The PANY Bulletin

Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Volume 39, Number 1 Spring 2001

Melitta Sperling Lecture
Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken": Childhood, Psychoanalytic Symbolism and Creativity
by Jules Glenn, M.D.
November 6, 2000

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Has worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back
I shall he telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost, despite his surface simplicity, down-home casualness and the colloquial quality of his poetry, was a complex thinker and writer, tragic and frightening. Frost gloried in multiple meanings, particularly in double meanings, and basked in the power of irony. He loved to pun and did so in his speech and poetry. He despised those who imputed simple statements to him. When others found a variety of significances to his writing, he did not disavow their interpretations. He neither belonged to the school that largely attributes a poem's significance to the reader or to the group of scholars that, emphasizing conscious content, ascribe everything to the author. He enjoyed tricking his readers by leading them to believe one meaning when he intended another meaning.

Such was the case when he wrote "The Road Not Taken." Frost had taken his family from their New England home to Britain where he successfully garnered a favorable reputation and had two books of poems published. He made firm friends with Edward Thomas, a writer who under Frost's influence became a poet of some esteem. The two men became close friends, so much so that when, with the outbreak of World War One, the Frosts returned to America, Thomas, an obsessional type, repeatedly mulled over whether to move to the the United States and live near Frost, to remain in England with his family or to join the British armed forces. Frost sent Thomas "The Road Not Taken" and was appalled to hear that his friend thought the poet was advocating take the unconventional approach to life.

Rather, Frost explained, he was poking fun at Thomas who could not make up his mind, and who frequently sighed as he pondered what to do. The point of the poem was that it made no difference what decision one made. Frost observed that many other readers missed his conscious intent and enjoyed tricking them all. Paradoxically, Frost also said that whenever he did the unconventional it worked out well. Apparently the poem advocated that position as well as mischievously suggesting that it made no difference which road was traversed.
In addition to these conscious intentions, a psychoanalytic reader can postulate other unconscious meanings:

1. The fork in the road may symbolize uncertainty, the difficulty making decisions and the conflict between heterosexual and homosexual object choice.

2. The poem was a reaction to Frost's loss of his close friend, with whom he shared many characteristics. Years before he wrote "The Road Not Taken," Frost had an eerie experience involving a crossroad in which he saw a man just like himself approaching and almost uniting with him, who then passed by. Writing "The Road Not Taken" used this imagery to express a desire to fuse with Thomas, a double with whom he could remain. By being one with Thomas, Frost could try to stem the anger that separation evokes.

3. Like many creative men Frost utilized secret sharers to facilitate his creativity. A secret sharer is a real or fantasized person, often a double, for whom or with whom one creates (Meyer 1967, Coltrera 1981, Glenn 1995). Frost's wife Elinor, and later his mistress Kay Morrison, served as secret sharers, and Frost encouraged Thomas's poetry as a secret sharer.

4. "The Road Not Taken" symbolizes Frost's oedipus complex which became more flagrantly apparent after his wife died and he became infatuated with Kay Morrison. Karl Abraham (1923) and later Weinberger and Glenn (1977) have provided evidence that the trifurcation of the road (the place three roads meet) symbolizes the female genital. It was at such a site that Oedipus killed his father Laius before he unknowingly married his mother Jocasta.
Both Elinor and Kay shared certain (different) traits with Frost's mother. (Elinor was disorganized and inefficient like Frost's mother for instance, and Kay was redheaded and of Scottish origin like her.) In addition he saw each as maternal figures who threatened to or actually rejected him. Frost's relation with men bore oedipal marks as well. He went so for as to ban Kay's husband from vacationing with Kay and him! And even before his affair with Kay, his violent competitive behavior was often outrageous. He once started a fire to distract the audience at a rival poet's reading

5. Frost's ambivalence and his interest in doubles, double (and multiple) meanings and puns can be traced to childhood experiences. His mother read him Bible stories emphasizing stark opposites, good and evil for instance. He identified with his parents, each of whom was quite different from the other, and particularly with his father whose contrasting traits included primitive rage and sublimated intellectualism.

Abraham, K (1923) Two Contributions to the Study of Symbols. In: Clinical Papers and Essays on Psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books, 1955.

Coltrera, J., Editor (1981) Lives, Events and Other Players: Directions in Psychobiography. New York: Aronson.

Glenn, J. (1995) The Child is Father of the Man: Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" and His Secret Sharers. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. New Haven: Yale Universities Press. (pp. 383-397)

Meyer, B.C. (1967) Joseph Conrad. A Psychoanalytic Biography. New York: Aronson.

Weinberger, J.L. and Glenn, J. (1977) The Significance of the Trifurcation of the Road; Clinical Confirmation and Illumination. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 25:655-567.

An expanded version of Dr. Glenn's paper, more complete than the Melitta Sperling Lecture, will appear in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child in 2001.