“Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.”

—  Lionel Trilling

Notebook entry (1946), published in Partisan Review: 50th Anniversary Edition, ed. William Philips (1985)

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Lionel Trilling photo
Lionel Trilling30
American academic 1905–1975

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