ABSTRACT
The chapter proposes a close reading of the psychographic essay by the Polish physician Aleksander Oszacki dedicated to the renowned modernist poet Piotr Włast (Maria Komornicka). A careful examination of Oszacki’s remarks about Włast’s psyche offers a closer look at the dynamics of the transmission of psychoanalytic knowledge to Polish culture and science as the internalization of the entire structures of thinking about non-normative sexuality. My reading of Oszacki’s essay, which was popular in Polish critical and literary circles in the second half of the twentieth century and greatly influenced the reception of Włast’s work and biography, allows me to yet again accentuate the close relationship between lifewriting genres (the biography, the letter) and psycho-medical discourses (the case study). This chapter also demonstrates that an essay that has been forgotten by contemporary literary criticism can act as an essential contribution to a better understanding of the shadow dynamics of knowledge transmission. I argue that this issue is particularly important in the Polish context, where psychoanalysis did not have an easy reception, and no formal psychoanalytic society or group was established before the outbreak of World War II.
