The Darkness From Within a Feline Friend

Freud’s Lecture Two expands one’s knowledge of psychoanalytic concepts. It is brought upon to the reader the ideas of a wishful impulse, resistance, and repression, along with other psychoanalytic concepts. These concepts are illustrated in “The Black Cat,” by Edgar Allan Poe. The short story itself shows repressed feelings and memories in the narrator’s unconsciousness emerging to his consciousness where he states, “ I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.” One can see how Freud’s psychoanalytic concepts are displayed in “A Black Cat.”

For starters, forms of repression, wishful impulse and other psychoanalytic concepts are expressed in the short story through different ways. In the story, the narrator states, “ Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character — through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance — had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others.” This quote shows how the wishful impulse awoke in the conscious mind of the narrator. At first he seemed to be a normal caring man. However, the use of alcohol led to the man awakening an aggressive demeanor. This is because his intoxication would lead to his wishful impulses of aggression towards others to awaken and reach the conscious mind. Therefore he would display his anger towards the domestic animals that his wife and himself had as pets.

Another way that repressed memories may come to the conscious mind is through condensation. It is a hidden way of a repressed memory being remembered. It is known that the narrator, because of his uncontrollable aggression, displaced this anger on his feline friend and murdered it. Later on in the story he states, “But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat I remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house.” This quote illustrates how a form of condensation in the story, allowed a repressed memory to become awakened.  The narrator unexpectedly passed by a figure that appeared to look like a cat, thus reminding him of his cat, Pluto. It was hung just like how he had hung Pluto in order to stop himself from seeing the cat suffer. This therefore, is a form of condensation discussed by Freud because while he walked out in the open ruins, one can agree that he did not expect to be reminded of his old friend, especially not through seeing another figure that appeared to be another cat.

Furthermore, repression is not only seen externally but also internally in the story. In the story, the narrator states, “ Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse.” Here, one can see the internal repression that the narrator suffered from. He began to have conflict from within himself that would startle him. He felt as if the spirit of the cat would haunt him, which would lead to him feeling guilty and not being able to forget about his atrocity no matter how much he tried to resist thinking about it.

Moreover, a great impact of the wishful impulse is seen towards the end of the story. Just as Pluto would follow the narrator, the new cat that he had adopted had traits just Pluto, just like one missing eye. A wishful impulse of aggression is released again from the narrator when he states, “ One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.” While trying to displace the wishful impulse of his anger that was awakened on the cat, the narrator in his anger, slaughtered his wife. In his one final blow on trying to displace his anger, he lost control due to the wishful impulse that impacted his conscious mind.

Consequently, one can see how Freud’s psychoanalytic concepts are displayed in “The Black Cat.” Freud states in his lecture, “If what was repressed is brought back again into conscious mental activity – a process which presupposes the overcoming of considerable resistances – the resulting psychical conflict, which the patient had tried to avoid, can, under the physician’s guidance, reach a better outcome than was offered by repression.” Therefore, as the more that the narrator tried to resist and repress his memories and his anger, the greater his reaction was when he would attempt to displace his aggression towards animals. In one of his final wishful impulse blows, his wife was struck. The condensation of the cat and its phantasm would not let him become mentally stable, causing his repressed memories to always come back one way or another.