This book traces the paths of ancient reception in the early days of psychoanalysis. Beyond commonly explored avenues such as Oedipus and myth interpretation, it starts from the paradoxical consideration that antiquity becomes epistemologically relevant precisely where its presence appears fragmentary and veiled, manifested in the guise of rhetorical citation. In the transition from studies on hysteria to dream interpretation, from a world of still provable hypotheses to a clarity of the provisional (Blumenberg), ancient literature emerges where scientific verifiability is lacking.