Streszczenie:
There are spheres of human culture that are capable of appealing with a powerful force to a
person’s heart at times allaying – like catharsis – surrounding anxieties and at times bringing
excitement of unexpectedness to the existence brimful with the quotidian.1 One of these
spheres is indubitably literature, the ever-growing circle of intertextuality and social
communication that, as it is held by Stephen Greenblatt, is an inconceivable “circulation of
social energy.”2 What is of significance, however, is the fact that literature is not only marked
with its openness to intertextuality within strict literary borders, it is likewise characterised by
its readiness to mingle with other spheres of human thought. One of the most noticeable co-
partners in such a symbiosis seems to be psychology with its various derivatives. That
psychology discloses a lot in common with literature on the ground of the same origin – the
human psyche – is indisputable. According to Markowski, “psychoanalysis applicable to
literary theory [...] focuses mainly on a neurotic subject expressing one’s subjectivity through
the text. Literary text, then, is treated as a symbolic representation of neurosis.”3 In truth, the
literary figures that the author of the article attempts to analyse disclose, despite their
powerfulness revealed in a variety of shapes, one serious weakness.
