The thesis that it is impossible to avoid Sigmund Freud captures his exceptional status in the humanities and social sciences since 1900. Still today, one must take a position—one way or another—on the challenge presented by Freud and psychoanalysis. This is particularly true for literary studies: while psychoanalysis has influenced literary productivity, the construction of psychoanalytic theory has always stood in an intimate connection with mythology and literature, and particularly with literary texts of the nineteenth century.

In this relation, ancient tragedy and its cast of characters have played a special role: in Freud, Oedipus becomes the namesake for the complex of masculine subjectivity; and Elektra the depraved candidate for its feminine counterpart. Beyond ancient tragedy, Hamlet is the modern heir of Oedipus and his complex; and Moses the model for translating individual psychology into cultural anthropology. These figures can thus be considered the paradigmatic figures of psychoanalysis: interpreting them formed the basis of its theoretical axioms both for Freud and the psychoanalysts who followed him. No figures, no complexes!

The interest in the epistemic potential of literature diminishes in the second and third generations of psychoanalysts, with the prominent exception of Jacques Lacan. The focus shifts from interpreting literature to interpreting the founding texts of psychoanalysis itself. Nevertheless, scholars such as Kohut (Narcissus), L. Szondi (Cain), Butler (Antigone), and Meltzer (Joan of Arc) continue to pursue the character-based motifs, contents, roles (personae), and narratives that significantly contributed to forming the concepts of psychoanalysis. This conference will investigate the functions of the figures that psychoanalysis has enlisted and the functions of those that it has ignored, avoided, and even suppressed yet still implicitly activated. With these figures, we will thus turn attention to how theorization depends on literature, which continues to assert its epistemic potential in this field.