  Good old Vladimir (beware the Freudian quack). But then, again, who cares if Nabokov doesn't want us to read his works through a psychoanalytic lens? It's not really his call. On a more serious note, an interesting discussion about authorial intention has popped up urlLink here . My points basically boil down to this (see the comments for them in their original glory): 1. Reconstructing an author's intentions is no different or more valid than any other reading, particularly if we're going to allow in history and biography, which are immediately interpretive works themselves (I'm separating autobiography out here, which although it's unreliable, it's at least written by the author). 2. If an author contradicts himself, we're in trouble. Particularly if he doesn't change the text but then changes his reading of the same work. 
