Chapter 7 Fighting the ‘Freudian Farce’: Vladimir Nabokov’s Portrayal of America’s Post-War Infatuation with Psychoanalysis
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Abstract
Verbal attacks on Sigmund Freud pervade Vladimir Nabokov’s letters, lectures, and interviews. Alongside the figural presence of Freud as either a nameless shadow or finely contoured foe, Nabokov’s fiction features extensive parodies of psychoanalytic theory and practice. This paper links Nabokov’s anti-Freudian rhetoric to the popularization of psychoanalysis in the United States after the Second World War. It tracks psychoanalysis’s development in academic and popular culture with special attention to Nabokov’s 1950s novels, revealing how his general claim to be just using the material that happens to be at hand considerably downplays the impact of sociohistorical factors on his writing.