The Critique of Pure Reason is an attack on the idea that by reason alone we can discover the nature of reality. Nietzsche, rather than Freud, served as Musil's mentor in the realm of the unconscious, examining the relationships between drives and values. Still more importantly, Nietzsche offered a view of art, not as an escape, but as the fundamental human activity. One explains through the family, the other through society.
Psychoanalysis describes a particular cultural moment.
People in whom there has not been a proper confluence of the affectionate and the sensual currents . . . Psychoanalysis has shown us that when the original object of a wishful impulse has been lost as a result of repression, it is frequently represented by an endless series of substitutive objects none of which, however, brings full satisfaction. Torless p. 37. Torless' desire to be a little girl, p. 128. The model for all people was male, grim and disciplined.