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 and/or character is either an alcoholic or conjures up neurotic and anxiety-ridden imaginings of his victims as they suffer the worst fate imaginable – being buried “alive”. In The Tell-tale Heart, the narrator’s victim is buried underneath the floorboards of his dwelling. Even thought he old man is dead when he is buried, the narrator believes he is still alive. Because of the presence of the police and his imagined perception of the old man’s beating heart through the floorboards, the narrator has a complete psychological breakdown. He exhibits emotional and physical reactions to his phobia of being buried alive. He exhibits the symptoms of a phobia given by the DSM-IV (Let’s, 2001, 1):
Feelings of panic, dread, horror, or terror
Reactions that are automatic or uncontrollable
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