Variations on the Theme of the Double

«But it is not only this latter material… which may be incorporated in the idea of a double. There are also all the unfulfilled but possible futures… all the strivings of the ego which adverse external circumstances have crushed, and all our suppressed acts of volition… The quality of uncanniness can only come from the fact of the ‘double’ being a creation dating back to a very early mental stage».

I have elected to recount a dream in which «the subject of the double», developed in a variety of different manners (doubling, splitting or exchange), seems to me to be closely linked to the conflict which exists between body and mind.

Clara: The dream is divided into two parts.

In the first part I am on the snow, perhaps having come out of a mountain chalet. Everything is covered in snow. It is as if I were on a precipice, in a very difficult area to cross. I crouch so as not to slip, like someone who is in danger of falling. I get down on the ground, so as not to fall, perhaps, and I see a hand sticking out of the snow. I start digging and I unearth a boy who is still alive; it's my brother. We meet up again at home, and he recovers.

- In the following scene my brother and I are small children, and our parents are seating us in front of a television. There is a window in the room, as well as a Christmas tree and the TV. Instead of having the usual ornaments the tree is decorated with small figures, imaginary beings half-way between insects and butterflies, like goblins. At a certain point I am no longer a child seated beside my brother. I look at the scene and I am the age that I am now. I see my parents listening carefully to one of the goblins who is speaking. This speaking goblin has another one beside him that looks more like an insect. As he speaks to my parents he is hitting the other one on the head with his beak and sucking out its brain. Before dying, the poor thing lays eggs which