Le horla: borders and thresholds between Maupassant and Freud

Abstract

Foreshadowing some aspects of the human reality studied by Sigmund Freud, Le Horla, written by Maupassant, depicts the possession of an anonymous protagonist by either an unknown monster or by some kind of mental disorder, which seems to transpose the higher mental structure that rules the society of that time and the “regime of thought” that imposes itself with the secularization of traditions, in a diary-framed narrative that allows other many approximations with the psychanalysis. Therefore, some breaches and meanders can be followed in order to stablish a comparative study between literature and psychanalysis: passing through their border zones, new meanings and interpretations come up; nevertheless, it is important to have the limits of this approach in mind, in which the literature can illustrate the human psyche and the psychanalysis can assist in the analysis of the literary text. By applying different methodologies to the same object of study, literature and psychanalysis produce a knowledge around this object, whose inter- -action can be observed in Le Horla. Both authors faced a society fascinated by supernatural and paranormal phenomena, at the same time as it was worried about apprehending the human spirit in its functioning and in its disorders and disturbs: the alienists of that time, dedicated in describing the disease, used to alienate the ill in nosographies, judging themselves as distant and impartial from their object of study, (re)producing exclusions and prejudice. Being aware of such misconception, in one side, Freud founds the psychanalysis and, on the other side, Maupassant makes the literature his laboratory. Both criticize the illusion of a neutrality in the scientific field, raising awareness to another belief concerning the limits of the unconscious until today and showing that different areas can dialogue, preventing one from being reduced or subordinate to the other in order to prosper and give impulse to new perspectives of studies and critics.