William Wilson

Inspired by Poe's own tragic life, the short story clearly presages Freud's method of psychoanalysis. In a very Fight-club-like plot and situations, "e;William Wilson"e; is a journey within the mind. Some sixty years prior to Freud's clinical work and theoretical developments, Poe's story is an example of the rise of the psychological genre in literature. A fruitful, and at the same time paranoid, the theme of the doppelganger runs strong in Edgar Allan Poe's fiction. From "e;The Fall of the House of Usher"e; to "e;Morella"e; and "e;Ligeia"e;, Poe's characters are constantly harassed by conscious entities that mirror the chaos within the protagonists' unconscious. The influence of "e;William Wilson"e; can be felt in the proliferation of contemporary movies exploring the idea of the double, such as Hitchcock's "e;Vertigo"e; (1958), Basil Dearden's "e;The Man Who Haunted Himself"e; (1970) or Darren Aronofsky's "e;Black Swan"e; (2010). -