-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov and Freud
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2011 08:50:52 +0100
From: <Maurice.Couturier@unice.fr>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
References: <4D4CAAC4.9000701@utk.edu>

Few, if any, Nabokovians may have heard of Michel Onfray's important essay, "Le
crépuscule d'une idole. L'affabulation freudienne" (Grasset 2010) which
triggered a heated debate in France (should I say in Paris?). It is a very
important book in my opinion. It is a frontal, and very well researched
(recently published letters of Fredu among other documents) attack against
Freud as a scientist which denounces his bad faith and his incompetence as a
therapist.

Some of you will be surprised to read these lines, coming as they do from the
author of the only psychoanalytic, mainly Lacanian, reading of Nabokov's novels
(so far), "Nabokov ou la cruauté du désir". Lacanian psychoanalysis provides,
in my opinion, a strong theory of the human psyche which casts new light on the
psychological make-up of Nabokov's characters and contributes to a better (not
the final as the Freudians are too prone to claim) understanding of the
unfolding of the stories contained in his novels.

Maurice Couturier

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