THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

1.2 Fantastic Psychoanalysis and the Doppelganger The Avatar in Panama1.2 Fantastic Psychoanalysis and the DoppelgangerI was sitting alone in my wagon-lit compartment when a more than usually violent jerkof the train swung back the door of the adjoining washing-cabinet, and an elderlygentleman in a dressing gown and a travelling cap came in. I assumed that he hadbeen about to leave the washing cabinet which divides the two compartments, andhad taken the wrong direction and come into my compartment by mistake. Jumping upwith the intention of putting him right, I at once realised to my dismay that the intruderwas nothing but my own reflection in the looking glass of the open door. I can stillrecollect that I thoroughly disliked his appearance.Sigmund FreudAs a science, as a method, and as a personality theory,psychoanalysis transcended international boundaries much like thedouble did and, in doing so, cemented its significance by its repeatedreinvention and reworking in various spheres. 1 No movement managedto interpret and distort more at the turn of the twentieth century than theEuropean modernist movement which held as one of its defining tenetsthat literary works could never be given an absolute interpretation. In itsgeneral sense as applied to literature and art, modernism in Europeconnoted change, innovation, a break with the past, a rejection of thetraditional and conventional, an embrace of the experimental, and asearch for a new means of expression. This assertion now holds for thepostmodern which, it is often forgotten, is resolutely ensconced in, andderives from, modernism.Psychoanalysis seemed tailor-made as a tool for interpretingmodern works and, fittingly, had a profound effect on modernism.Although the former influenced the latter, both movements werecontemporary and swayed the way in which the device of the doublewas portrayed not only in Europe but in other literatures influenced byEuropean writers. The continental influence on Edgar Allan Poe, forexample, whose writing subsequently impacted upon the modernism ofRubén Darío, cannot be underestimated. The elevation of the shortstory to a bona fide fictional vehicle might also be partly indebted to Poeas it superseded the traditional romantic novel from which thedoppelganger originated.The establishment of the fantastic as a genre, and a moveaway from the supernatural to the psychological double, enabled theboundless exploitation of the double. The double came to symbolisemultiple and overt feelings, unfulfilled desire, and the unorthodoxlifestyle, and was represented as an alter-ego taking the form of anarcissistic projection, an ideal or complementary self, or the reflection1Commenting on the significance of psychoanalysis, Ellenberger notes, “Thehistorical importance of a theory is not restricted to what it originally was in the mind ofits author, but also of the extensions, adjunctions, interpretations and distortions ofthat theory”. Ellenberger 547.36