Lokis, an essay on contemporaneous oneirology

Lokis can be read as a protopsychoanalytic treatise that is acted out and based on Mérimée’s appropriation of nineteenth-century oneirological theories. Through the examination of several dream sequences, the story writer proceeds to analyze Count Szémioth’s psyche. This psychological bias led him to critically examine Professor Wittembach’s intelligence: catching scholarly reason in the act of dreaming and imagination, Mérimée devotes himself to a “psychoanalysis of objective knowledge”.