The witch's kitchen

Sigmund Freud's writings bristle with citations from Goethe's masterpiece, Faust. Sabine Prokhoris maintains that Faust profoundly influenced Freud's psychoanalytic theory, particularly his conception of a cure. Its impact, she says, might be described as "analytic" in nature - a product of transference, the foundation of the psychoanalytic process. Citations from Goethe occur in many of Freud's texts, introduced suddenly to provoke or to underscore a point. Prokhoris asks a fascinating question: does the repetition of certain citations at critical junctures in many of Freud's texts provide important clues to the unconscious processes behind his analytic theory?