Kafka's Ambivalence Towards Psychoanalysis

Franz Kafka's attitude towards Freudian psychoanalysis has long been one of the most controversial topics in Kafka criticism. Views among the critics range from the claim that Kafka entirely rejected Freudian psychoanalysis to the opinion that psychoanalysis influenced Kafka's writings throughout his life. Only few critics have taken into consideration that Kafka's attitude towards psychoanalysis underwent a change during his lifetime, and that his ambivalence towards psychoanalysis reflects a more profound change in his life and in his views.

Kafka's first brief reference to Freud can be found in his diary in July 1912 when he was on a holiday in Jungborn in the Harz, when he notes having discussed Freud with an acquaintance. In this diary entry he only mentions Freud's name briefly but approvingly with some other modern modes of thought to which his attitude is known to be positive, such as natural methods of healing, educational reform and progressive political thought. Kafka's second, much more enthusiastic reference to Freud is to be found in his diary only two months later on 23 September 1912, immediately after the night in which he wrote his breakthrough story The Judgement. His enthusiasm in this reference is obvious when he talks about the literary figures whom he had thought of while writing the story, and he particularly emphasizes Freud's influence:

Only in this way can writing be done, only with such coherence, with such a complete opening out of the body and the soul. Morning in bed. The always clear eyes. Many emotions carried along in the writing, joy, for example, that I shall have something beautiful for Max's ‘Arkadia’, thoughts about Freud, of course; in one passage, of Arnold Beer, in another, of Wassermann, in one of Werfel's ‘Giantess’; of course, also of my ‘The Urban World’. (Kafka 1972, p. 293)

Kafka's enthusiastic remark about Freud reflects the importance of Freudian thought for his fictional works. Psychoanalytic theory offered him topics