ABSTRACT
Does the concept of a fundamental entity, of which there can be more than one in one body, occur in works of fi ction? At fi rst glance the answer clearly appears to be yes. Here we need mention only a few of the most famous works dealing with a shared body: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I’m Not Stiller, and Psycho. At second glance, just the opposite appears to be the case. Dr. Jekyll actually sees Mr. Hyde as a part of himself. Stiller is merely fooling himself when he poses as White. He ultimately realizes this himself. If we understand Psycho simply as a fi lmic presentation of a psychiatric disorder-one in which Norman Bates is perhaps just a multiple personality1-then this work of fi ction tells us nothing that we cannot already fi nd directly in psychological and psychiatric research.2 But fi ctional works like Psycho cannot be understood as one-to-one transpositions of psychic disorders. We may even presume that in stories of the double, the second self is never meant to be understood literally as a second fundamental entity in one body: the point of departure is always a single person, and its doppelganger primarily serves a symbolic function, which operates differently depending on the work. What is symbolized, for instance, are the inner psychic division within the relevant person, the division of the human being as such, or the battle between good and evil in the human being, etc. At any rate, this is how doppelganger stories are normally interpreted. In her study The Fear of the Other: Approaches to English Stories of the Double (1764-1910), Astrid Schmid defi nes the doppelganger relation this way: “According to my defi nition, the double-ganger relationships in the literature selected reveal the following features throughout: the doubles share a rationally inexplicable inner-psychic entity, a common mind. It is in this recognition of the self as being split into two halves that the motif’s inner dynamics are to be found. For in his appearance, the double-ganger externalizes the First Self’s haunting process of becoming aware of those repressed aspects of the self.”3 In other words, the doppelganger is a literary means to symbolically express the confl icted innerpsychic processes of persons. Even authors not concerned with presenting a precise defi nition of doppelganger likewise assume that the doppelganger symbolizes the inner confl ict within an individual’s identity: “The origin
in the experience of a problematic identity is just about the only trait of the modern doppelganger that can be generalized. All these doubled and halved humans . . . have had to experience that their I does not as a matter of course fi t with itself.”4
