Conclusion

Summary

My attempt throughout this book to resituate Freud's writings – clinical, theoretical, and applied texts alike – within the context of his literary culture has given rise to a variety of new perspectives. I have demonstrated not only that authors such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Goethe play an active role in Freud's formulation and development of psychoanalytical theory, but also that this depth of intellectual influence is matched by a corresponding profundity in his emotional relationships with great writers. The often underestimated sophistication of his literary analyses suggests that his ambivalence towards poets is by no means the arrogant disdain of a blinkered scientist. Viewed in the context of his appreciation of writers as genuine precursors of psychoanalysis, his ‘sublime’ ambivalence provides evidence, rather, of fraught emotional undercurrents such as filial reverence, influence anxiety, envy, and creative revolt. Although most would find, say, Harold Bloom's assertion that Freud has essentially rewritten Shakespeare in prose form rather too out-landish, Bloom's main flaw may simply be that he actually neglects Freud's prime precursor, Goethe. Faust, for example, constitutes something of an immanence within Freud's writing, present even when it does not surface in the form of an allusion; and Goethe himself emerges as a linchpin of Freud's emotional life: a revered totem, an adored but threateningly powerful father-figure, an invaluable advocate, a hero with whom he ambitiously identies, and an ideal alter ego – the poet-scientist.