Sigmund Freud's influence on twentieth century fiction was enormous and it took many forms. Much of what appeared in novels, however, was not concerned with the implications of actual clinical practice or the niceties of theory construction. Instead, much of Freud's thought was reduced to forms that were palatable and could either be understood and consumed easily or would create a sensation among readers. The well-known transformations of terms such as "libido" "ego" and "Oedipus complex" are examples of the reception that many of Freud's ideas found in the press and popular literature. Serious writers also picked and chose among the enormous number of ideas that psychoanalytic thought offered--employing them in the knowledge that the reader would be able to follow their references to Freud's ideas.
Though dreams, for example, were nothing new to literature the access to the irrational that seemed to be promised by Freud, led to renewed interest in them as symbolic vessels. Whether the dreams or their interpretation had very much to do with Freud's theory is not so important since his influence was primarily felt as a key that opened numerous possibilities. The same can be said of the view of Freud as some kind of prophet of freer sexuality or as a liberator of the artist's unconscious. The finer points of psychoanalysis were undoubtedly left to the experts by most artists.
But serious writers did employ Freud's ideas in two interesting ways. In one approach psychoanalysis was seen as a 'cure' and it was viewed as a source of hope by many writers. In another approach psychoanalytic case studies (Freud's own example was probably important here because he was a very good writer) provided a fresh method of viewing the individual and the analysis of symptoms was either performed by the writers or left to the readers for interpretation. In either case, however, writers from the 1930s on were able to rely on their readers...