#Otto rank the double pdf series

As humans evolved, the double, rather than protecting against death, reversed itself and became the 'harbinger of death' (372), and it is this dynamic that is associated with 'the uncanny.' According to Freud, man is subconsciously aware of his mortality and finds expression for its inevitability through arts and letters. The ideal being was in love with itself, thus it created the double in a futile denial of the power of death. In terms of the alter ego, Freud believed that this early stage of psychological evolution was one of overbearing narcissism, the 'old surmounted narcissism of earliest times' (370). This is based on the idea that, from man's evolutionary beginnings, the ego has developed in humans gradually, and through this evolution it has developed the double in many forms to protect itself from dying off. Freud borrows an explanation of 'the uncanny' from Otto Rank's investigations of 'the connections which the double has with reflections in mirrors, with shadows, with guardian spirits, with the belief in the soul and with the fear of death' (370).ДЇreud believed that the double often stems from some kind of repressed thought, thus it is an emotion far different than that of fear and deserves another name by choosing 'the uncanny,' he associates the experience of the double with the ego's evolutionary development.

The figure of the double dates back to primitive civilizations, as shown in legends and literature (Zivkovic 122-23) it is essential to Freud's concept of the uncanny, 'which appears in every shape and in every degree of development' (Freud 371). The double refers to a representation of the ego that can assume various forms: shadow, reflection, portrait, and twin. For the purposes of this discussion, the terms 'doubling' and 'alter ego' are interchangeable. Freud argues that 'the uncanny' occurs when something alien is presented in a familiar context or setting or vice versa.

#Otto rank the double pdf series

The uncanny is associated with a series of related topics such as telepathy, double or doppelganger, death, madness, animism, and claustrophobia. Sigmund Freud's 1919 essay, 'The Uncanny,' offers important insights on this topic as a direct response to the psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch's 'On the Psychology of the Uncanny,' Freud explores Hoffman's The Sandman as an archetypal source for both literary and psychological doubling. For example, in Jane Eyre, Bertha Mason acts as a double for Jane, representing two sides of one Self similarly, Isabella Linton's docile and meek character casts her as a double for the passionate Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights. Freud argues that, through the double, one is able to extend oneself having a doppelganger meant that one was indestructible.

The double expresses the opposition between good and evil, beauty and ugliness, reason and instinct. She has been a reviewer for various journals, including Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies and Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos.Many literary works employ the theme of the double or doppelganger, a device which enables us to examine and explore the conflicts of the personality.

Her work has been published in academic journals, such as the Edgar Allan Poe Review, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, and Frame: Journal of Literary Studies, and in books edited by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Transcript Verlag, and Brill Publishers. Her doctoral dissertation, вЂњSymbolic Transitions as Modalities of Aging: Intertextuality in the Life and Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Edgar Allan Poe,вЂќ is a comparative analysis that focuses on the concept of intertextuality in the fictional works of these two authors. Her research interests revolve around comparative literature, Gothic studies, nineteenth-century literature, gender, and aging. MARTA MIQUEL-BALDELLOU is a member of the Poe Studies Association (PSA) and she teaches English at the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain).