Mary H. Eframov [ on RS Gwynn's "I'm sure thatVN continually returned to the "primal scene" of his father's assassination, which could not have been less than the most significant event of his whole life..."] "I think the two words,"primal scene" are a suboptimal choice as they are derived from Freudian lore,and as such might be objectionable in writing about VN...."

 

JM: I'm unsure if RS Gwynn employed Sigmund Freud's term for the "primal scene." You don't need to read Freud to be able to know that what RSGwynn argues (about VN's returning to the "primal scene" of his father's assassination) is unrelated to this psychoanalytic concept.

A good source of information about the "primal scene" is, actually, Nabokov himself, in his parodies of the Wind couple, in "Pnin". Even the few lines on the subject, in Pale Fire, reveal a good grasp of Freudian texts.