Why do we read books? What are the unconscious processes involved in reading literature? Why have they remained enigmatic to this day and how does this book nonetheless try to decipher them?

The affinity between psychoanalysis and literature dates back to the founding of these two disciplines at the turn of the twentieth century. After analysing in what way and why these questions have bothered literary and psychoanalytic researchers for decades, I explain the idea I have adopted in response to these long-standing questions: to study a variety of reading experiences of diverse literary characters in 18 different literary works, and to psychoanalytically analyse the psychological processes involved in those reading experiences.

The way the authors described the reading experiences of their characters can therefore be regarded as similar to free associations about reading (projected into their characters), thus bringing us as close as possible to the reader’s unconscious experiences.