In Greene's writings we notice a genuine concern with social and political conflicts at different places in the world. But at the same time they bear witness to a distinct involvement in problems of human nature and behaviour. In this respect we can formulate some dominating preoccupations, such as the stressing of antitheses and antagonisms, which he calls himself 'cleavage'; the questioning of loyalty and the claiming of the right to disloyalty; the repercussion of childhood experiences, in particular the father-son relationship, on adult life; and the transcendental dimension in human experience. From a psychoanalytic viewpoint we analyse the various elaborations of these general themes in the work of Greene as symbolizations of specific unconscious phantasies, defined in the writings of Freud, Klein, Fairbairn, Kernberg, Kohut and Winnicott. This analysis of the imaginary world of an author is conceived as analogous to a clinical psychoanalysis. It is a hermeneutical activity based on the countertransference experience, evoked by the reading of the text, while taking into account the manifold strategies of symbolizing in a literary work, the choice of the genre, themes, text-construction, tropes, word-plays, figurative language, repetition, discontinuity, parallelism, plot and characters.
