SOURCE: '"Moral Insanity' or Paranoid Schizophrenia: Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart,'" Mosaic, Vol. 25, No. 2, Spring, 1992, pp. 39-48.

In the essay that follows, Zimmerman analyzes the ways in which "The Tell-Tale Heart" anticipates the psychological concept of paranoid schizophrenia, and concludes that Poe belongs to that group of "modern artists who find in science not a threat but an ally."

In our time, creative writers are expected to do their "homework," and consequently to find "modern" scientific accuracy in a literary text comes as no surprise. To discover similar scientific accuracy in a text from an early period is a different matter—one which involves not only questions about the sophistication of the artist but also about the sophistication of the science of his/her time. A case in point is Poe's short story of 1843, "The Tell-Tale Heart." Narrated in retrospect, Poe's confessional tale features a "mad" protagonist...