ABSTRACT
Reed has discussed and summarized the methodological problems of the psychoanalytic literary criticism in detail. She reminds us of the “important tradition in literary criticism which considers the text itself paramount” and which had led psychoanalytically informed literary critics to concentrate on the text, taking into the account psychoanalytic knowledge. Toward the end of Cabaret, a scene provides a point of the contact for the interrelated themes that have been considered so far: cultural and social history, individual history, form and content of the texts, novel and film. Freud postulated four major calamities (real or fantasied) as the sources of traumatic situations: object loss, loss of love of the object, genital loss or injury, and superego condemnation. Brenner suggests that there are major affective responses to the situations: anxiety (something terrible may happen) or depression (something terrible has already happened).
