The Psychoanalysis Track in Le Roi des Aulnes (1970), by Michel Tournier

Abstract

By focusing on the novel The Erl‐King (Le Roi des Aulnes, 1970), as well as on the testimonies of its author in The Wind Spirit (Le vent Paraclet, 1977), this article tracks down the elements that are typical of Freudian psychoanalysis, as well as of Carl Gustav Jung’s analytical psychology, in the thinking of a writer‐philosopher who is our contemporary. The main interest of this analysis lies in the fact that the novel is settled in a crucial –and obscure– moment of our past, i.e., World War II, with its undertone of racial doctrine and its abominable consequence: the Holocaust. This being a piece of research into the dark aspects of the collective psyche, it is not strange that it is Jungian psychology the one which ends up being more appealing to the writer.