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This chapter introduces the hypothesis that the three-cycle design might also furnish orientation to themes. The research finds that thematically analogous books are situated in analogous positions in their respective cycles, so that the thematic and positional analogies offer mutually reinforcing cues. Books 3 and 6, 2 and 7, and 1 and 8 are subjected to close examination. It is found that thematically analogous passages usually feature substantial differences in diction, so that the analogies cannot be an unintended byproduct of generic formulas. Examination of thematic differences between analogous passages finds that variations describe trajectories of transformation. In particular, choices become progressively less determined by material factors and correspondingly more symbolic.

Freud’s essay “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis” is the focus of the third chapter. Freud’s short essay revisits an enigmatic memory from the visit to the Acropolis. Two different yet inseparable themes surface in the text; the chapter unravels their connectedness through their relation to the cultural and intellectual dual origins of Freud’s upbringing. In the essay the twofold thematics of Freud’s Jewish background at home and his classical education in the gymnasium intersect, creating a picture of a life of duality, ambivalence, and internal contradictions. The cultural intersection between Athens and Jerusalem constitutes the essence of Freud’s personal history and is responsible for the creation of his indissolubly tangled narrative. The chapter deals with the notion of the woven materiality of the text, the inner ties between antiquity and modernity, as well as those between Freud’s past and present, and the unconscious language of analogies.

The triangulation of classics, psychoanalysis, and comparative literature is the proper context for discussing the exegetical significance of what Erich Auerbach, the father of comparative literature, turned into a conceptual cornerstone: the figura futurorum. Reading Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex through the lens of Auerbach’s figura futurorum, the chapter explains the fruitfulness of analogy for psychoanalysis and comparative literature and the kinds of linking (Oedipus–Hamlet, savage–neurotic) that have been crucial in the making of Oedipus’ future into the central plot of psychoanalysis. The universalism of Freud’s claims for psychoanalysis are examined, and shown to depend on his relation to classical antiquity in the formulation of his own experience.