SKB: VN’s LoL page
183: There are really three personalities -- Jekyll, Hyde, and a third, the
Jekyll residue when Hyde takes over.VN concludes, after all his diagrams:
“It follows that Jekyll’s transformation implies a concentration of evil that
already inhabited him, rather than a complex metamorphosis. Jekyll is not pure
good, and Hyde (Jekyll’s statement to the contrary) is not pure evil, for
just as parts of unacceptable Hyde dwell within acceptable Jekyll, so over Hyde
hovers a halo of Jekyll, horrified at his worser half’s iniquity.” [...]
I’m sure this is all useful in
understanding RLS’s novel with its drug-induced, graduated personality changes
in a single character. What I’m anxious to understand is its relevance to Pale
Fire...
JM: Our split-off quotes
are mis-matched* ( I chose: “Hyde is a kind of hiding place for Dr. Jekyll,
in whom the jocular doctor and the killer are
combined.”) but lead up to the same matryoshka situation. If there
is a relevance of RLS to Pale Fire, I might accept it for the
composition of Kinbote/Botkin ( but how to place their delusional
Gradus in this context?).
Carolyn Kunin has asked me, off-list, to present Freud's diagram. The one that I
remembered dates from "Das Ich und das Es" (The Ego and the Id,
1923).The third element, the Superego ( "ÜberIch", "Ego Ideal") is brought up in
the next chapter, so it was not included in the model: it is a differentiated,
mostly unconscious part of the ego. I don't think it will prove to be
useful, but here it is. Unlike J&H's closed circles, Freud's attempt draws a
model that contains intraconnections and also takes into account the
external world.
My German books are in my office
and I'll scan the diagram with its entries in Portuguese ( in a
very unsatisfactory translation).
Pcpt-Cs (
perception-conscious)/ acúst. ( a single acustic receptor)/
Pcs (pre-conscious)/ Reprimido ( the repressed,
"Verdrängt"ie: the Freudian Unconscious proper).
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* SKB:
Dificil sorte, Jansy, but that’s how the biscoito crumbles.//
JM: "Dificil sorte" must
mean "non consorting" fortune cookies, of
course!
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