THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

1.1 Double, Double, Toil and Trouble The Avatar in Panamacertain way and indulge in obsessive and/or compulsive acts.Psychoanalytically, the justification for the materialisation of the doublewas seen as a product of narcissism, as a reduplication and projectionof ego which may embody the character’s fulfilment of a wish.In a variation on the doppelganger theme, the secret or doublelife as an alternative existence is interpreted in various traditional andnon-traditional ways. The insidious emergence of dual and multiplepersonalities, behaviours performed while in altered states ofconsciousness, metempsychosis, lycanthropy and othermetamorphoses, and the Gothic favourite, the morally-divided selfrevealed through the ‘beast in man’ theme, all result in a substitutelifestyle of which the protagonist is ordinarily unaware. Often, thepurpose of the double is to fulfil the character’s yearned-for existencewhich was forsaken at the expense of the current one. Despite the factof being born of the Romantic tradition in Germany, the ubiquitousdouble is well travelled and transcends geographical, political, spatialand temporal borders, making it one of the most enduring andreinvented characters in fiction.35