ABSTRACT
The extraordinary preoccupation with literary “style” which marked Wilson’s first happy years at Princeton seems to have arisen from the unsatisfied portions of both his activity and passivity to his father. In the words of his brother-in-law: “… he was so preoccupied with literary ‘style,’ that it approached obsession.” His father also had been preoccupied to an exceptional degree by “style,” and Wilson’s “obsession” probably drew its chief charge of libido from his need for an additional identification with the Professor Extraordinary of Rhetoric. But since the Reverend Joseph Ruggles Wilson had done his best to compel his son to become preoccupied with literary “style,” this preoccupation also gave outlet to Wilson’s passivity to his father. Thus, like speech-making, literary “style” offered outlet to Wilson’s most powerful desires.
