Dreams and delirium, romantic passion and repression, conscious and unconscious, boundaries between the normal and the pathological, therapeutic process. Based on the hysteroromantic novella of Gradiva by Wilhelm Jensen (1837 - 1911), a narrative from 1903 where the heroes move between a small town in Germany and the ruins of Pompeii in the blinding light of noon, Sigmund Freud articulated fundamental concepts of his young science in 1907, offering a model psychoanalytic reading of a literary work.

This unique double book - of the writer and the psychoanalyst - had a significant impact in its time, and Gradiva became a symbol in both psychoanalytic and artistic circles, particularly among the surrealists. In this edition, Jensen's novella is published alongside Freud's reading, translated by Maria Angelidou and Pano Aloupi, who also edited the volume.

The extensive introduction and notes are by psychoanalysts, drawn from the German edition of Freud's Complete Works, while the Appendix features a study by Niki Loizidi on the 'surrealist transformations of a Freudian myth.'