This paper aims to demystify the way in which the mechanics of the Kafka Trial reproduces the Freudian topography of id, ego and superego, within which shame acts as a warning signal, as well as to highlight the hostile representation of psychoanalysis in The Trial. Thus, in an allegorical form, justice, through its representatives, would personify the inquisitive gaze of the analyst, whose theory resembles a law he himself enacted. It is also a question of how this criticism of psychoanalysis could emerge from the study of Talmudic writings undertaken by Kafka around 1911, impregnating in the author a conception of the law and its transgression incompatible with the Freudian doctrine.

This paper aims to demystify the way in which the mechanics of the Kafka Trial reproduces the Freudian topography of id, ego and superego, within which shame acts as a warning signal, as well as to highlight the hostile representation of psychoanalysis in The Trial. Thus, in an allegorical form, justice, through its representatives, would personify the inquisitive gaze of the analyst, whose theory resembles a law he himself enacted. It is also a question of how this criticism of psychoanalysis could emerge from the study of Talmudic writings undertaken by Kafka around 1911, impregnating in the author a conception of the law and its transgression incompatible with the Freudian doctrine.