“Stelle” in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw

In “Genius Loci: The ‘Place’ of Identification in Psychoanalysis,” Eva Badowska (2008) seeks to elucidate the problem of “Stelle” (place, authority) in Freudian psychoanalysis, particularly with regard to Freud's claims in On Narcissism and in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego that imply a “social side” at work in the process of identification, as well as distinct relationships within ego-cathexis to the ideas of “having” and “being.” These associations may fundamentally complicate Freud's interpretation of the relationship between identification and desire. Following Freud's dialectic with the problem, Badowska draws on the work of to link the idea of identification with “the other's place” as a kind of implicit darstellen (acting), while offering the viewpoint of the governess in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw as an allegorical explanation. Focusing on the second encounter between the ghost of Peter Quint and the governess, and in particular on the desire of governess “to take the place of” Quint, Badowska argues:

“More mysterious than any ghostly visitation, the governess's confused desire to occupy the ghost's exact place suggests that the spot is more compelling than Quint's presence or absence in it: “he was there or was not there.” That the ghost's place can be taken suggests that the place is empty or that two can occupy one place. In either case, it is the place—or some mysterious genius loci—that governs the governess, (p. 950)

With Badowska setting the context for the conception of Quint's “Stelle” as a place of authority that the governess is trying to master, even more crucial commentary about object-relation might be teased out of the dialectic between art and artist. To set