Abstract

With the evocative  title of this paper “Sheherazade and Bluebeard” a well known tale that was written many years ago, I aim to portray how often during psychoanalytic sessions a patient will refer to literary texts, making quotations from stories and tales when he/she is unable to express his own fantasies and emotions. There are gradual steps that are made, the tale is referred to, it creates an atmosphere, there are the remembered dialogues of the characters and the silences. By having selected a particular tale, not only does the patient show his difficulty in expressing his complex state of mind, but he signals his inability in grasping that which is essential to him. Through this paper I shall also be dealing with the more psychoanalytically based topics of separation and memory, and with the aid of the relationship of “tale telling” that gradually establishes itself between analyst and patient we will see how these topics are in fact interrelated.

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