Freud seems admittedly to base his idea upon pure conjecture, as when he says that if one were to view his idea of penis-envy, which he has no empirical proof for, as “fantastic” and as an “idée fixe” (driving obsession), he would be defenseless. As a theory of literary this type of conjecture can perhaps be accepted but Freud is writing a scientific treatise of working of the human mind. He bases all of his ideas on mere anecdote, he is a terrible scientist. Doing this with characters in the literature is valid, as the character exists not as a type but as an individual creation within a specific story, where specific details are given to us, inferences can be made. Followers of Freud in literary theory seem to go beyond this and fabricate things for the characters that do not exist in the text at all. It seems that one of the grounding themes of Freud and his followers is that they are very good and creating ideas ex nihilo that seem to make logical sense without any substantial grounding, which works for a philosophical theory but not a practical medical treatment.