7th April 2014
The Double or Doppelganger
We are all born with primal / instinctual thoughts (id) to do bad things but we do not act upon these feelings as our super-ego and upbringing tells us it is wrong. This is how the double develops in an adult as the counterpoint of an ego, your conscience or superego.
The superego can both praise and punish a person. When they do well, the superego will make them feel happy and proud, however when they do something bad the superego is what makes the person feel guilt and shame.
Most people can make their superego forgive the bad that they have done, this is called Reparation when you try to make amends for some damage you have done. This is related to the religious and spiritual notion of redemption; it always implies recognition of guilt and a wish to repair the damage. (Roth P, 2001) proving some people can overcome the double and keep it in the subconscious.
In some extreme cases the superego does not allow the person to be forgiven and therefore is being constantly attacked from within. This can cause the person to go into depression and sometimes push them to commit suicide or murder in the conscious.
The superego projects all the things it represses onto this primitive image of the double. Hence the double in later life is experienced as something uncanny because it calls forth all this repressed content (Gray R, 2012) It is a negative ego or the bad form of yourself, all of the repressed urges are forced into the double like a bad twin. The fact that our superego allows us to observe ourselves makes the idea of a double more real again making the line between animate and inanimate more blurred.
