Double Agony: Is Literary Doubling a Cure for Suffering or Its Source?

This paper focuses on the literary theme of the double (doppelgänger) as an artistic attempt at endowing suffering protagonists with a chance for redemption. Doppelgänger works feature a protagonist who encounters his or her double, or disintegrates into several self-parts. The paper investigates the question of whether literary doubelness may serve as a cure for the protagonists' suffering, or rather aggravates their initial suffering and introduces further causes of agony on their part. After discussing whether doubleness stems from the protagonists' wish to meet Kohut's self-object need for twinship, the paper analyzes stances of literary doubleness, either by split or by multiplication, that seem to be the source of their protagonists' sense of suffering. It concludes by attempting to provide an integrative account of these sources of distress in view of Kohut's theory of self-object needs.