This is one of the most interesting chapters of the book Edgar Poe, Étude Psychoanalytique (published in Paris, les Editions Denoël et Steele 1933). The unconscious material of the famous story is traced to Poe's childish fantasies and silent questionings concerning the paternity and bith of his younger illegitimate sister. Coitus is symbolized as fatal to the

mother and threatening castration to the father, with whom the child Edgar Poe identifies himself in the person of the orang-outang. This story stands midway in the group comprising the 'Cycle of the Murdered Mother' which present the fantasy material of the gradual evolution of the poet's identification with the guilty father.