Neither Freud nor Psychoanalysis need me to defend them. My interest
remains
on the subject of how Nabokov judged or understood Freud.
I remember reading somewhere ( and I quote from memory) Nabokov
describe
psychoanalysis as a "sexual police-state". This leads me to suppose he
was
particularlty cognizant with Freud's seduction theory and not
necessarily
with what became "Psychoanalysis" after Freud moved on to "Oedipal"
matters.
The use of hypnosis and psychology to establish retroactive seduction
by
parents and relatives belongs to the level of such "sexual
police-state" -
which I, along with VN, despise.
UNICEF and other agencies have staggering statistics about child abuse
and
rape, plus other heinous crimes that demonstrate how often these take
place
in the seclusion of a family. It is not the purpose of psychoanalysis
to
deal with that ( it's for lawyers, police investigators, the
firesquad,etc),
but psychoanalysis does offer a better understanding on what is
inveolved in
most family pathologies - and Oedipal theories are instrumental for
that.
Jansy Mello