Freud and Fiction

This work is an examination of four fictional texts on which Freud himself wrote; a fragmentary poem by Empedocles, Hebbel's "Judith and Holofernes", Jensen's "Gradiva" and E.T.A.Hoffmann's "The Sandman". In her analysis, Kofman is concerned to reassess these texts in the light of Freud's reading of them and to highlight what he misses out. She argues that Freud's claim to give faithful summaries of these works conceals his own editing and distortion of the texts. By interweaving her own commentary with Freud's and with the original texts, Kofman draws attention to the creation of myth and literature, to Freud's use of the literary text as proof of the analyst's theory, and to the process of literary interpretation as a revelation of the interpreter.