THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

1.1 Double, Double, Toil and Trouble The Avatar in Panamapotentially psychotic episodes is the character’s perception of visual,auditory and olfactory hallucinations. 65Mention the device of the double and the image which firstsprings to mind is the visually explicit or manifest double which appearsas an autoscopic hallucination. The autoscopic double is usually arepresentation of one double as opposed to multiples and is anexample of spatial doubling unlike the dissociation experienced inmultiple personality which is temporal and visual. 66 It has beenquestioned whether literary doubles bear any true resemblance toclinical cases of autoscopic phenomena and whether there is arelationship between writing about doubles and perceiving them. 67Clinical evidence of the early twentieth century reports the mostcommon documented conceptualisation of the self was visual; seeingone’s self as a performing or observing being. By and large, thesevisualisations were virtual reproductions of the subject’s mirror image orfavourite photo as one’s own reflected image seemed to determine thephysical aspects of the double. It was thought the ancientpreoccupation with shadows and reflections favoured the appearance ofthe autoscopic double; however, “visual objectification may take theform of a person other than the self or assume the form of an animal orsome object of the inorganic world”. 68 This visualisation might also beabbreviated so the projection appears only as a body part, or in roughschematic form. 69 Another factor determining the physicality of thedouble’s appearance is the apparent extraneous detail accompanying itwhich may reveal the subject’s temperament or be indicative of65 In psychiatric terms, hallucinations in the auditory mode are the most common andare rarely self-referring. Auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions exhibitthemselves in the elderly as symptoms of paraphrenia. Olfactory hallucinations whichfeature unpleasant smells are indicative of organic brain disease.66 The exception to the appearance of only one image is in the case of Capgras’Syndrome (also known as ‘imposter syndrome’ or the ‘illusion of doubles’) whichusually affects women and is the illusion that those surrounding the psychotic subjectare possessed of doubles. In an unbalanced mental state, decomposition of thesubject is liable to occur in men as a double of the self. In women, decomposition ofthe object is more likely, resulting in the ‘illusion of double’. Stanley M. Coleman, “ThePhantom Double”, British Journal of Medical Psychology xiv (1934): 269.67 Tucker, introduction xxi.68June E. Downey, “Literary Self-Projection”, The Psychological Review xix (1912):311.69“Actually, the autoscopic double varies in its degree of perfection. It may consist ofan hallucination of the whole of the subject’s body, or merely a part of it (for example,the face or the arm); it may be a solid, life like replica, or semi-transparent and vague;it may exchange ideas with its prototype in complete silence, or speak with the voiceof the latter; and recognition by the subject of the hallucination as his own double maybe gradual or immediate.” John Todd and Kenneth Dewhurst, “The Double: ItsPsychopathology and Psycho-Physiology,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease122 (1955): 53.33