Interpretation of Peter Kien's Dreams in Elias Canetti's "Auto Da Fe". An Illustration of Freud's Method of Psychoanalysis

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,3, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, language: English, abstract: The international aesthetic movement at the turn of the century is the so-called "Modern Break" or the period of literary modernism. A famous author of this movement can be found in Elias Canetti who "depicts himself as a lone traveler" (Murphy 21) and who was geographically displaced from his home in Austria while spending a significant part of his life either living or travelling through Western Europe. His first novel is "Auto Da Fé", which was published in 1936. "Auto Da Fé" contains a number of dreams which the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud interpreted and analyzed in his "Interpretation of Dreams" in 1899. Consequently, this essay will demonstrate in how far Freud's concept of psychoanalysis can be defined and which features are commonly associated with it according to Canetti and Freud. To prove this statement, the following essay initially gives a short overview of the Freudian concept of psychoanalysis and identifies its common features. Moreover, the second part of the essay will analyze and interpret Peter Kien's dreams in Elias Canetti's "Auto Da Fé" with regard to psychoanalysis. The third and last part will finally sum up all the important points mentioned in this paper.