Freud’s long essay, an analysis of the German novelist Wilhelm Jensen’s story

, is his first work to deal explicitly and systematically with literature and aesthetics, although he had commented at some length on

and

in

(1900). In asserting that dreams have meaning, psychoanalysts are aligned with the ancients, a “superstitious” public and creative writers. Through the close analysis of a story that Jensen termed a “Pompeiian phantasy”, Freud considers “the class of dreams that have never been dreamt at all – dreams created by imaginative writers and ascribed to invented characters in the course of a story.”

The story concerns Norbert Hanold, a young German archaeologist who becomes fascinated, even obsessed, by a

1374 words

Citation: Brewster, Scott. "Der Wahn und die Traüme in W. Jensens 'Gradiva'". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 April 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5620, accessed 25 November 2024.]