Mary H. Eframov [ on RS Gwynn's "I'm sure thatVN
continually returned to the "primal scene" of his father's assassination, which
could not have been less than the most significant event of his whole
life..."] "I think the two words,"primal scene" are a suboptimal choice as
they are derived from Freudian lore,and as such might be objectionable in
writing about VN...."
JM: I'm unsure if RS Gwynn employed Sigmund Freud's term
for the "primal scene." You don't need to read Freud to be able to
know that what RSGwynn argues (about VN's returning to
the "primal scene" of his father's assassination) is unrelated to
this psychoanalytic concept.
A good source of information about the "primal scene" is, actually, Nabokov
himself, in his parodies of the Wind couple, in "Pnin". Even the few
lines on the subject, in Pale Fire, reveal a good grasp of Freudian
texts.