The Freudian Poetics of Naked Truth: Psychoanalysis and the Modern History of Nakedness and Nudity

Samenvatting

This article examines the poetic and affective dimensions of Freud’s psychoanalytic writing through the interrelated metaphors of nakedness, nudity, and revelation. It argues that The Interpretation of Dreams and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious develop a poetics of naked truth, in which psychoanalysis emerges not solely as a hermeneutic of unveiling but as a literary practice that produces aesthetic pleasure. By analyzing Freud’s oscillation between concealment and disclosure, the article demonstrates how his texts perform the very dynamics they describe: their figurative and narrative structures transform the act of reading into an embodied and affective experience. Situating these textual strategies within the broader cultural and literary history of the body, the study traces how Freud’s reflections on dreams, jokes, and sexuality engage with discourses of nudity as both epistemological trope and anthropological figure. In dialogue with traditions of classical reception and the long-standing metaphorics of the textile, Freud’s writings reveal a poetic epistemology that blurs the boundaries between science and literature, critique and pleasure. The article thus proposes that psychoanalysis, in Freud’s own practice, functions as a modern aesthetic discourse that integrates knowledge, embodiment, and affect.