ABSTRACT
Fifty Shades of Grey, written by British author E. L. James and quickly followed by two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, was first published in New York in April 2012. By imitating a vampire romance for teenagers, Fifty Shades has been able to ride the wave of Twilight's success, whilst also explicitly reintroducing genital sexuality into its narrative. The sociological approach, which explains the dazzling success of Fifty Shades by the fact that it is a kind of coming-of-age story, therefore seems lacking. Fifty Shades is thus a vibrant tribute to a successful hysteria. The widespread success of Fifty Shades is nonetheless ironic. As Ernest Jones shows, historically the belief in vampires repressed the incestuous desire for the father, together with the excessively genital sexuality of the incubus. The first psychoanalyst who became interested in vampires was Jones, in his work On the Nightmare, which he began writing in 1909.
