Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensens »Gradiva«

A psychoanalytic reading argues that dreamed scenes in fiction are meaningful and can be analyzed like ordinary dreams. After defending the premise that literary dreams deserve interpretation, the author closely examines a novella in which a reader becomes obsessed with a depiction from the past, experiences recurrent dream-like imaginings, and develops a persistent delusional attachment that leads to real-life encounters tied to the image. Applying analytic techniques, the essay interprets these imaginative dreams and the ensuing delusion as disguised satisfactions of repressed wishes mediated by mechanisms such as displacement and symbolic substitution, and considers what such patterns reveal about creative and psychic processes.