Comparing Edgar Allen Poes The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat, and

Comparing Edgar Allen Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat, and The Tell-tale Heart The short stories of Edgar Allen Poe demonstrate the author's ample gifts in the psychology of the mind, regardless of the fact he was decades ahead of Freud.   Poe's short stories are often from the deranged and murderous point-of-view of the narrator, who often illustrates the inner-workings of his own psychology and the disintegration of the self brought about by psychological disorders, aberrations, and other factors (anxiety, substance abuse, etc.).   Perhaps two main factors omnipresent in the Poe psychological realm are substance abuse (i.e. alcoholism) and taphophobia (exaggerated fear of being buried alive). In short stories like The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat, and The Tell-tale Heart, Poe constructs a psychological world where alcoholism and the fear of being buried alive are inextricably intertwined.   So, too, the combination of them has an impact on the narrators and characters in his stories.   Poe's own alcoholism and taphophobia are inextricably intertwined in the psyche of his narrators and/or characters. In all three of these short stories, the narrator an... ...xacerbates the psychological symptoms being manifested due to taphophobia.   Yet, these stories amply demonstrate Poe's own preoccupation with alcohol and drinking as well as his neurosis with respect to being buried alive.  Ã‚   References Anonymous.   (2001). Criteria for Substance Dependence Diagnosis.   DSM-II-R, NIDA, Available: http://www.nida.gov/DSR.html, 1-3. Anonymous.   (2001). Let's talk facts about phobias.   APA, Available: http://www.guggenheim.yourmd.com, 1-4. Poe, E. A.   (1966). Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe.   New York, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.