The real artist is never concerned with the fact that the story has been told, but in the experience of reliving it; and he cannot do this if he is not convinced of the opportunity for individual expression it permits.
Anais Nin, The Diary, Volume 1.
[She writes this in the context of her analysis with Otto Rank. How he, unlike other analysts, doesn’t seek to fit the individual’s story into a pattern in a textbook, a case of X or Y neurosis, but rather delights in each individual’s story, including the ways in which it mirrors an archetype or “textbook case”, in its own unique way. Her example – that he approaches like “an artist when he is about to paint, for the thousandth time, the portrait of the Virgin and Child”.]