Stephen Blackwell: If in fact the popularized version of Freud was a caricature and distortion of the original figure, and if Nabokov himself was to some
extent aware of that distance between original and popular parody, his awareness would have only reinforced his very energetic protection of his own privacy--including the privacy of his works' hidden meanings.

 

JM: It's almost as if we could imagine that there were two Freuds at war in VN: one he respected and feared (& to whom he kept returning to, even in his diatribes) and another one, the guiding idol for select "schools of fish," whom he rightfully and truly detested?

Actually, Psychoanalysis developped along divergent roads, mostly leading its hordes of practitioners away from the Ur-Father. Nabokov's private motivations against him were equally manifold and, for the most part, successfully cached. My greatest curiosity, among the list of works by Freud that Nabokov did read, is to find out if he ever read Freud's article about the "paramnesias."