Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Freud’s MemoryConclusion: Freud’s Secret

Freud’s Memory: Conclusion: Freud’s Secret [Vladimir Nabokov was exuberantly contemptuous of Freud’s work. ‘Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe,’ he said in an interview, ‘that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.’1 In Lolita (1955), he has Humbert Humbert delight in recalling a stay in a psychiatric hospital: The reader will regret to learn that soon after my return to civilization I had another bout with insanity (if to melancholia and a sense of insufferable oppression that cruel term must be applied). I owe my complete restoration to a discovery I made while being treated at that particular very expensive sanatorium. I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on; never letting them see that you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style (which make them, the dream-extortionists, dream and wake up shrieking); teasing them with fake ‘primal scenes’; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one’s real sexual predicament. By bribing a nurse I won access to some files and discovered, with glee, cards calling me ‘potentially homosexual’ and ‘totally impotent.’ The sport was so excellent, its results — in my case — so ruddy that I stayed on a whole month after I was quite well (sleeping admirably and eating like a schoolgirl).2] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Freud’s MemoryConclusion: Freud’s Secret

Part of the Language, Discourse, Society Book Series
White, Rob
Freud’s Memory — Sep 29, 2015
Download PDF
9 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/freud-s-memory-conclusion-freud-s-secret-BanTUDXcr9

References (2)

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2008
ISBN
978-1-349-28089-6
Pages
146 –155
DOI
10.1057/9780230227569_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Vladimir Nabokov was exuberantly contemptuous of Freud’s work. ‘Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe,’ he said in an interview, ‘that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.’1 In Lolita (1955), he has Humbert Humbert delight in recalling a stay in a psychiatric hospital: The reader will regret to learn that soon after my return to civilization I had another bout with insanity (if to melancholia and a sense of insufferable oppression that cruel term must be applied). I owe my complete restoration to a discovery I made while being treated at that particular very expensive sanatorium. I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on; never letting them see that you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style (which make them, the dream-extortionists, dream and wake up shrieking); teasing them with fake ‘primal scenes’; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one’s real sexual predicament. By bribing a nurse I won access to some files and discovered, with glee, cards calling me ‘potentially homosexual’ and ‘totally impotent.’ The sport was so excellent, its results — in my case — so ruddy that I stayed on a whole month after I was quite well (sleeping admirably and eating like a schoolgirl).2]

Published: Sep 29, 2015

Keywords: Pure Classic; Greek Myth; Primal Scene; Ancient Myth; Archive Fever

There are no references for this article.