An attempt will be made in this paper to identify the frameworks within which it is possible to introduce the concept of the Other into folkloristics. The Other is discussed primarily as a psychoanalytic term coined by Jacques Lacan, a notion that is very productive in the interpretation of diverse aspects of culture and folklore phenomena, which are not, for their part, fully explicable only with the help of historical, political and social factors.This paper deals with the ways in which Lacan’s categories can be used in reading narratives and oral stories about supernatural beings, especially witches. The psychological dimensions of the construction of witches have not been properly taken into consideration, although witch-trial records, narratives about witches, oral stories and Malleus Malefi carum in particular would allow such analysis. Witches are represented as an extreme, as particularly evil or harmful, as beings that undermine the social order. Their construction as the Other can be read as a means of establishing the social order, a way of maintaining and preserving cultural norms.

Za razliku od, primjerice, Michela Foucaulta, koji čudovišta i čudovišno razmatra kao prazne kategorije koje se neprestano ispunjavaju novim značenjima i dobivaju nove oblike (Foucault 1999 [1974/1975]; 2002 [1966]), u tekstu se, oslanjanjem na psihoanalitičku kritiku, pokušava razabrati koja su čudovišta kontinuirano prisutna u usmenoj tradiciji, usmenoj književnosti, a posebno u predajama te koje su im funkcije, odnosno zašto se opiru izmjenama ili potiskivanju te zašto je to čudovišno u predajama najčešće kodirano kao žensko.

This text discusses the discursive construction of the body of a woman/witch as a threatening Other under Article 60 of the Criminal Practice, which served both as a criminal law and as a criminal procedure law in Hungary, and thus Croatia and Slavonia, during the period of mass witchcraft trials from 1699 to the mid-18th century. Otherness is approached from a psychoanalytic, Lacanian point of view because it opens up the possibility of understanding the collective affective politics of fear as a reflection of the unconscious in the language that created the witch imaginary, which takes its origin from the register of the imaginary and the mirror stage, i.e., in the psychological economy of structuring of the self/ego. The legal procedures that are analyzed in the text as part of the symbolic register seek to socially channel and discipline fear first by inscribing on and into women's bodies various deviations and transgressions of the human, which are then entirely annulled through designification procedures and practices. [1]

This paper focuses on a specific type of archival material from the first psychiatric institution in Croatia, the Stenjevec Royal National Institute for the Insane in Zagreb, today the Vrapče University Psychiatric Hospital, dating from the period from its foundation in 1879 until 1900. More specifically, it focuses on patient narratives featuring fantastical beings, i.e., narrations about their life relying on the genre of belief legends. Based on this material, which is considered to be an important albeit atypical folkloristic corpus, the paper analyzes and interprets the status and functions of the genre of belief legends (more specifically, the memorate) in daily life narratives, personal stories and in coding affects (primarily fear). The role of belief legends is examined not only from the perspective of oral tradition and literature, but also in terms of their social and psychological position, and through the lens of psychiatric discourse of the time, which recognizes such narratives merely as symptoms of madness, translating and coding them as the language of abnormality and psychopathology.

UDK 398.47(497.5)(091)"17" 133.4-055.2(497.5)(091)"17" 2 I witchcraze u engleskome govornome području i Hexenwahn u njemačkome sugestivno upućuju na ludilo, zaslijepljenost, maniju i strah povezane s vješticama, a koji se podjednako mogu odnositi i na tužitelje i na optužene, no i na političke i društvene sustave koji takvim vjerovanjima daju okvir. Popis radova s navedenim ključnim riječima u naslovu preopsežan je da bih ga ovdje navodila te stoga upućujem na tekst Erica H. Midelforta iz 2011., "Witch Craze? Beyond the Legends of Panic", u kojemu ih autor izdašno citira. 3 Već su autori iz "skeptične tradicije" demonološko-teoloških rasprava u doba masovnih progona poput nizozemskoga liječnika Johanna Weira, Britanca Reginalda Scotta i dr. naglašavali da dijelovi vještičjega imaginarija ili pak ekstatičkih stanja odgovaraju simptomima bolesti poput histerije, melankolije, megalomanije ili epilepsije, za koje se vjerovalo da češće pogađaju žene, i koje je potrebno adekvatno medicinski liječiti, a ne sankcionirati (usp. Elmer 2007: 37; Porter 2002: 25-31). 4 Usp. Charcot, Jean-Martin i Paul Richer (1887). (Knjiga je dostupna na https://archive.org/stream/ lesdmoniaquesda00richgoog#page/n5/mode/2up. Više o neurološkim istraživanjima histerije Charcota i suradnika u Didi-Huberman (2003). 5 Freud, kao i Charcot od kojega je učio, isprva je histeriju smatrao neuropatologijom da bi kasnije usmjerio fokus na istraživanje psihopatologije. Tako je nakon Studija o histeriji iz 1895. napisanih s neurologom Josefom Breureom objavio radove koji napuštaju neurološko-anatomske temelje i okrenuti su psihoanalizi, odnosno razvijanju teorije nesvjesnoga poput Fragmenta analize jednog slučaja histerije