The Black Cat through Freud’s eyes
The Black Cat was written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843. This story exhibits how events can affect the state of mind of humans. The story tells the life of a man going through some mental problems. Throughout the story there are many episodes and situations that show how the human mind works. These episodes are best explained by Sigmund Freud in his Lectures. Terms and definitions such as Wishful Impulse, Hysteria, Repression, Resistance, Condensation and Displacement are explained by Freud and shown by Poe.
The story begins with this man, his wife and their cat. Pluto was the name of the cat. The story tells us that something starts growing inside the man, some sort feeling of anger and dislike. This situation leads to the first term shown by Edgar Allan Poe, Wishful Impulse. Based on Freud Wishful Impulse is explained by the desires of the unconscious, what our true selves really want. This gives us an idea of why the man did what he did. This man annihilated his cat’s eye. This incident led to the cat’s death when the man hanged it from a tree. The man tells us why he did what he did “hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; — hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin”(Poe). He does not give a valid cause of his crime. He says he killed his cat just because. This can be interpreted as a Wishful Impulse. How he did not want to hurt his cat but still killed him. How some part of his mind, the unconscious, yearned to get rid of the cat. Also, Wishful Impulses are often opposite to our morals and principles. The man did not want to kill his cat but something inside of him did.
Following the story, after killing his cat, the man contracts this feeling instead of regret ,perversity and evilness. This derives from his internal desire of killing the cat causing the man to develop Hysteria. In his first Lecture, Freud explains the case of a woman. This woman was suffering from excess of emotions and absences, she contracted Hysteria. In the case of this woman, the cause of her Hysteria was a traumatic event, the death of her father. ”And here we may quote from the report of the patient’s illness the further fact that it made its appearance at a time when she was nursing her father, of whom she was devotedly fond, through the grave illness which led to his death, and that, as a result of her own illness, she was obliged to give up nursing him”(Freud). Applying this concept to “The Black Cat”, the man obtains his Hysteria from a traumatic event too, the murder of his cat. “One night as I sat, half stupified, in a den of more than infamy”(Poe). Here is where his hysteria kicks in, leading him to drink and feel various emotions at the same time. In addition, he describes the bar as “infamous”, meaning that the place is pretty much a pigsty. In other words, the man does not care where he is, he is numb, a normal effect of a traumatic event.
The story continues. While drinking at a bar, the man finds another cat, deciding to take care of it in an attempt to somehow cover his atrocity towards his old cat. His wife is very happy with this new cat. Until his feelings start to mess up with him. “For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated”(Poe). He realizes his new cat is one-eyed, just like the old cat was. This causes some type of repression towards the new cat. Based on Freud, Repression is when a painful memory or thought is pushed away unconsciously. “ were now offering opposition to the forgotten material’s being made conscious, must formerly have brought about the forgetting and must have pushed the pathogenic experiences”(Freud). All these awful thoughts and memories start invading the man’s mind causing him to refute his new cat’s company.
This same event of finding the new cat leads to another situation. At the moment of changing cats the man tries to fulfill and eliminate his fault for murdering his old cat. The man is trying to Displace his emotions. Freud says that Displacement is moving our painful feelings, thoughts and memories from one place to another, metaphorically speaking. This was the man’s purpose. Move his feelings of regret, fault, perversity and evilness from the old cat to the new cat. “ What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. “(Poe). In this part the man discovers the hate he has now for the new cat. The same hate and anger he had towards the old cat. These feelings moved from one cat to the other.
In conclusion, Edgar Allan Poe achieved showing us the state of mind works.On the other side, Freud defines how this state of mind works. Poe effectively explains some Freudian terms such as Wishful Impulse, Hysteria, Repression, Resistance, Condensation and Displacement.
Works Cited
Freud , Sigmung. 5 Lectures on Psychoanalysis . 1910. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b446/cfb00094a2e62f82e8c8e430581891ca4e47.pdf?_ga=2.153662776.1893964575.1597526595-1709737971.1597526595
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Blak Cat. 1843. United States Saturday Post. https://poestories.com/read/blackcat
