The Psycho-Somesthetic Sense and Self: A Freudian Analysis of Edger Allen Poe’s Short Stories The Black Cat And Tell-Tale Heart

Abstract

Somesthesis sense means a system of multiple receptors and neural pathways to indicate distinctive bodily and mental stimulations’. The present research analyses the data collected from Edger Allen Poe’s Short Stories The Black Cat and Tell-Tale Heart. The data has been analysed by applying Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of phobias. The theory of phobia provides a synthesis and a framework to help identify the orientation of fear and pain instigated by external factors. It focuses on somesthetic sense at function to unveil the psychic binary impulses. It finds that the Protagonists of Poe’s stories The Black Cat, and Tell-Tale Heart undergo a somesthetic shift of individual instinct to psychic cathexes which is an immediate pleasure principle to eradicate and experience pain and fear. This study helps to decode multiple psychic paradigms of the human psyche at function. The study signifies that the psychic cathexes with relevance to the somesthetic orientation of the human conscious and unconscious state. The findings divulge Poe’s portrayal of the psychological conflict of somesthetic sense and self through psychic cathexes.