Starobinski and Freud: myths and reality of a long-distance relation- ship

Abstract

This paper aims to focus the attention on some specific and determined aspects of the relationship between Starobinski and psychoanalysis, namely on its connection with the original Freud’s theory (regardless of its subsequent heterodox and non-heterodox re-elaborations), and in particular on some explicit methodological statements about the limits and legitimacy in the use of Freud’s arsenal. To what extent is it allowed, according to Starobinski and Freud, to apply the resources and epistemological categories inherited from psychoanalysis to the reading of a literary or philosophical text? How can the two different interpretative registers of clinical-medical observation and so-called “humanities” coexist? Where does the plausible thought of the author end and where does the interpretative superfetation which triggers the hermeneutical circle to begin? And under what conditions can the latter be considered fruitful and not arbitrary? But above all, how to discern and delimit the subjective-authorial nucleus of a text from that dilation of universal and metahistorical meanings activated by the mechanism of interpretation? The following pages hazard an attempt to answer these complex questions.