By Eric Mendelsohn
Thank you to Cara Maniaci for her invitation to write, and to Diane Malkin and Chris Nardozzi for their facilitation.
I
Writers contend with the tension between originality and indebtedness. This is the central claim of the literary theorist Harold Bloom (1973), who wrote that each author’s work is a creative misreading of their literary forebears. Why misreading? Bloom’s recognition that a writer’s creative achievement builds on the influence of earlier generations does not mean that later authors succumb to interpretive errors or to mindless imitation. Rather, it refers to the ways that literature transforms its readers, and then, in turn, undergoes its own transformations in the process of becoming part of literary tradition. We read a text and allow it to run through us. Then, once we come around to our own writing, the original text has exerted its influence and, in so doing, is changed as a result of having been read. Each reading results in some revision of the original text.
At the same time, we also struggle to stand apart from influence (even as we recognize the impossibility of fully doing so) in order to preserve a space of personal expressiveness. We reach for what we can claim as authentically ours, while worrying that we have been diminished by a belatedness that renders our work derivative. This is what Bloom terms “the anxiety of influence.”
One of my children, at two and a half, resolved to get dressed without help, while not yet being able to do so. They anxiously implored, “Daddy, help me do this by myself.” Such interpenetration of autonomy, trust, and essential interconnectedness shapes our living and writing. How do we reconcile our claims of authenticity, our expressions of what feels most true, with the recognition that we become who we are through relatedness?
II
I have always been drawn to writing. My earliest poems and stories were often self-conscious and imitative. Yet, from the start, there was also the sense of something taking shape from within, a feeling that what awaited expression would indeed be found. Consider the definitions of inspiration and influence. Inspiration derives from the Latin inspirare, “to breathe in, as air into the lungs… an inspiring or being inspired mentally or emotionally… a prompting of something to be written or said” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 1991). Air itself, life’s most essential necessity, is located at the junction of artistic inspiration and creative output. What we need most is bestowed. We are inspired and are then enabled to create meaning. In so doing we contribute to the fluidity and vitality of cultural life.
Now consider influence, derived from the Latin influere, “to flow… and to flow in… the supposed flowing of an ethereal fluid or power from the stars… thought by astrologers to affect the characters and actions of people.” We are influenced, so that we may in turn inspire others and become influential. And we thrive, and undergo anxiety, in both domains.
I would not be writing this—certainly not specifically this—now, absent Cara’s invitation. Yet, as I write, I have the sense that what has emerged was, in some sense, already “there.” Certainly not in this precise form, but in some process of incubation prior to this invitation.
I enrolled in a creative writing seminar in high school. There was a new assignment every two weeks. We were asked to write a poem, story, or scene from a play. And we regularly castigated ourselves for putting off the writing until the night before it came due. Our teacher brushed aside our self-reproaches, reassuring us that receipt of the assignment had prompted some preparatory process. He said that by the time we actually began writing, we had already been working for some time, and that what we wrote would have been far less accomplished had we received the assignment the night before. He maintained that we were unimaginative and constricted in our conceptions of what writing entails. He added that each assignment taps into a reservoir of self-generated creative potential. His role as teacher was principally to provide occasions for our expressive reaching.
I recall feeling both skepticism and begrudging resonance. I thought that he was letting us off the hook by excusing our laziness, yet I was taken with the idea that our writing is always in some stage of preparation and readiness.
If what I write here was already coming into being in advance of Cara’s invitation, is this invitation merely a triggering event? Is it meaningful to conceive of writing that does not derive from invitation? In the most literal sense, of course, yes. Not infrequently, we encounter what presents itself as unbidden inspiration, as natural as a drawing in of breath. Perhaps in the course of grappling with some clinical complexity, I arrive at an idea for a paper and embark on a process of sculpting thoughts that seem to form themselves, and then essentially watch as the article takes shape. Or, especially in more recent years, I might write something directly autobiographical and self-reflective—not so much a clinical paper, but closer to a meditation or memoir.
And yet, even without any specific invitation to contribute a chapter, participate in a panel, or serve as a discussant, I am always engaged in ongoing conversations, even when these are, in the most immediate sense, internal, functioning as a place of origin for each piece of writing. At the very least, I might say that some invitation—either in explicit form or derived from internal promptings—is essential for any work to be written. The difference between explicitly invited and more emergent contributions may be largely one of degrees of separation between and within inspiration and influence.
I am occasionally a published writer while I am, more ongoingly, a reader. Even so, I am, in some meaningful sense, always somewhere in the process of writing. Even at the point of starting this draft, I had only some relatively unformed impressions of what I would write. The work emerged more recognizably into being through the act of writing. I do not fully know what I will say until I speak, and what I write and speak is never static; it is always in some process of refinement. And yet, for me at least, some tangible invitation is usually part of the creative process.
Most of what I have written, from early poetry and stories through this piece, has been assigned or invited. There is always some struggle with inertia, and the potential for productivity often remains unrealized. Invitations inspire, even as they engender anxiety. This is the case even when inspiration feels self-generated. Influence and inspiration are inseparable, and they interpenetrate; indeed, I struggle to keep the distinctions between them clear. Likewise, indebtedness and creativity are irreducibly linked.
III
It is fitting to close with an invitation of my own, one extended to writers in our community, to join our communal conversation by contributing to this forum. Potential must be coaxed into being, and this potential, once actualized, is transformed as it finds expression. Writing is a muscle that needs to be worked over and again. It is a practice both solitary and communal. Once invited, it takes shape from within and then is made available for reading. It elicits response and serves as inspiration. Not infrequently, we underestimate our potential to influence. The anxiety of influence encompasses our struggles to profit from and limit what we take in, as well as our reluctance to become influential.
December 2025
Eric Mendelsohn is formerly Associate Editor of Dynamo, the literary journal of the Bronx High School of Science. He is on the teaching and supervisory faculty of several psychoanalytic institutes, and his clinical practice includes several consultation groups. He writes about the patient-therapist relationship and the subjective experience of the therapist.
References
Bloom, H. (1973). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Oxford University Press.
Neufeldt, V. (Ed.). (1991). Webster’s New World Dictionary of American English.