Is There an Unconscious in This Text? On Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno

Abstract

In La coscienza , psychoanalysis constitutes one of the principal themes of the novel, while it acts at the same time as a fundamental narrative device. Undoubtedly, the text stems from a reflection on psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud’s theories shape the book as a whole. Since psychoanalysis made its appearance in Italy, the Freudian discipline had been perceived as an exotic matter, a bourgeois cure for introverted Northern European souls. However, La coscienza does not exclusively embody one of the earliest signs of a generic aversion Italy showed towards psychoanalysis but also of the specific attitude national culture exhibited towards the very notion of unconscious. By so doing, Italo Svevo’s novel inaugurates a specific ‘Italian way’ to the unconscious, marking the resistance that would characterize the country’s attitude towards the radical attack psychoanalysis moved to a consciously led model of subjectivity.

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