[Kate Benedict]

Of for heaven's sake, psychoanalysis is a complicated subject. I didn't mean to promulgate anything but I'll state as a fact that parent blaming was a huge aspect of my experience of psychoanalysis. Incorrect or not, the Freudian obsession with parental influence, the Oedipus complex, etc., weasled into the culture at large. Larkin was writing at a high point in the popularity of analysis and his mockery is spot on. That's the subject. Larkin. The poem. The matrix in which the poem was written.