Understanding “ The Black Cat” through a Freudian lens

Sigmund Freud, is the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud introduced ideas of Psychoanalysis and understanding of the consciousness and unconsciousness mind. Freud presents this approach to the new world in Clark University in his, “Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis”. In the short story “ The Black Cat” by edgar Allen Poe an unidentified narrator murder his cat and wife due to alcohol and self-deception. The narrator in the “The Black Cat” demonstrates the Freudian symptoms of repression and wishful impulse.

The Short story is similar to Freud’s five lectures on pshcyolanayalis because in Freud’s lectures Freud gives an example of the girl who decided to marry her brother-in-law because her sister is dead and now he’s free for her, here Freud introduced the idea of repression. Repression occurs when a thought, memory, or feeling is too painful for an individual, so the person unconsciously pushes the information out of consciousness and becomes unaware of its existence. According to Freud “When the girl reached the bedside of her dead sister, there came to her for a brief moment an idea that might be expressed in these words: ‘Now he is free and can marry me.’ We may assume with certainty that this idea, which betrayed to her consciousness the intense love for her brother-in-law of which she had not herself been conscious, was surrendered to repression a moment later, owing to the revolt of her feelings” ( Freud 2213). This is an example of repression which the lady is facing. This instinct is automatically repressed because it goes against this girl’s conventional beliefs towards her sister. The unidentified narrator of “The Black Cat” loves his animals. However, because of his addiction to alcohol, the narrator’s mentality is unhealthy. With a small knife, the narrator cuts one of Pluto’s eyes because of the cat’s bite in the dark. According to The Black Cat  “When reason returned with the morning — when I had slept off the fumes of the night’s debauch — I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed” ( Poe 8). Drinking alcohol is a way the narrator represses his emotions. He feels guilty about causing harm to his cat but at the same time, he feels no remorse because drinking excessively is a way for him to escape reality. The narrator said “ the soul remained untouched” just shows his true emotion which seems to be evil and that he has no feelings of kindness or innocence towards the cat. These are the feelings he tries to repress because he is unaware of the consequences of his action and these thoughts are hidden in the conscious mind.

   One of the reasons why he murdered the black cat in the story is the narrator’s wishful impulses.  This urge to kill the cat was because of the alcohol he was consuming becauses alcohol prompts you to act without thinking about your actions. According to The Black Cat “One night, coming home, heavily intoxicated, from one of my city haunts, I fantasized that the cat had escaped my presence” (Poe 7). Being very intoxicated, the narrator justifies his action to take the cat and harm it by cutting out its eyeball. He indulged in his desire to hurt the cat by making the excuse that the cat did not pay any attention to him. These wishful impulses are explained by Freud as desires or wants that are in the mind and that are being repressed. Most of the time, the individual doesn’t really mean to do these things, but that emotion is hidden in the unconscious mind and that is why it made him very tempted to kill Pluto. According to Freud “All of these experiences had involved the emergence of a wishful impulse which was in sharp contrast to the subject’s other wishes and which proved incompatible with the ethical and aesthetic standards of his personality” (Freud 2212). This justified what the narrator’s says in the short story “I hung it there until it was dead. I hung it there with tears in my eyes, I hung it because I knew it had loved me because I felt it had given me no reason to hurt it”(Poe 47).  As he was crying while hanging the cat, it shows that he did not find pleasure in doing so and realizes he is in the wrong and feels some sort of regret. With alcohol in his system and him having mood swings he is mentally unstable and cannot make correct decisions. So when he felt angry towards the cat he acted on his wistful impulse to harm the cat but he realizes after what he has done and feels guilty because he once loved the cat. This supports the idea how the narrator was acting on his wishful impulse and this led to the death of both his wife and cat.

Overall readers can further analyze the short story “ The Black Cat” through a Freudian lens and understand how the narrator’s wishful impulses failed to be repressed in the conscious mind. This inability to keep them repressed in the unconscious mind is due to the alcohol that he consumes.  The narrator psychological state was unstable and the emotions he tries to repress causes him to have an outburst in emotion which indulges him in acting on his wishful impulse. Freud found that the people he worked with in therapy were more likely to recall things under hypnosis than consciously recall things without hypnosis. This led to his development of the concept of repression. We can conclude that “The Black Cat” by Allen Poe can be analyzed through a freudian lens and understand how wishful impulse and repression can be connected to the short story.

Works Cited

Giordano, Robert. “The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe.” PoeStories.com, https://poestories.com/read/blackcat.Rasch. “About Psychoanalysis.” Sigmund Freud: 5 Lectures about Psychoanalysis, https://www.rasch.org/over.htm.