The Cartesian system provides the fundamental principles for Romanticism to produce a new object: the 'self', simultaneously as interiority and alterity. This invention falls on the scientific, political, social, and artistic fields that produce ethical and aesthetic consequences that endured in the 21st century. The aim of this essay is to offer an approximation between Freud's style and Impressionism, while recognizing the point of inflection in the production of a new rationality in the literary romantic thought. Pointing to the emergence of the self, as (re)presented by Freud means to recognize it as a tributary of the romantic ideal. At the same time, it highlights the epistemological change that Freud imprints on this concept in a proposal that has remained subversive until today.
Romanticism; invention of "self"; psychoanalysis; Impressionism