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The relationship between psychoanalysis and literature consists not just in the retrospective application of theory to works of literature. Rather, Hamlet, Oedipus, and other works are elements in the very genesis of psychoanalytic
theory itself. Because analytic interest was chiefly directed toward pathography, it formerly centered on the id contents concealed and elaborated in these works, while ignoring those contents that fulfilled the function of resistance. Dettmering points out that even Freud undertook 'exopoetic' (the Leonardo study as well as 'endopoetic' (Jensen's Gradiva) interpretation of literature. The author also points to psychoanalytic research on creativity and to a newer trend in psychoanalytic interpretations which is aimed at the form and structure of the work of art (Chasseguet-Smirgel).