-------- Original Message --------
Few, if any, Nabokovians may have heard of Michel Onfray's important
essay, "Le
crépuscule d'une idole. L'affabulation freudienne" (Grasset 2010) which
triggered a heated debate in France (should I say in Paris?). It is a
very
important book in my opinion. It is a frontal, and very well researched
(recently published letters of Fredu among other documents) attack
against
Freud as a scientist which denounces his bad faith and his incompetence
as a
therapist.
Some of you will be surprised to read these lines, coming as they do
from the
author of the only psychoanalytic, mainly Lacanian, reading of
Nabokov's novels
(so far), "Nabokov ou la cruauté du désir". Lacanian psychoanalysis
provides,
in my opinion, a strong theory of the human psyche which casts new
light on the
psychological make-up of Nabokov's characters and contributes to a
better (not
the final as the Freudians are too prone to claim) understanding of the
unfolding of the stories contained in his novels.
Maurice Couturier