Throughout Lolita, Humbert Humbert is constantly making fun of Freudian Psychoanalysis. He calls Freud “the Viennese medicine man,” (274) and points out everything that Freudians might consider to be an important psychic symbol—not because he agrees, but just to make fun. Lolita is chock full of Freudian symbols—guns which are compared to male genitals, for example—but they are not meant to serve their usual purposes. They symbolize nothing, and have been placed in the novel just to make fun of Freud.
Freudian Symbols Quotes in Lolita
The Lolita quotes below all refer to the symbol of Freudian Symbols. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 1, Chapter 2
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My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory...
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Part 2, Chapter 17
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We must remember that a pistol is the Freudian symbol of the Ur-father’s central forelimb.
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Part 2, Chapter 25
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It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art.”
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Freudian Symbols Symbol Timeline in Lolita
The timeline below shows where the symbol Freudian Symbols appears in Lolita. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Foreword
...to “Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male,” is written by the fictional psychologist John Ray Jr., Ph.D., a specialist in perversions and abnormal states of mind. It frames...
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Part 1, Chapter 9
...must go to a sanatorium for a third time, he continues to play games with psychoanalysts by repeating exactly the kind of dreams and patterns of thought they describe in their...
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