TRIO: Three Sherlock Holmes Mysteries That Introduce Us to Cultural Studies

TRIO reprints three Sherlock Holmes novellas I wrote, Freud is Fixated, Marx Est Mort and My Name is Sherlock Holmes, which provide a novel (literally and figuratively) introduction to cultural studies. This book is meant to do two things: be entertaining and also teach my readers something about psychoanalytic theory, Marxist theory, and the interdisciplinary field known as cultural studies. Books such as TRIO are sometimes described as “Infotainments,” combining both information and entertainment.  Each chapter is introduced by quotations of interest and I also provide bibliographies and at the end of the book, a glossary. In this book, as he tries to solve each crime, Sherlock Holmes interrogates some of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century.  Which means this book is full of ideas about all kinds of things.  In some cases, the dialogue comes from the writings of the thinkers Holmes is questioning.  I’ve had to sacrifice my narrative line to pump as much ideational content into the stories as possible, so these novels are didactic in nature, but they are still works of fiction but of an unusual kind.  I have taken some minor liberties with the punctuation and repeat myself at times in different places in different books. Teaching cultural studies by using Sherlock Holmes mysteries is an unusual way to instruct students and readers. I hope, after reading this book, you will think it was worth your effort, and mine.

A Note to My Readers

Freud is Fixated is a mystery novel.  It features the great consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusted companion Dr. John Watson.  But it is also, like many mysteries, a novel of ideas and the ideas in this story are those of some of the most important psychologists and psychoanalysts of the nineteenth and twentieth century such as Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones, John Rickman, Joan Riviere, and Melanie Klein.

I’ve had a lot of fun writing it and I hope you will find this little mystery novel both entertaining and edifying.  It is not easy, believe me, to make psychoanalytic theory, written at the turn of the 20th century, palatable, let alone digestible.  On the other hand, there is something inherently fascinating and interesting about psychoanalytic theory, which attempts to explain why people behave the way they do.  So I hope you come away from reading this book with an appreciation both of the formidable powers of intellect the various characters in the story have and of the insights they have provided about that most curious of matters—the psychological behavior of human beings.

You will learn about the unconscious, about Freud’s theories about the different levels of consciousness (consciousness, subconscious, and unconscious) and different components of the psyche (Id, Ego, and Superego), about the power of collective representations, symbols, and many other matters in this book.  

I have cast a wide net and included some thinkers who may be a bit peripheral to traditional courses on psychology and psychoanalytic theory.  But I wanted to deal with Feminist thought and with so-called “post-Freudian” psychoanalytic theory, among other things.  I also had to tell a story that dealt with psychoanalytic theorists and psychoanalytic theory and that created certain problems for me, as far as determining who would be in the story and why they did what they did.

As a result of reading this book, which deals with a fascinating and important subject—psychoanalytic theory--you might even find out where some of your ideas about your place in the scheme of things and your notions about your possibilities come from.

I have used some important passages from material written by my theorists and others as dialogue in certain places in this book to capture their ideas as accurately as possible and give readers a sense of their style of writing.  That explains the antiquated or awkward nature of the language in some of the passages.  It has been necessary to make some changes, here and there, in these passages to make them more readable. 

In addition, I have made use of material found in many books by writers who deal with psychoanalytic theory and others, as well as the works of the psychoanalytic theorists dealt with in the book.   I have also drawn some illustrations to make the book more visually attractive. This book can be seen as a textbook on psychoanalytic theory buried in a Sherlock Holmes mystery story and it is, in that sense, very much like another one of my books,  Durkheim is Dead: Sherlock Holmes is Introduced to Social Theory.  

Personae

Sherlock Holmes is the most famous consulting detective of all time.  His intellectual brilliance and ability to make astonishing deductions were put to the test, as he became caught in a tangled web of events involving some of the most important psychoanalytic thinkers of the twentieth century.  They had all come to London to deal with a problem the psychoanalytic movement faced—too many German speakers and not enough English speaking theorists. While they were having dinner one night, one member of the group was stabbed.  Sherlock Holmes arrived on the scene minutes after the event, having been summoned to deal with a different problem, but one that involved the man, Maxim Sontag.

Dr. John Watson…Holmes’ good friend and associate, who had been with him in Holmes’ greatest cases.  Watson’s knowledge of medicine and his trusty revolver were often put to use. 

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) A physician and the originator of psychoanalytic theory had a lasting impact on social and political thought.  Freud argued that the human psyche has three levels: consciousness, pre-consciousness (material that is accessible to us), and an unconscious, that is not accessible to people under ordinary circumstances.  The unconscious is important because it shapes our behavior.  He also divided the psyche into three parts: an id, which is used to described our drives and impulses, an ego, which we use to monitor our surroundings, and a superego, which is similar to conscience.  The ego tried to balance the imperatives of the id and superego.  Freud was interested in individual psychology but also in group psychology, and used psychoanalytic theory to explain the social, as well as the individual behavior of people.  His work is controversial but is the foundation of much thinking in psychoanalytic fields and related areas. 

Ernest Jones, M.D. (1879-1958) was the first person to practice psychoanalysis outside of German-speaking countries. A friend of Freud and one of his leading disciples.  He was born in England, became a professor at the University of Toronto for a while but returned to England in 1913.

Melanie Klein (1882-1960) was a pioneer in the field of child psychoanalysis and analytic techniques suited for children.  She contributed “Love, Guilt and Reparation” to a book Love, Hate and Reparation, which also contained a contribution by Joan Riviere. 

John Rickman, M.D.  (1891-1951) was a prominent member of the psychoanalytic movement in England and studied Russian peasant life from a psychoanalytic perspective.  He contributed many studies of Russian character and culture to American publications in 1919 and 1920.

Joan Riviere (1883-1952) studied with Freud in Vienna and translated his Introductory Lectures and many of his other works.  She edited the International Journal of Psychoanalysis for many years.

Maxim Sontag (1883 to 1950) is a Russian psychoanalyst, with many personality problems, who attended a meeting on psychoanalysis in London that was organized by Freud.  Sontag was found lying on the floor with a knife wound in his stomach, moaning.  His attack and events involving the attack were investigated by Sherlock Holmes who had been invited to the meeting by Freud.

Otto Rank (1884-1939) is the author of many books on psychoanalysis, including The Double: A Psychoanalytic Study, which was a combination of psychoanalytic theory and literary criticism.  He was one of Freud’s closest comrades. 

Cipriana Buonaparte (1870 to 2060) is an Italian psychoanalyst, educated at the University of Milan, who practiced in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  She read an article by Maxim Sontag and entered into a long correspondence with him. On a visit to London, she hoped to meet him but after his attack, she was interviewed by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

It was a triumph for the interpretive art of psychoanalysis when it succeeded in demonstrating that certain common mental acts of normal people, for which no one had hitherto attempted to put forward a psychological explanation, were to be regarded in the same light as the symptoms of neurotics: that is to say, they had a meaning, which was unknown to the subject but which could easily be discovered by analytic means. The phenomena in question were such events as the temporary forgetting of familiar words and names, forgetting to carry out prescribed tasks, everyday slips of the tongue or pen, misreadings, losses and mislaying of objects, certain mistakes, instances of apparently accidental self-injury, and finally habitual movements carried out seemingly without intention or in play, tunes hummed “thoughtlessly,” and so on. All of these were shorn of their physiological explanation, if any such had ever been attempted, and were shown to be strictly determined and were revealed as an expression of the subject’s suppressed intentions or as a result of a clash between two intentions one of which was permanently or temporarily unconscious. . . .Finally, a class of material was brought to light which is calculated better than any others to stimulate a belief in the existence of unconscious mental acts even in people to whom the hypothesis of something at once mental and unconscious seems strange and even absurd.

—Sigmund Freud, “Psychoanalysis” in Philip Reiff (Ed.) Character and Culture (1963, pp. 235, 236)

Chapter 1

Sherlock Holmes Reads Sigmund Freud

After my surgery hours, I had returned to our apartment at 221B Baker Street around 4:00 PM to find Holmes deeply engrossed in reading a book.  He was sitting in his velvet armchair, smoking a pipe, and was so involved with the book he was reading he didn’t notice that I had walked into the apartment.

“Holmes, I said.  “I can’t recall seeing you so deeply engrossed in a book for ages.  What has happened?

He looked up, surprised to see me there.

“It’s the most extraordinary thing, Watson,” he said.  “This morning I received a package with a letter in it, inviting me to a meeting of some psychologists this evening.  And it also had a book by Sigmund Freud, whose title is Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, which is what I’m reading.  It is really one of the most remarkable books I’ve read.”

“How so?” I asked.

Well, to begin with,” said Holmes, taking a puff on his pipe, “Freud suggests that there are different levels to our minds and that much of what we do is the result of material, of which we are unaware,  buried in the deepest levels of our psyches, what he calls the ‘unconscious.’  This part of our mind stores all kinds of things that happen to us, many of which do not attract our attention.  That which we recognize he calls consciousness and below that is an area that we can sometimes access, which he calls the subconscious.  So, if Freud is correct, much of our behavior is affected by this unconscious.  That may help explain why people behave in such curious ways.”

“Fascinating,” I said.  “I would like to read it when you are finished with it.”

“Of course,” said Holmes.  “And by the way, I’d like you to accompany me to this meeting.  It may be interesting.  Whoever wrote the letter inviting me added that he hoped I might be able to help them deal with a problem of some urgency.  It involves one member of the group. So the book was a lure of sorts, to get me to come to the society’s meeting.  When dealing with psychoanalysts it seems rational to assume that knowing what they know about how the mind works they have ways to get people to do all kinds of remarkable things.”

“So you have a new case,” I said, “Even though you’re not sure what it involves.  I’m sure the writer of that letter is aware of your extraordinary powers of deduction and your ability to solve problems that seem to have no solution.  Should I bring my revolver?”

“No,” said Holmes.  “I doubt that it will be necessary.  If you’ll excuse me, I want to read some more of this book since it probably has something to do with the problem I’ve been invited to deal with, or perhaps even solve.”

With, that he turned his attention back to his book.   Holmes had formidable powers of concentration, and they were one reason, along with his ability to deduce things, he was such a success as a detective.  That evening, after our dinner, we went to the house where the meeting was being held, at 122 Bonapart Court.  We arrived at 8:00 PM.

Lacan was a creature less of psychoanalysis as a clinical discipline and international movement than of French intellectual life.  There is no better example than Lacan's work of the way psychoanalysis in different countries takes on a distinctly national character.  Lacan's presentations were spectacles, filled with the conceptual and verbal gamesmanship characteristic of the French intelligentsia: sweeping philosophical, political, and literary references and allusions, a contemptuous, combative posturing (the title of Julia Kristeva's novel depicting the intellectual world in which Lacan lived is, tellingly, The Samurai ), and a complex blend of authoritarian fiat and antiauthoritarian defiance\

Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black. Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought.  New York: Basic Books.

Chapter 2

Too Late

When we arrived, a few minutes before 8:00 PM, we knocked on the door.  A woman, whose name we learned was Joan Riviere opened the door.  She had a frightened look on her face.  We entered and found some people standing around a man who was lying on the floor, with a stab wound in his stomach and groaning.  There was a sense of excitement and dread that permeated the house.

“He’s got a nasty wound,” said a short man with a gray beard and wire glasses.

The man introduced himself.

“My name is Sigmund Freud and I am the one who sent my book and the letter inviting you to our meeting.  Alas, you’re too late!  We just found our colleague with a stab wound a few minutes ago.  We were having a meeting that ended at six in the evening. When we came down for dinner, around 7:30 PM, we found Maxim lying on the floor, with a bloodstained shirt.  He had been at the meeting with us but left early.  I have sent for someone to bring him to a hospital where he will need some surgery.”

Holmes looked at the body lying on the floor.  He was a man in his thirties.  There was a  bloodstain on his shirt that was horizontal and ran for around five inches, some ashes scattered about, and the man’s eyes were dilated.  His skin was a pale yellow.  He was wearing a dark brown suit, a white shirt with a brown tie, and brown shoes.  His black hair was neatly cut and his beard trimmed.  He had horned-rimmed round glasses with thick lenses.  One of his arms had some ashes on it as if it had somehow fallen into the fireplace for a moment.”

“If it wasn’t one of the servants here,” Holmes said, “unless someone from outside was able to enter the house, which seems unlikely, that means someone in your group of psychoanalysts is the attacker.”

“I find that hard to believe,” said Freud.  “The wounded man is a young Russian psychoanalyst, Maxim Montag.  It was he that I wrote to you about.  He had been behaving curiously, insulting me and my colleagues, and threatening one of them, as well.  It was his threat that was the most urgent problem.”

“I take it that you have notified the police,” said Holmes.  “While we are waiting for them to come, I would like to talk to your colleagues to see what I can learn that may help us determine what happened …or, as you put it, resolve this problem.  It might not be the same problem you wrote to me about.”

“Of course,” said Freud.

Holmes looked through Montag’s pockets and found a note in his jacket which Holmes palmed and slipped into his coat pocket.

“Does this house have a library, where I can interview people?” asked Holmes.

“Yes,” replied Freud.

“Good,” said Holmes.  “My colleague, Dr. Watson and I will repair to the library and start interviewing your colleagues.”

“Who would you like to start with?” asked Freud.

“What about the gentleman standing next to me,” said Holmes.  He turned to him.

“And your name is?” asked Holmes.

“John Rickman,” said the man.

“Good,” said Holmes.  “If you would accompany me and Dr. Watson to the library, we can begin.”

For the first five decades in the history of psychoanalytic thought (up until Freud's death in 1939), it would have been tenable to argue that psychoanalysis was largely the invention of Freud's singular genius. Freud regarded psychoanalysis as a form of treatment, but also as a new branch of science.  He carefully ended his creation and it grew up around him.  Those taught and analyzed by Freud were justifiably impressed with his early discoveries; they admired him and let him take the lead.  Freud also regarded psychoanalysis as a quasi-political movement, and proved himself a dominant leader, wary of opposition, often regarding others' creativity and originality as signs of disloyalty.  

Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black. Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought.  New York: Basic Books. 1996.

 John Rickman

Chapter 3

John Rickman, M.D.     

“Tell me, Dr. Rickman, what was this meeting about and who was the man who was stabbed?” asked Holmes.  John Rickman was also a young man, barely thirty.

“I don’t know where to begin,” he said.  “Freud had invited a number of us to have a meeting in London to consider the future of the psychoanalytic movement and to help establish psychoanalysis in England.  So he asked several younger psychoanalysts, many from England like the people in this room, Melanie Klein,  Joan Riviere, Ernest Jones, and myself, to attend.  He also invited some other psychoanalysts like Theodor Reik and Maxim Sontag, the man who was attacked, to attend.  We’ve been meeting for two weeks.”

“I see,” said Holmes.

“We’ve known Sontag for years but he’s never behaved the way he did at the conference.    He insulted people, he threatened people, said he might kill someone, said he might kill himself, and was causing a great deal of trouble and trauma among us, which is why Freud contacted you.  We were afraid he might do something shocking and thought you might have some suggestions to help us deal with him.  We didn’t want to call the police.”

“I find this strange,” replied Holmes.  “Here you have a group of psychoanalysts whose job it is to deal with people with psychological afflictions of one kind or another and you call of me, a private detective, to help you.”       

 “You are correct about that,” said Rickman, “But sometimes we have a feeling that a different kind of expertise is needed to deal with a problem we are trying to deal with, and in the case of Maxim Sontag, we had a sense that your help would be needed.  Of course, we never expected anything like his being attacked the way he was to contend with.” 

  “What do you think was bothering him?” asked Holmes.

Rickman paused for a moment to collect his thoughts.  “I’ve known Maxim for many years.  If I had to diagnose his illness, I’d say he was suffering from a split personality, from two conflicting and antagonistic personality polarities.  At times he was manic and very genial and cooperative and in excellent spirits, but those periods didn’t last long and then he became sullen, morose, and depressed.  He moped around and lacked energy and affect.  This was the way he behaved most of the time.  Of course, we’ve only been with him for a bit less than two weeks.  But when you’re dealing with a troubled person, it doesn’t take long for things to start happening.”

“Is this the area that interests you the most?” asked Holmes.

“Actually, I’m most interested, at least at this point in time, in the way culture shapes personalities and personality disorders, and have done work in Russia on these matters.  Cultures play a role in shaping personalities and what I learned in Russia may help explain Maxim Sontag’s behavior,” said Rickman.

“And what did you learn?” asked Holmes.

“Psychology has shown,” Rickman said, “that in the life of any individual the process of learning is cumulative, so that early learning influences later learning.  Social anthropology has shown that culture is continuous over more than one generation, that the people who die are replaced by new members who have learned, by both conscious and unconscious processes, the values and customs appropriate to their culture and their position in it, or, in other words, their individual variation of the national character.  This national character plays a continuous and influential role in an individual’s life.”

“Interesting,” said Holmes.  “What you are saying is that it is Sontag’s having been raised in Russia and learning certain Russian traits that shaped his behavior.”

“Yes,” Rickman continued.  “Much of the aggressive element in the Russian disposition had, in the old regime, been turned inwards under the influence of an unusually mystical religion and an exceptionally autocratic regime, so that the people were submissive, not docile, that is too passive a concept, and unself-confident, but subject to outbursts of self-glorification and indignation against their oppressors.  In Russia, where power was seized in the revolution, people feel violence may be necessary for politics, but violence generates feelings of guilt, which are generally unconscious.   This guilt plays an important role in Russian political life and Russian mental states.”

“From what you’ve said,” Holmes replied, “I take it that there are powerful strains in the Russian psyche—sometimes Russians feel glorified and at other times they feel guilty.  So they often alternate between feelings of being powerful and then of being weak.  And they learn all this by growing up in Russia.  And that explains your notion that poor Mr. Sontag was torn in two directions at the same time.  A most interesting hypothesis.”

“We cannot underestimate the power of national character,” added Rickman.  “Everyone is different and is unique, but we are all, at the same time, the products of the countries in which we were raised and are affected, to varying degrees, by the culture around us.  There is, of course, always social change, but there is also, at the same time, culture, which changes relatively slowly. 

Implicit in my discussion of  Maxim’s problems is the nation that there is a split in Russian culture that manifests itself in Maxim’s behavior and the behavior, to varying extents, of all Russians.  When we grow up, in our early years, we become indoctrinated by our culture, and that culture shapes much of our behavior for the rest of our lives.  Unless we find a way to repudiate that culture and everything it has done to us, and for us, by moving to a different country or changing religions or making some other change.  But this would be another example of the tensions in a culture playing out.  In a sense, there is no escape.”

“And what about the role of psychoanalysis here?  What role do people like you and Freud and your colleagues play in the scheme of things?” asked Holmes.

“Yes, a very interesting question, Mr. Holmes,” said Rickman.  “We are essentially interventionists who attempt to help people who have psychological problems caused by some kind of malfunction in the process of growing up, who have had traumatic experiences when young, who have suffered from physical ailments or terrible parents, of some combination of all of these things.  Since it takes a while, generally speaking, for psychological problems to manifest themselves, it takes a long time to deal with them and, when possible, help heal people and relieve them of their suffering.”

“Your tutorial on Russian character and culture has been most illuminating,” said Holmes.  “Now I understand how you were able to diagnose Maxim Sontag’s problems the way you did.  And also more about how you psychoanalysts work.  You’ve been very helpful.  When you leave, will you ask another of your colleagues to come to this room.  Perhaps Joan Riviere.  I would like to see what she has to say about Maxim Sontag’s psyche.”

“You might be interested to know that Maxim seems to have been stricken by Joan Riviere and spent an enormous amount of time staring at her,” replied Rickman.  “It might be infatuation or something like that.”

“I find that interesting and possibly quite useful,” said Holmes.  “May I ask--what were you doing while you were waiting for dinner?”

“I was in my room, reading.  I found the meetings rather upsetting at times and so I was reading to relax.”

“Yes, I can understand,” said Holmes.“

The most celebrated and influential modern doctrines, those of Marx and Freud, actually amount to an elaborate system of hermeneutics, aggressive and imperious theories of interpretation…For Marx, social events like revolutions and wars; for Freud, the events of individual lives (like neurotic symptoms and slips of the tongue) as well as texts (like a dream or a work of art)—are all treated as occasions for interpretation.  According to Marx and Freud, these events only seem to be intelligible.  Actually, they have no meaning without interpretation.  To understand is to interpret. 

Susan Sontag Against Interpretation.  New York: Laurel Books.  1969.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.  Only one idea of general value has occurred to me.  I have found love of the mother and jealousy of the father in my own case too, and now believe it to be a general phenomenon of early childhood, even if it does not always occur so early in children who have been made hysterics...If that is the case, the gripping power of Oedipus Rex, in spite of all rational objections to the inexorable fate that the story presupposes becomes intelligible, and one can understand why later fate dramas were such failures.  Our feelings rise against any arbitrary individual fate...but the Greek myth seizes on a compulsion which everyone recognizes because he has felt traces of it himself.  Every member of the audience was once a budding Oedipus in fantasy, and this dream-fulfillment played out in reality causes everyone to recoil in horror, with the full measure of repression which separates his infantile from his present state.

Sigmund Freud, Letter to Wilhelm Fliess.  Oct. 15, 1897. Quoted in Martin Grotjahn, Beyond Laughter: Humor and the Subconscious. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1966.

Joan Riviere

Chapter 4

Joan Riviere

Joan Riviere was wearing a light tan dress and had a pearl necklace on.  She was a rather handsome woman who radiated a sense of authority and control.  There was a sparkle in her eyes that suggested a liveliness to her personality.  She had curly hair, parted in the middle of her head. She sat down on a chair and started talking.

“You must understand, Mr. Holmes,” she said, “that I’ve played a role in Freud’s popularity in England because I translated several of Freud’s books into English.  But I’ve also done my own research.  My work has involved dealing with the unconscious mind, except that where Freud used dreams to analyze his patients, I use other methods, and in my work, I have found, often, reflections of the Oedipus complex and the roots of what Freud called the superego in babies.  It is fascinating work.  It may surprise you to think that babies and children can have psychological problems but that is often the case.”

“Nothing surprises me when dealing with human beings,” replied Holmes.  “But the work of Freud and his colleagues involves a world of which I know little, though in the course of my work I’ve learned that human beings are very complicated beings and understanding their motives—often an important element in crimes—and the curious aspects of their behavior have long fascinated me.  I find many similarities between my work and the work of you and your colleagues.  Had I not become a consulting detective, I might well have become a psychoanalyst.  We’re all interested in motivation.”

“Let me say something my theories about the importance of our experiences when we are small babies.  It is a bit complicated and, I should admit, somewhat controversial.”

“Please continue,” said Holmes.

“When we are babies,” Riviere said, “we experience a sense of anxiety, from our fear of the loss of our mother’s breast.  A baby at the breast is completely dependent on someone else, but has no fear of this, at least to begin with, because he does not recognize his dependence.  In fact, a baby does not recognize anyone’s existence but his own.  His mother’s breast is, to him or her, merely a part of himself.  Babies expect all their wants to be fulfilled.  If these wants and expectations are not fulfilled, babies become aware of this dependence, recognize they cannot supply all their wants, and cry and scream, exploding with hate and aggressive craving, and feeling lonely.  This situation which we were in as babies has enormous psychological consequences for our lives.”

“How so?” asked Holmes.

She continued.  “It brings an awareness of the non-existence of something, of an overwhelming loss and an awareness of love, in the form of desire and dependence, in the form of need.   The hate and aggression, envy, jealousy, and greed felt and expressed by grown-up people are all derivatives and usually extremely complicated derivatives, both of this primary experience and of the necessity to master it if we are to survive and secure any pleasure in life.”

“If I understand you correctly,” replied Holmes, “you believe that the very first days and months of our lives play a crucial role in our psychological development and shape the rest of our lives.  I hadn’t thought that babies were such complicated beings and that their first experiences, what you call their primary experiences, are so important.”

 Joan Riviere smiled.

“I should admit that many psychoanalytic theorists do not attach as much importance to the experiences of babies as I do, but my theory explains so many aspects of our lives when we are older.  Consider the longing people have for things.  Our longing or greed for good things can relate to any and every imaginable kind of good—material possessions, bodily or mental gifts, advantages, or privileges.  But, besides the actual gratifications, they may bring, in the depths of our minds, they all ultimately signify one thing.  They stand as proofs to us, if we get them, that we are ourselves good, and full of good, and so are worthy of love, or respect, and honor in return.  Thus, they serve as proofs and insurances against our fears of emptiness inside ourselves, or of our evil impulses which make us feel bad or full of badness to ourselves and others.  One great reason why a loss of any kind can be so painful is that unconsciously it represents the converse idea, that we are being exposed as unworthy of good things, and so our deepest fears are realized.”

“I see,” said Holmes.  “It would seem that the primary experience you talk about, the experience babies have at their mothers’ breasts, plays a major role in shaping their experiences when they are older.  Your theory is, to my mind, very bold and imaginative and far-reaching.”

“Thank you, “said Joan Riviere.  “From what I know of your career, I’d say you are, yourself, a person with a superior intellect and a considerable knowledge of what motivates people. Let me give you one more example that might be of interest.  How much does this motive of the need for reassurance about one’s own value play a part in the decisions of men and women to marry and how little in comparison with it does the feeling of love or sexual desire impel them?  A mutual love serves as a double insurance for each partner.  By this partnership in love, the satisfaction of the harmonizing and unifying life-instincts, the self-preservative and sexual, is gained and security against the destructive impulses and the dangers of loss, loneliness, and helplessness is increased.”

“So, if I understand you correctly, there is always this matter of defending oneself against the fears babies experience that comes to the fore,” said Holmes.

“Yes,” said Joan Riviere.  “You understand my point completely.  For many people, my ideas about the primary experience and the need people have for reassurance and love, seem far-fetched and more a matter of my imagination than of what happens when people develop.  Yet my experiences with people in need of psychoanalytic assistance convince me that I am correct.”

“And now let us put your theory to the test,” replied Holmes, “and consider the matter…” of Maxim Sontag’s attack.  Was the attacker striking out because he, or she, feared that Sontag represented a threat of some kind?  And would this be the case even if the attacker was a stranger who didn’t know Sontag?”

“Whoever attacked Sontag was driven by the same fears and anxieties that I have discussed, which originated in their experiences as babies.  If babies are treated well and have the benefit of loving parents, they generally can handle their aggressive feelings in non-destructive ways, but for some people, their aggressive and hostile impulses dominate their lives, which explains why there are bullies and there are murderers.  And why some people commit suicide.  They turn their anger and rage against themselves.  Psychoanalysis represents, for many people, a second chance.  And in some cases, the last chance.  Psychoanalysis enables people to undo some of the experiences that have led to their unhappy lives, their problems, their difficulties.  But it is difficult work, both for the person being analyzed and for the analyst.  Our work is very much like yours, Mr. Holmes.  We look for clues that help us find the villain, though the villains we deal with are people who have caused someone to become overwhelmed by guilt or anger or any one of many other problems.  We are all, in a sense, like Sherlock Holmes, though we use our powers of observation and deduction not to find criminals but to discover the causes of the problems that the people we deal with experience.”

“And I am like you and your fellow psychoanalysts,” Homes said, with a smile on his face, “in that I spend my life dealing with people who have problems and who are problems and whose behavior, it would seem, stems from their earliest days at their mothers’ breasts and their problematic upbringing.  And maybe certain deficiencies in their minds and bodies.  It is all quite complicated.  In any case, we have the matter of the attack on Maxim Sontag to deal with.  If this attack was not from a stranger who somehow was able to enter the house, attack Sontag, and leave without being detected, it means that one of your colleagues, or even you, stabbed Sontag—as strange as that may seem to you.  And your colleagues.  One does not imagine Sigmund Freud or any of the other people at the meeting, all persons of consequence and high esteem could do something like that, but anything is possible.”

“You are correct,” replied Joan Riviere.  “One does not imagine Sigmund Freud, or me, or any of my colleagues here, stabbing anyone, but anything is possible.”

“Now let me ask you about what I learned from your colleague, John Rickman, said Holmes.  “He seems to believe that it was Sontag’s Russian character that explained his curious behavior.  But that does not square with your theory about the importance of our earliest experiences.  Or does it?”

Joan Riviere smiled.  She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts.

“And now you have come face to face with one of the problems the psychoanalytic movement has to deal with,” she said.  “Different members of the profession have different theories that explain how the human psyche works and what makes people act the way they do.  And the different theories all seem reasonable and generally contain a grain of truth.”

“Yes, I understand,” said Holmes.  “But how do you reconcile your theory about the experiences of infants with Rickman’s notions about the importance of cultures in shaping us?”

“We must remember that babies born in Russia have important experiences, at their mothers’ breast, before they grow up and are exposed to Russian culture.  And this Russian culture may affect the way mothers nurture their babies.  So I’m content with my thesis.  Freud said that the child is the father of the man.  I  would amend that and say that the baby is the father of the man and the woman, whether in England or Russia.  Or anyplace.  And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll return to my colleagues.”

“Before you go, may I ask you one last question?” asked Holmes.

May I ask what you were doing between the time the group’s meeting ended and dinner?”

“I was in my room working on an article,” she replied.  “I have a busy practice and I am working on a book.  When I’ve published it, I’ll have a copy sent to you.  It will explain my ideas more completely.”

“ I see,” replied Holmes.  Feel free to leave.  It has been very interesting talking with you, Dr. Riviere.

She left.

“Well, Watson,” Holmes said, “What do you make of all this?”

“I have to say I find it both fascinating and confusing,” Watson replied.  “But we have similar problems in medicine since there are often different approaches to dealing with medical problems and even diagnosing problems.  There can be many different causes for a disease and its symptoms can be generated by any number of physical ailments.  Dr. Rickman seemed to imply that Russian culture is behind Sontag’s behavior but Miss Riviere argued that his earliest days at his mother’s breast was of paramount importance.  I wonder what the other members of this group will have to say about Sontag and whether any of them can shed light on who might be responsible for his being stabbed.”

“Yes, you’re correct,” said Holmes.  “This stabbing and Sontag’s behavior are hard to figure out.  But we’ve only begun with our psychoanalysts.  No doubt, they will all have different explanations of Sontag’s personality problems and they may shed some light on his attacker.”

Holmes took the piece of paper he found in Sontag’s pocket and read it.  There was an expression on his face that combined wonder and amusement.

Just then the doorbell sounded and there was a commotion in the hallway.  A small, rat-faced individual followed by several policemen entered the house.  It was Inspector G. Lestrade.

Holmes opened the door of the study and saw him.

“Holmes,” Lestrade said.  “What are you doing here?”

Then he paused for a moment and thought for a few seconds.

“On the other hand, I might have known that you’d be here.  In any case, I will investigate this attack and determine who attacked the victim.  If I run into any problems, I‘d appreciate any help you can provide.”

“My pleasure,” said Holmes.  “I’m sure Dr. Freud and his colleagues will provide you with all the information you need.  It is getting late and Dr. Watson and I will return to our apartment.  But we will return tomorrow afternoon and see what else we can learn from these remarkable individuals gathered here”.

With that, Holmes and Watson left  Sigmund Freud and his colleagues and were soon in their apartment.

“That wound on Sontag’s stomach was most curious.  It seems as if it was a superficial slice along his stomach rather than a penetrating wound.  That’s why the bloodstain was so long.  So it wasn’t a serious attack unless the attacker lacked the strength to plunge the knife into Sontag’s chest.”

“I came to the same conclusion,” said Watson.  “There was blood but whoever attacked Sontag didn’t want to kill him.  At least that’s what I thought.”

“The sheet of paper that I found in Maxim Sontag’s pocket will take us to Claridge’s for breakfast,” said Holmes.  He passed the sheet to Watson.  It was written in a delicate woman’s hand and read:

Meet me at Claridge’s restaurant at 11:00 AM. tomorrow.  I will have a white rose in my hair.

At last!

“What do you make of this note?” asked Holmes.

“It’s quite simple,” replied Watson.  “This C woman, whoever she is, wants to meet Sontag at Claridge's.  That’s about it.”

“Dear Watson,” Holmes said.  “You fail to see some important things in this message.  For one thing, it is written in the imperative voice, suggesting a woman of consequence, used to issuing orders to others.  Second, she will have a white rose in her hair—white being a conventionally understood symbol for innocence.  Were is a red rose, its meaning would be quite different.  The fact that she signed it with only her initial tells us that Sontag knew who the woman sending the message was.  And then there is that last comment, “at last.”  That tells me that C is looking forward to meeting Sontag, that she thinks the meeting will be important, and that she regards it with strong emotions.  The paper that the note was written on is of high quality, which tells me that C is a woman of means, who is willing to purchase expensive products.  If you hold the page up to the light you will notice there is a watermark, Luccapapiere, a very fine Italian papermaker from the city of Lucca.  So there is, dear Watson, much more to this note that you think.”

“Yes,” said Watson.  “I can see that.”

“As long as we are to meet this woman on at Claridge’s,” said Holmes, “we might as well have a good breakfast.”  

“A splendid idea.  I fancy a really good breakfast every once in a while,” replied Watson.  “And you always eat well at Claridge’s.”

For the first five decades in the history of psychoanalytic thought (up until Freud's death in 1939), it would have been tenable to argue that psychoanalysis was largely the invention of Freud's singular genius. Freud regarded psychoanalysis as a form of treatment, but also as a new branch of science.  He carefully ended his creation and it grew up around him.  Those taught and analyzed by Freud were justifiably impressed with his early discoveries; they admired him and let him take the lead.  Freud also regarded psychoanalysis as a quasi-political movement, and proved himself a dominant leader, wary of opposition, often regarding others' creativity and originality as signs of disloyalty.  

Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black. Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought.  New York: Basic Books. 1996.

Sherlock Holmes

Chapter 5

Breakfast at Claridge’s

The next morning, at 9:30 AM, Holmes and Watson entered the hotel and made their way to the dining room.  When the hotel’s manager, Vittorio Settembrini saw them, he rushed over to greet them.

“How wonderful to see you again, Mr. Holmes,” he said.  He led them to a table.  “We are pleased to offer you breakfast with our compliments.  We appreciate the work you have done for us over the years.  I can’t exaggerate how important your help has been.”

He summoned a waiter, Gregory Roheim.

“Gregory,” he said, “Please attend to these gentlemen.   Anything they want. The breakfast is with our compliments.”

The waiter nodded.  Settembrini scurried off to the main lobby.

“When you are ready to dine,” Roheim said,  “I will be pleased to serve you.  Just summon me when you have decided what you would like to eat.”

Holmes looked around the dining room.  There was a sideboard that held silver teapots and coffee in glistening silver pitchers.  Next to the tea and coffee, were plates full of scones and toast and jars of marmalade, jams, and honey.  On another sideboard, Holmes saw silver dishes full of poached eggs, rashers of bacon, sausages, ham, kidneys, haddock, and salmon.  A third sideboard offered various kinds of cold meats: pressed beef, tongue, pheasant, grouse, and partridge.  Near this display was a table with many fruits, such as melons, nectarines, peaches, raspberries, and strawberries.”

“We won’t go hungry,” said Watson, as he surveyed the food.  “I’ve always felt that you can’t beat Claridge’s for a good breakfast, though some of my friends seem to favor Selfridge’s restaurants.”

“They are both excellent,” said Holmes.

He summoned the waiter.

“Mr. Roheim,” he said.  “I would like some strawberries and cream, a cup of coffee, two scrambled eggs with four rashers of bacon, toast, and butter, and marmalade.  That should be more than adequate.  And what would you like, Watson?”

“I’d fancy strawberries and cream, as well,” he said.  “And then a slice of pheasant and ham on a plate, with a pot of black tea, and toast.”

“Very fine,” said Roheim, who then scurried off.

Several minutes later, some young men with large trays came to the table and left the food that Holmes and Watson had ordered.

Watson ate ravenously while Holmes ate slowly, which was his custom.

“I wish,” Holmes said, “I had your passion for food.  I like a good meal but food doesn’t excite me the way it does you.  Perhaps because my mind’s so occupied with other things, such as this very enigmatic case.” 

“If you kept away from drugs,” Watson cautioned, “I think your appetite would approve.  They aren’t doing you any good.  I say that as a physician and as a friend.”

Holmes frowned and did not reply to Watson’s advice.

“It is now 10:30,” said Holmes.  “I suggest we take a walk and return at 11:00 AM to meet this mysterious woman with the white rose in her hair.”

“A very good idea,” said Watson.  “After a breakfast like this, I think a walk and some fresh air would do us a bit of good.  I like the area, too.  It’s pleasant to look at all the shops in this neighborhood.”

Blink is concerned with the very smallest components of our everyday lives--the content and origin of those instantaneous impressions and conclusions that spontaneously arise whenever we meet a new person or confront a complex situation or have to make a decision under conditions of stress.  When it comes to the task of understanding ourselves and our world, I think we pay too much attention to those grand themes and too little to the particulars of those fleeing moments.  But what would happen if we took our instincts seriously?  What if we stopped scanning the horizon with our binoculars and began instead examining our own decision making and behavior through the most powerful of microscopes?

Malcolm Gladwell, Blink. The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. New York: Bay Back Books.  2005

Cipriana Buonaparte

Chapter 6

Cipriana Buonaparte

At 11:00 AM, Holmes and Watson returned to Claridge’s from their walk, entered the dining room, and saw a woman, with a white rose in her hair, sitting at a table drinking tea.  She was a woman of about sixty, with gray hair and blue eyes.

Holmes and Watson went over to the table where she was sitting.

“Please allow me to introduce myself,” said Holmes.  “My name is Sherlock Holmes.  I am a consulting detective.  And my friend is Dr. John Watson.”

“What is all this about?” asked the woman.

“I found a note from someone you know, Maxim Sontag telling him to meet you here at this time.  Unfortunately, he has had an accident and we have come to meet you.”

            “Is it serious?” asked the women.

            “Fortunately, it is not,” replied Holmes.

            The woman had a relieved look on her face.

            “Please sit down and join me for tea?” she replied. 

            “Thank you,” said Holmes.  They joined her at the table.

“My name is Cipriana Buonaparte,” she said.  “I am a psychoanalyst.  I was educated at the University of Milan.  I married a man from Argentina and have lived in Buenos Aires for many years, working as a psychoanalyst. The Brazilians need as many psychoanalysts as they can find. Believe me.”

“I see,” said Holmes.

 “A couple of years ago I read an interesting article in a psychoanalytic journal by Maxim and wrote to him about it.  This led to a correspondence about his theory and other things.  I am in London to visit my daughter, who is studying at Cambridge.  I will be going there to see her in two days.”

“A very fine institution,” replied Holmes.  “You cannot do better than Cambridge, though don’t say that to an Oxford man. But tell us about this theory of Maxim Sontag.  I’ve had some long and very interesting conversations with psychoanalysts lately and they have given me much to think about.”

“With pleasure,” said Cipriana Buonaparte.  Maxim’s article was on what he called the ‘Impostor Syndrome.’”

“How curious,” said Holmes.  “In my profession, I often have to deal with impostors, who are criminals pretending to be someone for nefarious purposes.”

“Maxim would explain his notion about impostors this way,” she answered.  “Our personalities are masks.  The Latin term persona means mask, it turns out.  We create these personas to deal with other people in social relationships.  Maxim contrasts the personality or mask with character or self, which he defines as a person's true being.

 “That makes sense,” said Holmes.  “So far, his theory does not seem outrageous.”

“The problem, according to Maxim, is that many people are troubled by never growing up, never casting off their immature and fantastic notions of what it means to be an adult, never achieve any sense of continuity in their sense of themselves and so they end up as frauds, as fake persons, as impostors.  They can’t help themselves because they don’t realize that they are impostors.  They have devoted all their energy to creating these false personas, to fool others, but end up fooling themselves.  They become victims of their own duplicity.”

“Most interesting,” said Holmes.

“These impostors generally suffer from a kind of amnesia about their childhoods, when many of the foundations of their personalities were established, and about their adolescent periods when they were searching for acceptable identities.  They forget who they were and are and thus are condemned to endlessly create new characters for themselves, all of whom are false and so they are always impostors.  It’s curious, but we spend a great deal of time and energy trying to figure out what other people we meet or know are really like and seldom devote much energy to thinking about ourselves.”

“Do you have any idea how Maxim Sontag discovered this condition?” asked Holmes. “It is, I would say, very original and imaginative.  Did he find it in his patients?”

Cipriana  Buonaparte smiled.

“Let me put it this way,” she said.  “Maxim Sontag’s theory about impostors is not so much a theory as an autobiographical revelation.  He wrote about people being impostors because he believes himself to be an impostor.  That helps explain his many mood swings and sometimes erratic behavior. 

He was what we call a cyclothymic personality.  He also was given to playing practical jokes, for some reason that escapes me.  That’s the picture I got from his letters and sometimes, of course, letters lead people astray. And that is why I was so anxious to meet him.  After years of writing to him, I wanted to see what he was actually like.  His letters also revealed him to be quite charming, with a good sense of humor.  I wanted to see if he was like his letters or whether they were misleading.”

“One would expect to get misleading letters from an impostor, I would imagine,” said Holmes.

“Yes,” replied Cipriana Buonaparte, “If he really were an impostor.  But what if he was wrong about himself and wasn’t an impostor.  He might have thought he was an impostor but his diagnosis was incorrect.  People are not good at diagnosing themselves.”

“I can understand that,” said Watson.  “I’m a physician and we all have to deal with the problem of incorrect diagnoses.  It is a big problem.”

“There is,” said Holmes, smiling, “Something amusing about all this.  Maxim Sontag, who developed this theory, thinks he is an impostor but it is possible or even likely that he isn’t.  No wonder psychoanalysis is so difficult and can be so confusing.  But it all comes down to the fact that people generally don’t know themselves and, if Freud is correct, seldom can understand the roots of their behavior.  I guess this might apply to Sontag.”

“And to Freud and all of us,” added Cipriana Buonaparte.  “Socrates said ‘know thyself.’  It isn’t easy, and for many people who want to know themselves and require the services of a psychoanalyst, it can also be very expensive.”

“If you wish to meet Maxim Sontag, you can find him at St. Alban’s hospital.  “He had a nasty wound but it was not life-threatening.”

“Thank goodness for that,” she replied.  “I will visit him at the hospital as soon as I finish my tea.  Thank you, Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, for meeting me.  I assume, of course, that you are actually Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, and not impostors.”  She laughed.

“I am delighted to have been of help to you. Consulting detectives are also, so we mostly believe, members of a helping profession.  And now Dr. Watson and I will return to meet again with Dr. Freud and his colleagues.”

Holmes and Watson got up and left the hotel.  They left Cipriana Buonaparte sitting at the table, drinking her tea, with a wistful look on her face and a smile.

It is important to realize that psychoanalytic theory is concerned with normal as well as with pathological mental functioning.  It is by no means merely a theory of psychopathology.  It is true that the practice of psychoanalysis consists of the treatment of people who are mentally ill or disturbed, but the theories of psychoanalysis have to do with the normal as well as the abnormal even though they have derived principally from the study and treatment of the abnormal.   As with any scientific discipline, the various hypotheses of psychoanalytic theory are mutually related. Some are naturally more fundamental than others, some are better established than others, and some have received so much confirmation and appear to be so fundamental in their significance that we are inclined to view them as established laws of the mind.  Two such fundamental hypotheses, which have been abundantly confirmed, are the principle of psychic determinism or causality, and the proposition that consciousness is an exceptional rather than a regular attribute of psychic processes.  To put the latter proposition in somewhat different words, we may say that, according to psychoanalytic theory, unconscious mental processes are of very great frequency and significance in normal as well as abnormal mental functioning.

Charles Brenner, An Elementary Textbook of Psycho-analysis

Melanie Klein

Chapter 7

Melanie Klein

Homes and I had a light lunch and repaired to the house where Freud and his fellow psychoanalysts were housed.  They had met during the morning and were free to entertain themselves as they saw fit for the remainder of the day.  He asked to speak with Melani Klein and she appeared in the study a few minutes after we had asked to see her.

Melanie Klein was a woman in her forties, who, I learned later, had studied children’s play and considered play as analogous to dreams. But we were dealing with something more serious here—the mystery of Maxim Stontag’s personality and its relation to the knifing attack he had suffered. 

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” said Holmes. 

“I will be pleased to help in whatever way I can,” Klein replied.

“Please tell me something about yourself and how you happened to be at this conference,” asked Holmes.

She paused for a moment, trying to decide how to reply to Holmes’ question.

“I am a simple Jewish housewife from Austria who happened to become involved in this curious field we call psychoanalysis.  I don’t even have a degree from a university, but I was analysed by Sándor Ferenczi and worked with Karl Abraham, and started doing some innovative research on children.  My colleagues in Berlin were not very supportive of my work, so when I received an invitation from Ernest Jones to come to London, I was happy to do so and I’ve been here ever since.  Ernest Jones is one of this group and I’m sure he’ll have something interesting to say about this matter.  Freud convened this group because he is mildly obsessed with the idea of broadening the reach of psychoanalysis from primarily German-speaking and primarily Jewish psychoanalysis.”

“That’s very interesting.  I can see that psychoanalysts come from many different backgrounds,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied.  “We have some who are physicians but many who are not.  I am a bit of an anomaly because I don’t have a degree from a university.”

“And what sense, may I ask, do you make of this attack on Maxim Sontag?” replied Holmes.  “It would seem likely that a member of this group of psychoanalysts was responsible for the attack, but the idea is also a bit difficult to imagine.”

“Maxim could be quite charming and quite brilliant,” replied Melanie Klein, “but he was also very childish at times and could be disruptive and unpleasant.  I’m sure that my other colleagues have told you about his mood swings.  Much of my work involves the matter of the reparations we make to counter the feelings of hatred we feel, as babies, towards our mothers, and towards others.  I imagine my colleague Joan Riviere has filled your head with her ideas on this matter.”

“Yes, she did,” said Holmes, “But she didn’t talk much about reparation.  How does that fit into your research and your thinking about the psyche?”

“You must realize that feelings of love and tendencies to reparation develop in connection with aggressive impulses and in spite of them.  Remember that the baby’s first object of love and hate—his mother—is both desired and hated with all the intensity and strength that is characteristic of a baby’s earliest urges.  When a baby is hungry and his desires are not gratified, or when he is feeling pain or discomfort, he becomes dominated by the impulses to destroy the very person who is the object of all his desires and who he believes is connected to everything he experiences, good and bad alike.  When his mother provides relief from his painful states of hunger and hate, he gains a feeling of security and provides the satisfaction of his desires, the baby develops a sense of security, which both intensifies the gratification he receives and is connected to feelings of love.  Security becomes an important component of love whenever a person receives love.”

“So there is a battle going on in the mind of the baby over the feelings of love and hate that the baby feels towards his mother,” said Holmes.  “I can understand how that might be possible.”

“Yes,” she replied.  “The power of love, which is another way of saying the forces that preserve life, are in the baby as well as his destructive impulses.  It begins with the baby’s attachment to his mother’s breast and develops into his love of her as a person.  As we develop, our feelings of love and hate for our mother and our parents intensify and we have phantasies of destroying the people we love, but this is supplanted by unconscious phantasies in which we make good for the injuries we did in phantasy and for which we still feel guilty—a process I call reparation, which is a fundamental element in love and all human relationships.”

“In my work,” said Holmes, “I often have the feeling that most of the people I become involved with, who have performed criminal acts, have a sense of guilt about their behavior.  But some seem to have no feelings of guilt at all.  They are completely amoral.”

“For some people, these feelings of love I have been talking about, these attachments to others, become a burden.  They find their way out of these difficulties by lessening their capacity for love, denying or suppressing it, and by avoiding strong emotions altogether.  Some displace it and move it from people to things or interests of some kind.  As you can see, we’re all very complicated animals.”

“May I ask how your theory of love, hate, and reparation helps understand the attack on Maxim Sontag?  That’s what I’m investigating,” said Holmes.  “And a very complicated investigation of complicated animals, as you put it, it is.”

“That’s a reasonable request,” replied Melanie Klein.

“Thank you,” said Holmes.  “Who might have wanted to attack Sontag and what was it about Sontag that might have invited, shall we say, an attack?

“There are many members of the group who have been upset with Maxim’s behavior over the years, but I can’t imagine that anyone in our circle would actually attack him physically.  People like Sigmund Freud do not go around attacking others with a knife.”

“But someone did,” said Holmes.

“Yes,” she replied.  “I would see this act as some kind of means of reparation by someone whose love or admiration, in a general sense, had switched to hatred, and that led to this remarkable attack.  Whoever did it is now feeling great guilt and is, I believe, seeking some kind of a means of reparation.  It is an endless cycle, Mr. Holmes.  It may be that our attacker is despondent over not having anyone to love him or her?  When we feel unloved, we are capable of all kinds of terrible things.”   

“Yes, I agree,” said Holmes.  “In my career, I have had to deal with men and women who have done terrible things.  I’ve always harbored a suspicion that being unloved was a motivating factor behind their crimes.  Though there were other things as well.”

“People are very complicated,” said Melanie Klein. “That’s what makes our work so fascinating and difficult.”

“May I ask what you were doing after dinner on the day that Maxim Sontag was attacked?” replied Holmes.  “I ask this question of everyone I interview.”

“I was working on an article I am writing on children’s play as a pathway to the unconscious,” she said.  “I am always writing, and, it turns out, endlessly fighting with other psychoanalysts about my theories.”

Holmes laughed. 

“You sound more like a politician than a psychoanalyst,” he said.  “But from the discussions I’ve had to date I can understand that there are many different schools of psychoanalysis and they are continually battling with one another.”

“We do it through our articles and books,” Mr. Holmes.  “We are all after the same thing—finding ways to heal troubled and sometimes very disturbed neurotic people—but we take different approaches.  We quibble about various technical matters that are no interest to the layman.”

“Is there anything else you have to say to me?” asked Holmes.  “Is there some question I should have asked you that I neglected to ask?”

“No,” said Melanie Klein.  “I think you’ve been very discrete but also very complete in your questioning me.  You have to understand, most of the time it is I who ask the questions of my patients, so this has been a fascinating reversal of roles.”

“Thank you for your help,” said Holmes.  “Your colleague Maxim Sontag remains an enigmatic figure in my mind.  But I’m coming to some conclusions about what he is like and what he might have done to make someone want to attack him.”

Melanie Klein got up and left the room.

“What do you make of that woman, Watson?” asked Holmes. 

“She is a woman of strong opinions,” said Watson.  “And one of considerable intellect.  She may describe herself as a simple housewife, but she is obviously much more than that.”

“Self-deprecating or whimsical?  Or maybe both,” said Holmes, smiling.

“A person with a formidable intellect,” said Watson.  “But all of the psychoanalysts you’ve interviewed have been extremely intelligent.  It is not a profession for fools.”

“But what about Maxim Sontag?  He may be a brilliant practitioner but, from what I’ve heard from others, he may also be a fool.”

Freud proposed to distinguish three psychic systems, which, in his early diagrams, he intercalated among the memory and association systems.… The contents and operations of the mind may be divided on the basis of whether they are conscious or not.  Three systems are to be distinguished, the system Ucs. (from “unconscious”), Pcs. (from “preconscious”, and Cs. (from “conscious).  The abbreviations were used as names, in order to avoid confusion with the ordinary meanings of the words from which the abbreviations were derived….Freud proposed a new hypothesis concerning mental systems (Freud, 1923).  This theory is usually referred to as the structural hypothesis to distinguish it from the earlier one, which is often called the topographic theory or hypothesis.  The structural hypothesis, despite its name, resembles its predecessors in that it attempts to group together mental processes and contents which are functionally related….As a way of giving ourselves a first, rough orientation in this final of Freud’s theories, we may say that the id comprises the psychic representatives of the drives, the ego consists of those functions which have to do with the individual’s relation to his environment, and the superego comprises the moral precepts of our minds as well as our ideal aspirations.d

Charles Brenner An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis Revised and Expanded Edition

Ernest Jones

Chapter 8:

Ernest Jones, MD

“Dr. Jones.  Will you kindly tell us something about yourself,” said Holmes. 

“I am a physician.  I trained as a neurologist, like Freud, and was analyzed by him.  I studied in Munich, Paris, and Vienna.  I read some of his papers and became interested in the field.  I happen to be the first person to practice psychoanalysis in a non-German-speaking country.  I had some difficulties with my colleagues in England and was accused of molesting several of my patients—an absurd matter.  I left England spent some years in Canada, but I’ve returned to England a good number of years ago, in 1913.  While in Canada I founded the American Psychoanalytic Association and here in England I founded the British Psychoanalytic Association.  We now have an International Psychoanalysis Association which covers members of our profession in every country.”

“I can see that you’ve been a very busy man,” said Holmes.

“Yes.  I’m a good friend of Freud and so I’m delighted that he has come to London to help us establish the field in an English speaking country.  He has, what one might call a mild fixation, which is based on his desire to have psychoanalysis available to people in every country and to be less Jewish. Freud has been working tirelessly to accomplish this goal.  And I think he’s been successful since psychoanalysis it is slowly making its way to all the countries.”

“In my talks with your colleagues, I found out something about their theories,” said Holmes.  “What, may I ask, are you interested in?”

“Many things,” Mr. Holmes.  “I have a wide range of interests, like my colleagues.  In addition to my work that deals with alleviating people from their neuroses and suffering, I’m also interested in the creative process and, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking of writing a biography of Freud one of these days.  When I’m not so busy.”          

“In the course of this investigation I’ve heard a great deal about the way babies feel about their mothers and have they have powerful feelings of hate at times,” Holmes said.  “Have you done any work on this matter?”

“Yes, I have,” said Jones.  “That sexual needs and passions may at times be related to murderous impulses has of course long been known.  Only since Freud’s work, however, have we learned that corresponding elements commonly operate in the infant’s mind before the damping down that evolution brings into childhood, and, in addition, that the conflicts aroused in early childhood, though they remain repressed in the unconscious, may profoundly affect adult life.  I wrote about this many years ago and  was attacked by many analysts, but I believe now that my hypothesis seems much less  startling.”

“Are we, then, all prisoners of our earliest days?” asked Holmes.  “And how, exactly do you and your fellow psychoanalysts deal  with the problems of older children and adults, or anyone who requires your services?”

“You ask a reasonable question,” replied Jones.  “Freud made two important contributions to what is now known as ‘depth psychology.’ The first was his invention of a special technique for penetrating the more obscure regions of the mind.  The second was his focus on mental suffering.  The only way people will reveal the truly intimate cores of their personalities is that they are suffering and seek to find a way to be released from their pain.  The neurotic symptoms that give rise to this suffering proceed from primordial difficulties and conflicts inherent in every mind and they are, it turns out, only one of the various ways in which attempts are made to cope with them.  The character traits and peculiarities of so-called normal people, which are commonly defensive, proceed from the same source as do neurotic symptoms.”

“If that is correct,” said Holmes, “Then the line separating normal from neurotic behavior is very thin.”

“Yes, that is the case,” replied Jones.  “I have written a book on the treatment of neuroses that will be published shortly.  In that book, I explain my ideas in considerable detail.  We all have the potential to be neurotics, by which I mean seriously troubled people, but most people can avoid doing so.”

“From what I’ve learned from your colleagues,” Holmes said, “the roots of neuroses and just about everything connected with the human psyche starts in our infancy.  And you seem to believe that is the case, as well.”

“Yes,” said Jones.  “Childhood, the period of approximately three to twelve, is preceded by infancy, which plays a much more important role in our lives than what happens in our childhoods.  The congeries of emotions, phantasies, and impulses, forgotten or never even conscious, that occupy the dawning mind, was only made accessible to our knowledge when Freud devised his psychoanalytic methods for penetrating to the unconscious mental layers.  Side by side with loving attitudes and peaceful contentment, there are always found mental processes of savage life or an intensity that is only faintly mirrored later by the distressing aspects of our relations. In infants, violent and ruthless impulses of destruction—that is murder—follow on the inevitable minor privations of the period.  The jealousies, hatreds, and murderous impulses of which signs may be detected in early childhood are, in fact, the weakened derivatives of a very sinister inheritance we bring into the world and which we must deal with in the painful conflicts and emotions of infancy.”

“Am I to deduce, then,” said Holmes, “that whoever attacked Maxim Sontag was motivated, at least in part, by infantile passions and hatred and even murderous impulses that were never resolved?  It seems remarkable to think that we find such things in innocent infants.”

“Or seemingly innocent infants,” Jones interjected.  “Children have to learn to separate themselves from the influence and authority of their parents.  Society depends on this.  But the process does not always work out well.”

“So, given all that you’ve told me, what is your diagnosis of the attacker of Maxim Sontag? And which of your companions do you think most likely have perpetrated this crime?”

Jones shrugged.

“I can’t believe any of us in this house now attacked him.  To my mind it is a preposterous idea,” Jones said.

“And yet, we know for a fact that Maxim Sontag was lying on the floor, moaning, and that he suffered from some superficial knife wounds around his stomach.  Somebody must be responsible for this having happened,” Holmes replied.

“What we have here,  with the attacker, is an example of the triumph of the id over the superego and of an ego not strong enough to control the id’s murderous impulses,” said Jones.  “There are many people who are dominated by their impulses and wishes.  This attack is an enigma and it is one that you or the police detective who was here, Inspector Lestrade,  must solve.”

Holmes laughed.

“I wouldn’t pin my hopes on Inspector Lestrade,” he said.  “ I’ve learned, I must say, a great deal about psychoanalytic theory, much of it quite remarkable. But my conversations with you and your colleagues have not, to my mind, furthered my investigation.  Maybe I’ll find the answer when I interview Maxim Sontag.  Sometimes the victim holds the key to the solution of a mystery and that may be the case here.”

“Is he well enough for you to talk with him?” asked Jones.

“Yes,” said Holmes.  “He is much better, so I understand and will be released from the hospital soon.”

“Some good news, finally,” said Jones.

“Finally,” said Holmes.  “Kindly tell me what you were doing during the period after your dinner, up until the time of the attack?”

“I was working on my book on neuroses,” said Jones.  “Like my colleagues here, all of whom do a great deal of writing, I spend much of my free time working on articles for psychoanalytic journals and books.”

“I see,” said Holmes.  “I thank you for your tutorial on your perspectives on psychoanalytic theory.  You and your colleagues all seem to think infancy is all-important, though I find that you also all differ in various ways.”

Jones said nothing.  He got up and without saying anything else to Holmes or Watson, left the room.

“What’s rather curious, Holmes,” Watson said, “is that each of our psychoanalysts is so convincing and their theories, which emphasize different things, seem both radical yet correct.”

“If they are correct,” Holmes said, “Then someone’s mother’s breast is the key to all of this.  But whose mother’s breast are we talking about: John Rickman’s?  Melanie Klein’s?  Joan Riviere’s? Ernest Jones’s?  Or even Sigmund Freud’s?  We haven’t had a chance to interview him yet.  But we will, shortly.”

“These psychoanalysts are all convincing, but I’ll be damned if I can see how an infant’s experience at his mother’s breast led to the attack on Maxim Sontag,” said Watson, with an emphatic tone in his voice.

“Somehow,” added Holmes, “I feel that the pieces of this puzzle are fitting together and that we will soon find the answer to our two questions:  who attacked Sontag and what was it about Sontag that might invite such an attack? 

There was a knock on the door and Melanie Klein entered.

“We’re having tea now and would be pleased if you and Dr. Watson could join us,” she said.

“I could use a bit of tea now,” said Watson.

“That will be a pleasure,” added Holmes.

They followed her out the door to the dining room where all the analysts were sitting around a large round table and chatting away.

Monroe Meyer and I once discussed with Freud the suicides of two analysts in Vienna.  His eyes twinkling, he commented, “Well, the day will soon come when psychoanalysis will be considered a legitimate cause of death.”  Freud had a great fear about the future of psychoanalysis.  He believed that psychoanalysis would founder because it would go down in history as a “Jewish” science.  He hated this idea.  He said this was a preoccupation with him and that he did not know what to do about it, because most of the people who were attracted to it were Jewish.  Some of this anxiety was realized, but the greatest irony was when Jung, in a Swiss psychoanalytic journal…labeled psychoanalysis “a Jewish science.”

Abram Kardiner, MD. My Analysis with Freud: Reminiscences