The author presents his research into the place of the imaginary in Nerval’s later works, combining the methods of thematic criticism with an analytical reading. He first discusses the problems raised by the use of psychoanalysis in literary criticism, comparing his approach with those of Jean Bellemin-Noël and Jean-Pierre Richard. He draws on Lacan’s writings on the mirror stage and paranoid psychosis to establish a dialogue between the phenomenological approach and Lacan’s reading of the imaginary. They enable him to shed light on the role played by fixation on the maternal imago, the invention of imaginary loves and the subject’s identification with his doubles in Nerval’s last texts. The aim is not to reduce them to the expression of a pathology, but to understand how their author, by confronting his vertigo, was able to open up new avenues for literature and offer valuable material for psychoanalysis.