By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Imp of the Perverse’ is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), written in 1845. Of all of Poe’s stories, this is one of the strongest tales to prefigure the ideas of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Before we proceed to a summary and analysis of this story, it might be worth reading ‘The Imp of the Perverse’; you can find it here.