The method of invention, as Edgar Poe demonstrated in 
his “Philosophy of Composition,” is simply to begin with the 
solution of the problem or with the effect intended. Then one 
backtracks, step by step, to the point from which one must 
begin in order to reach the solution or effect. Such is the 
method of the detective story, of the symbolist poem, and of 
modern science. It is, however, the twentieth century step 
beyond this method of invention which is needed for 
understanding the origin and the action of such forms as the 
wheel or the alphabet. And that step is not the backtracking 
from product  to starting point, but the following of process  in 
isolation from product. To follow the contours of process as in 
psychoanalysis provides the only means of avoiding the 
product of process, namely neurosis or psychosis.

     It is the purpose of the present book to study primarily