Murder in the family: An analysis of two Poe short stories

Learning to be possessed has been described elsewhere by the writer as a form of pathogenic relating begun when children are taught by adults that they will receive a lesser penalty for misbehavior if they can show they were not responsible, such as if it were caused by an evil agent or the Devil. It was suggested that learning to be possessed can be an underlying cause of psychopathology, the delusion of persecution in particular. Two short stories by the distinguished American writer Edgar Allan Poe are examined to develop the formulation of learning to be possessed, especially when it has passed to a delusion of persecution. Two propositions are offered: (1) Where it appears that a family member is murdered by a delusional assailant by accident, it is not an accident; and (2) the delusion of persecution entails a memory loss so that the murderer not only can claim lack of personal responsibility for the act, but also spares himself the guilt of having broken a fundamental taboo. Further comparison is made between learning to be possessed as a cause of delusion, and the psychoanalytic theory in which the defense mechanism of projection is central. In the latter theory, interpretation of the delusion is critical; whereas in the former, interpretation is counterproductive because it merely reinforces the delusion.Probably a note of appreciation is due the writer's daughter Cary, who at age 14 is an expert at badgering her father for help with homework assignments. For several weeks the writer was alternatively pestered and cajoled to help Cary with her Poe Project for high school English which required an essay analyzing the work of a great American writer denigrated by the author as weird by his recollection formed decades earlier. Cary's persistence required the author to consider Poe anew, to recognize his unwarranted earlier prejudice, and to recognize that Poe offered him a gift of understanding regarding a topic about which the author had been thinking for several years, namely that form of pathogenic relating named learning to be possessed.