For example, I could say of myself, I want to see into people's minds and lives, but I don't want to get close to them. We make our lives as artists make works of art. We have a conception, partly conscious, mostly unconscious, and we shape everything to that end. My real interest, however, had never left the question of readers' responses. I found, doing an experiment in 1968, that this concept of identity applied to re-creation as well as creation.
Readers shape the texts they read to fit their identity themes.
To give you a proper account of those, though, I need to say more about identity. That is, we now know that each human brain is different, and the differences come from childhood experiences. In other words, as psychoanalysis says, our childhood leads each of us to develop a different personal style or identity theme. Our identities are quite literally written into our brains from the time we are born until we have entered adolescence. Through free association or some other form of self-knowledge, we can to some extent know our identity, but mostly it will remain unconscious.