ABSTRACT
As in The Castle, the depth of the unconscious is represented by its opposite, height: the courts are located high in a tenement. In The Castle the unconscious is passive, in The Trial it is aggressive. Joseph K.'s arrest is a symbolic one. It is not caused by a civil authority. He is not incarcerated. It is a psychic arrestation, a fixation classical in neurosis. He is arrested on the anal level of sexual development. And he is the victim of a castration complex. Titorelli is the archetype of the anal character. As a painter, he is coprophilic. He is closely connected with the court. As a father imago he offers K. castration threats. The nomenclature of The Trial is not as allusive as that of The Castle, and it does not contain patterns of meaning, as does the later novel. The Trial is clearly a more transparent and simple symbolic novel than The Castle.
