THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

1.2 Fantastic Psychoanalysis and the Doppelganger The Avatar in PanamaMaupassant reflected the contemporary fascination with thesubconscious and believed the supernatural always tended towardsmadness, invariably isolating people from society. This was also afrequent theme all through his writing. His concept of interior dualismwas based upon the revived magnetic theories of the time and on theconclusions of, among others, Charcot, whose lectures he attended. Inthis regard he shares the use of the traditional psychologicalperspective of the double as the projected conscience, as didHoffmann.The phenomenon of doubles had a special significance forMaupassant who claimed to have been assailed by visualisations of hisown double. As his mental condition deteriorated, the doubleexperience was forced on him as a recurring autoscopic hallucination.He declared he had seen his mirror image sitting at his desk. 59 On oneoccasion:as he was sitting at his table in the study, hethought he heard the door open […]Maupassant turned round, and was not a littleastonished to see himself enter, sit down in frontof him, with his face in his hands, and begin todictate exactly what he was writing. When hehad finished and he stood up, the hallucinationdisappeared.The writer’s two stories “Lui?” and “Qui sait?” are based on thisexperience. Psychiatrically, Maupassant was assessed as sufferingfrom a narcissism related to his promiscuity that was manifested asgrandiose eroticism. The detrimental consequences of his sexualexcess were pushed out of his consciousness and repressed. As thecerebral syphilis progressed they resurfaced in a distorted embodiment,an autoscopic hallucination -his double. 60 Evidently, Maupassant’spsychiatric history is responsible in part for his literary output; especiallythose often overlooked tales belonging to les contes fantastiques.“Le horla” is Maupassant’s fictional written testimony to theincreasing dread and panic that overwhelms the story’s character. Thetwo-fold tale has dual simultaneous and ambiguous readings; either thesupernatural being is real and the protagonist its victim, or the horla is59 David Coward, introduction, Mademoiselle Fifi and Other Stories, (Oxford: OxfordUP, 1993) xviii.60 Coleman 260-262.52