SOURCE: Gilman, Sander L. “Freud Reads Heine Reads Freud.” Southern Humanities Review 24, no. 3 (summer 1990): 201-18.

In the following essay, Gilman traces parallels between Heine's work and the theories of Sigmund Freud.

Of all the creative writers whom Sigmund Freud read and quoted, none has quite as unique a place in his mental library as does Heinrich Heine. Although when Freud was asked in 1907 to compile a list of “good books,” he did not include any by Heine, he did include Heine as the only German author on his (admittedly short) list of “favorite” books.¹ Freud neither quotes Heine more frequently than Goethe nor does Heine have as central a position in Freud's world of metaphors as do the Greeks. But Freud's reading of his “favorite” German writer, Heinrich Heine, reflects Freud's confrontation with the literary representation of the Jewish cultural voice in a way not paralleled by his...