HOW KIERKEGAARD USED MAIEUTICS IN WRITING HIS UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT
Strictly speaking, suggestion and hints should play no part in maieutics. However, Kierkegaard used both extensively in the Postscript, despite describing it as maieutic. I think perhaps he was using the maieutics on himself, and the suggestions and hints are actually the ideation resulting from its application. He used the concept of an imaginary reader, and this reader would share the ideation in a subconscious form with himself, the writer. Hence the imaginary reader was given the responsibility of conversing with Kierkegaard and bringing the unconscious ideation to the surface. Kierkegaard explicitly states that he follows the socratic method in this. Socrates believed that the knowledge already exists under the surface and comes out in the course of conversation. The reader of the Postscript is playing the part of Socrates, and Kierkegaard, the writer, is responding with vague hints about the semi-conscious ideation which is common to them both.