J.Mello:
Stan, I didn't "google-match" this sentence to accidentaly find it in
Freud. It so happens that this episode is one of my favorites, because
the patient was expressing her rejection of Freud's interpretations - when
reporting her dream about a "canal" - while, at the same
time, confirming them. I still think that Nabokov might have read it
in Freud since it would be absurd to suppose that he took such great pains
to deride Freud without being familiar with his writings about "Die
Traumdeutung."
Nabokov even read minor articles by some
of Freud's followers, such as Oskar Pfister and even Erich Fromm(cf.
"Pale Fire"). Richard Rorty once observed (The Barber of
Kasbeam) that "Freud was the one person Nabokov resented in the same
obsessive and intense way that Heidegger resented Nietzsche. In both cases, it
was resentment of the precursor who may already have written all one's best
lines."*
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*-
Here I use R.Rorty's authoritative observations merely as a tease because I find
this particular sentence of his superficial and unjustly depreciative..