TOTAL NARCISSISM AND THE UNCANNY: a new interpretation of e.t.a. hoffmann's “the sandman”

Abstract

This article disputes Freud's reading of “The Sandman,” in which he seeks to explain the text's uncanniness primarily with reference to his theory of the castration complex. Rather than abandon Freud altogether, however, I demonstrate how the uncanny effects of Hoffmann's tale are best understood with reference to Freud's concept of “total narcissism.” Specifically, I argue that the ambiguities surrounding this notion are profoundly interwoven with the uncanniness of “The Sandman's” “doubles.” Finally, using these analyses as a foundation, I present my own apocalypse of “The Sandman's” subtextual narrative, arguing that the tale effectively dramatizes the self-destructive tendencies of the individual dominated by total narcissism.

Keywords:

• narcissism
• Freud
• Hoffmann
• uncanny
• double

Notes

The author wishes to thank both his anonymous reviewer and John Fletcher for their constructive comments on this article.

Jentsch 13.

Cixous 528; original emphasis.

Royle 45.

Derrida 156.

Laplanche and Pontalis 338.

Laplanche 71.

Pontalis 38.

A problem that Hegel identifies in his account of uni-directional recognition. See Hegel 111.

Cixous 534.

Fletcher highlights some interesting problems inhering in this line of thought (127).

See Lacan, “The Mirror Stage” 2.

Certainly, for Lacan, it is from this very process of méconnaissance that the ego develops, since it is what enables the subject to identify with the unitary, specular image of herself beheld in the mirror (or the Other qua mirror); the corollary of this is, therefore, that the specular image does not equate to that which is reflected (namely the fragmentary subject). See Ibid. 6.

Hertz 304.

Green 121.

Møller 127.

Rieff 7. See also Hertz 298.

Translated as “crescent moon” by Hollingdale (TS 87).

Lacan, Seminar II 50.

Kreis certainly does not imply a filled circle and, rather, since it can also be translated as “circuit,” “orbital” or “ring,” I have thus grouped the Feuerkreis with the series of ring tropes one finds in TS.

See also Lacan, “Of the Gaze.” Lacan's analysis of the gaze affords us a deeper understanding of why exactly Nathaniel enjoys so much sanctuary in Olympia's eyes, whilst, by contrast, he finds the lucid gaze of Clara so intolerable. Certainly, looking into Clara's unreflective eyes, Nathaniel appears struck by the Lacanian gaze of alterity, that is, by the thought that “You never look at me from the place from which I see you” (103). This confrontation with both the Other and the limits of our experience of the visible is, explains Lacan, characterized by the same sensation of lack and anxiety produced by the fear of castration. Looking into Olympia's eyes, however, Nathaniel is able to enter into a narcissistic state of scopic self-enclosure, which Lacan describes as “seeing oneself seeing oneself” (74). In this condition, continues Lacan, one negates the otherness of the Other's perspective and thereby evades the anxiety induced by their gaze. See also Lacan's unpublished Seminar X: L'Angoisse where TS is cursorily examined in terms of the gaze (5 Dec. 1962, 40).