Shame in The Trial: Franz Kafka, critic of psychoanalysis Cover Image

La honte dans Le Procès : Franz Kafka, critique de la psychanalyse
Shame in The Trial: Franz Kafka, critic of psychoanalysis

Author(s): Julie Racine
Subject(s): Czech Literature, Psychoanalysis, Theory of Literature, Sociology of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Kafka; The Trial; Freud; psychoanalysis; law; Talmud;

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to demystify the way in which the mechanics of the Kafka Trial reproduces the Freudian topography of id, ego and superego, within which shame acts as a warning signal, as well as to highlight the hostile representation of psychoanalysis in The Trial. Thus, in an allegorical form, justice, through its representatives, would personify the inquisitive gaze of the analyst, whose theory resembles a law he himself enacted. It is also a question of how this criticism of psychoanalysis could emerge from the study of Talmudic writings undertaken by Kafka around 1911, impregnating in the author a conception of the law and its transgression incompatible with the Freudian doctrine.

  • Issue Year: 2017
  • Issue No: 11
  • Page Range: 47-64
  • Page Count: 18
  • Language: French
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