SOURCE: “Freud, Jung, and the ‘Myth’ of Psychoanalysis in The White Hotel,” in Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, Vol. 22, No. 1, Winter, 1989, pp. 55-69.

In the following essay, Wymer examines Thomas's incorporation of classical Freudian theory, particularly themes surrounding the concept of the death instinct, in The White Hotel, and mythic aspects of psychoanalysis and opposing elements of Freudian and Jungian psychology in the novel.

D. M. Thomas's The White Hotel is a book which polarized the responses of its first readers and reviewers to a remarkable degree. Now that the initial controversies over alleged sensationalism and plagiarism have died down it is possible to see more clearly how richly and carefully organized the novel is and to arrive at a more certain view about what Thomas is trying to convey by means of his delicate network of cross-referenced images and allusions. A useful starting...