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Nabokov has left us in no doubt about his attitude to psychoanalysis: “I have ransacked my oldest dreams for keys and clues—and let me say at once that I reject completely the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally medieval world of Freud, with its crank-ish quest for sexual symbols (something like searching for Baconian acrostics in Shakespeare's works) and its bitter little embryos spying, from their natural nooks, upon the love life of their parents “;1 “Although everybody should know that I detest symbols and allegories (which is due partly to my old feud with Freudian voodooism …) “; 2 and, “In the Prefaces I have been writing of late … I have made it a rule to address a few words of encouragement to the Viennese delegation. The present Foreword shall not be an exception. Analysts and analyzed will enjoy, I hope, certain details of the treatment Luzhin is subjected to after his breakdown (such as the curative insinuation that a chess player sees Mom in his Queen and Pop in his opponent's King), and the little Freudian who mistakes a Pixlok set for a key to a novel will no doubt continue to identify my characters with his comic-book notion of my parents, sweethearts and serial selves.”3
Through these and similar remarks, Nabokov tells us that psychoanalytic theory is mistaken and distasteful, and that the same applies to any who think it helps to explain either him or his novels. Hence, it is not surprising to find that even literary critics who are sympathetic to psychoanalysis take Nabokov's pronouncements at face-value. Trilling, speaking of Lolita, asserts that Nabokov's “purpose cannot be explained by any