Massé in her article Psychoanalysis and the Gothic remarks:
In thinking about psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic criticism of the Gothic, then, it is important to keep in mind the ways in which both modes of interpretation have evolved, because this helps us to make sense of the vast range of interpretative strategies that can be rightfully identified as ‘psychoanalytic’. The stages of ‘elements’, ‘structures and themes’ and ‘systems’ that organise this chapter smooth over exceptions, ambiguities and alternative movements, as all such schema do; they do not outline a smoothly unfurling historical amelioration.(