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Peter Rudnytsky identifies himself not as a psychoanalyst but as a mere literary critic. It is as such that he brings to this volume a close—indeed, microscopic—reading of some classic texts by pioneering figures (Freud, Rank, Ferenczi, and, somewhat surprisingly, Groddeck) in order to understand some recent developments in the field. He is, however, a critic with an ax to grind, and it is the sparks that fly from that procedure that, for this reader at least, raise some questions about what is for the most part an impressive demonstration of erudition, literary skill, and conceptual grasp.
Fittingly, Rudnytsky begins by exploring Freud's earliest effort at the analysis of a literary text: Jensen's “Gradiva”1 This essay was Freud's first venture into the realm of applied psychoanalysis, stemming, as Rudnytsky says, “from the halcyon days of the movement” (p. 2), and Rudnytsky, himself a distinguished practitioner in this realm, traces the pathways of its evolution and subsequent contributions, such as “Leonardo” and the Schreber case. Indeed, he cites with approval Schafer's observation that “it would be just as warranted to recommend viewing clinical analysis as a form of applied analysis as to continue viewing applied analysis as parasitic on clinical analysis” (p. 6).2
In his carefully wrought critique of Freud's texts, Rudnytsky places emphasis on similarities in the Freudian method of argument in the reading of fiction, of autobiography, and of what Rudnytsky calls his “clinical fictions?—i.e., Freud's case reports. In all cases, the author asserts, “Freud concentrates on the oedipal level of repressed wishes but neglects to consider moods or states of being” (p. 12). In his analysis of the characters in Jensen's novel (whom he tends to treat as though they were real persons), Freud ignores the fact that both of them—Norbert Hanold and Zoe Bertgang