「記錄隱晦的心靈思緒」：在詹姆士‧哈哥的「一個自辯正當罪人的私人回憶錄和告白」中之第二自我

Recording the hideous events: The Second Self in James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

本論文旨在探討詹姆士•哈哥在《一個自辯正當罪人的私人回憶錄和告白》小說中如何運用自傳小說的寫作文類嘲諷充滿宗教與政治的意識型態之社會中的虛偽與偏見。出版於1886年，作者透過此心理小說道盡了他對宗教意識型態文化倡行的社會所俱有的邪惡現象之觀感。小說男主角羅伯聽從一位神秘同伴的建議，犯下了很多罪行，但他卻辯白他無罪，且是為上帝作神聖的服務。他謀殺了他認為「無上帝」信仰的人，如殺了他的兄弟、地方市長、甚至他的母親。本人認為，作者正是基於此宗教的偏激教義，想透過罪犯的自我脫罪之回憶錄和告白，來闡述罪犯心理層面的自我分裂。承然，本論文提出一些思考罪犯殺人動機與自我脫罪的緣由。首要，透過作者運用自傳小說的寫作文類，讀者如何從罪犯的回憶錄和告白中察覺他難以說出的自卑感和他想透過與其假想對手的競爭關係來重新建立親緣關係。更特殊的是，讀者如何透過罪犯與他母親與其他類似母親人物的感情連結狀態，來得知他極慾排除他的自卑感和滿足他的自我成就感，以便重新定位他的生命價值。最重要的是，讀者如何透過罪犯個體在其家庭與社會中假想的獨特化行動，來重新認知罪犯心理層面中第二自我的建構，且重新理解罪犯的心理狀態如何糾結於「理想的」自我意象與第二自我意象之中。

This essay explores how James Hogg deploys an editor’s point-of-view narrative form to ridicule the pretences and prejudices of an essentially political-religious society. With the publication of his psychological novel Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner in 1886, James Hogg offers his view of the evil of his age ( 1770-1835 ). Hogg’s religious consciousness shows his concern with his society’s ideological disintegration with regard to its religious-cultural and political dimensions. The protagonist Robert takes the advice of a strange companion and enters into a life of crime that he considers to be a life of divine service. He rids the world of “ungodly” people such as his brother and the local country minister. Robert disappears from home not long after his brother George inherits the title of Laird, having committed several additional crimes, such as killing his mother. This study proposes that it is religious consciousness that motivates Hogg to write the character of Robert in this psychological novel as a hideous demonic fiend, thus revealing the psychic-twist of falling apart. In order to investigate a criminal’s motives in committing murders, several questions deserve our close attention: in what ways can the protagonist, Robert, in Hogg’s confessional writings, convey his inarticulate sense of inferiority and re-build an intimate alliance through competition with his brother George despite his familial and social displacement? More specially, how can he empower himself by reconfiguring his life value, so as to remove his sense of inferiority, (though this is a hallucination resulting from a sense of self-incompleteness), through affectionate bonds with his mother and other mother figures? Most significantly, how can we re-comprehend the imaginings of an individual’s implied second self through the lens of one’s imaginary individuation through his family and society, and through his battle for an ideal self-image which is a polished version formed in opposition to this second self?