THE BLACK CAT
last to appear, since the unconscious knows it not, and it is only
comprehensible to the
ego,
is fear of death or
death-anxiety.
Now, the
full-fledged ego, having learnt to comprehend the possibility of death,
begins to dread its own annihilation. Happily, for most, the un–
conscious comes to the rescue by projecting its inner conviction of
its own immortality beyond the bounds of time and space.
All these types of anxiety seem here present, crystallized round
the main castration fear which dominates this tale, much in the
way that the one-eyed cat dominates the cleft skull of the murdered
wife. Even birth-anxiety is present though, as it were, inverted and
directed, as by the law of talion, against the mother who inflicted
it
on the child; namely, the theme of the cellar and chimney in
which she is walled up while, in the motif of the white splotch on
the cat's breast, we see a reminiscence of both weaning-anxiety and
separation-anxiety. Deriving from the main castration-anxiety theme,
we see the fear of conscience (anxiety arising from the sense of
guilt), which drives the criminal to confess his crime. Finally, with
the gallows theme, we see death-anxiety, or fear of death.
All these fears, however, remain subordinate to the main theme
of fear of castration, with which all are closely interwoven. The cat
with the white breast also has a missing eye; hanging represents
not only death, but rephallization; the urge to confess leads to the
discovery of a corpse surmounted by an effigy of castration; even the
cellar and tomb, and the gaping aperture of the chimney, recall the
dread cloaca of the mother.
1.
The Black Cat: The Philadelphia United States Saturday Post,
August 19,
1843; 1845.
2. Cf. the case of Mme. Lefebvre, a wealthy bourgeoise of Lille who, in 1926,
from jealousy of her son, shot and killed her pregnant daughter-in-law. After
the crime, she declared, with utter conviction, that she felt she was doing her
duty. (Cf. the author's study,
Le cas de Mme. Lefebure, Reuue franfaise de
psychanalyse,
1927, fasc . I). Poe would have thought this woman, too, dominated
by the spirit of perverseness.
3. Cf. in particular Reik,
Gestiindniu.wang und Strafbedurfnis
(The Confes–
sional Urge and the Need for Punishment). Vienna:
Internationaler Psycho–
analytischer Verlag, 1925.
4. Worth recalling is the case of Kurten, the "vampire of Dusseldorf," who
seemed to derive a voluptuous pleasure from confessing his worst atrocities to
his judges.
