The confessions of a justified sinner and the psychopathology of the double

Abstract

In discussions of the psychopathology of the double, acknowledgement is usually given to the various literary accounts of the subject by Dostoevsky, De Maupassant and Stevenson (Christodoulou, 1986). Curiously, mention is never made of the work that has been described by Karl Miller (1985) as “the cardinal text” in the literature of the double. James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, published in 1824 and since recognised as a Scottish literary classic, represents the most detailed and complex exploration of the theme of the double.