Abstract
By applying a neuropsychoanalytic theory of literary creativity, through a close reading of Witi Ihimaera's The Matriarch (1986) and its sequel The Dream Swimmer (1997), this essay demonstrates how the thematic and structural patterns of the diptych express rage, resentment, and their attendant emotions, hatred and guilt. It shows how Ihimaera ascribes these emotions to a convergence of postcolonial political circumstances and cultural pressures exerted by a traditional indigenous culture that his hero in certain respects finds oppressive. A comparison of these fictional works with the two volumes of Ihimaera's autobiography, Māori Boy (2014) and Native Son (2019), confirms that the novels have their origins in his own real-life experience, which is transposed through strategies of symbolic figuration into a representation of unusual complexity and imaginative daring.