Psychoanalytic studies of literature have tended either to apply to literary works psychoanalytic theories formulated in other contexts (as in so-called ‘Freudian readings’) or, more recently, to see textuality as itself a psychoanalytic issue. In contrast, the author bases his model for reading on a more open version of the therapeutic exchange, and thus he derives his categories for analyzing Casanova in the course of his engagement with the text, allowing patterns to emerge over the course of continued encounters.