How did Italo Svevo and Luigi Pirandello pioneer psychoanalytic literature?

Italo Svevo and Luigi Pirandello are recognized as the pioneers of the psychoanalytic literary genre in Italian literature. They shifted the focus of narrative toward the exploration of the subconscious and the complexities of the human personality.123

Italo Svevo
Svevo’s contribution was rooted in his introspective, analytic treatment of characters. His most famous work, La coscienza di Zeno (1923), is structured as a patient’s statement for his psychiatrist, directly engaging with the themes of the psyche and internal conflict.2

Luigi Pirandello
Pirandello’s understanding of psychology was influenced by the work of experimental psychologists like Alfred Binet, leading him to explore the "subconscious personality"—the idea that an individual's conscious knowledge is only a small fraction of their true self. Even before he was familiar with the work of Sigmund Freud, Pirandello focused his writing on the relativity of truth and the instability of human identity, famously illustrating that a person is "one, no one and a hundred thousand" depending on individual perception.3