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Amy Yang
ABSTRACT Much has been written about Freuds influence on popular culture.
This article addresses the influence of literature on Freuds psychoanalytical theory, specifically the role that modern detective fiction played in shaping Freudian theory. Edgar Allan Poe gave Freud the literary precedent; Sir Arthur Conan Doyles creation Sherlock Holmes gave him the analytical model. In turn, the world of crime storytelling embedded Freudian theories in subsequent forms, spinning the tales of crime into a journey into the human mind. As these tales were popularized on the silver screen in the early 20th century, psychoanalytical ideas moved from the lecture halls into the cultural mainstream.
and modern detective fiction evolved into their modern form around the turn of 20th century. In several ways, their development reflected the turbulent time period: an era that saw increasing doubt over logic and reason as ways to govern the world and that questioned humanitys ability to redeem itself through progress and knowledge. Detective fiction was an attempt to solve the unexpected through logic and reasoning, while psychoanalysis was a way to make coherence out of a fragmented presentation.The preceding period had marked a growing public concern over crime in urban areas that was fed into public consciousness by the burgeoning print industry.After the
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Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, University of Chicago, 5841 S. Maryland Avenue, MC 3077, Chicago IL 60635. E-mail: ayang@yoda.bsd.uchicago.edu. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, volume 53, number 4 (autumn 2010):596604 2010 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
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establishment of the worlds first public police force, the Metropolitan Police in London in 1829, it was only a matter of time before the sensationalistic, journalistic storytelling of crime solving would blossom into a genre of its own. However, psychoanalysis and detective genre shared more than just a historical moment. Freud himself was intensely interested in detective stories, and for him the archetype of detective reasoning was Sherlock Holmes. Freud felt that psychoanalysis had plenty to offer the field of crime detection.The fervor was returned by the literary circle, which saw in psychoanalysis a field that offered a fresh new approach to solving crime. No longer was it enough to simply describe the events that unfolded in a crime incident, nor was it satisfactory to end the story at the discovery of the murderer.The readers wanted more than just plotthe notion of motive and intent had become an important element of the storytelling. Part of this desire was due to the nature of crime detection: a death can only be considered murder and not manslaughter with the establishment of mens rae in the criminal case under the English law (Sayre 1932). However, with the introduction of the unconscious mind into mainstream discussion, psychoanalysis offered a concept more intriguing than just the obvious, surface motive. It delved into the criminals mind, teasing out the underlying driving force for murder, even if the criminal was not actively aware of it at the time of crime. In other words, it dislodged the notion of free will from intent to commit crime. The murderer may have intended to commit the crime, but was the intention a product of his or her own will? Before diving into the structure of modern detective novels, it is necessary to look at what contributions psychoanalysis gave to the nonmedical community. For practical purposes, psychoanalysis here will refer to Freuds development of this practice. Freud described psychoanalysis as a procedure for the medical treatment of neurotic patients, in which nothing takes place . . . but an interchange of words between the patient and the analyst (Freud 191517, p. 43). In other words, Freud in his practice had invented space in which two people have a dialogue, in which no one else but the analyst and the patient could witness (Horrocks 2001). In addition, Freud introduced the concept of the unconscious into everyday life. In the Introduction to his lecture series, Freud announced that Mental processes are in themselves unconscious and that of all mental life it is only certain individual acts and portions that are conscious (Freud 191517, p. 46). Freuds use of the term unconscious referred to the passive sidethat is, to things occurring without active knowledge. It was the concept of the unconscious that lent itself most readily to literary interpretation, and writers eagerly incorporated this concept into their work. Freud also recast the ways in which the criminal mind was portrayed in his book The Ego and the Id (1923), in which he stated, Criminals do not feel guilt because they are already criminals, but they become criminals because they already feel guilt (pp. 39394). This concept of unconscious guilt, which Freud further explored in his later works, influenced the question of motive in discussions of detective fiction.
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studies.The figures of Holmes and Freud, each an archetype of his respective field, have etched their influence on public imagination far beyond their contemporaries. But the two share more than legendary fame, iconic adulteration, and love of cocaine (Shepherd 1985).The titles of their stories, which usually describe the main personality of the story, share a certain theatrical style. Titles like The Crooked Man and A Case of Identity in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) draw ready comparisons to Freuds titles The Rat Man and The Case of Anna O. Beyond the title, the method by which Freud constructs his case shows remarkable similarity to the way in which Holmes presents his case to Watson. The similarity is not coincidental. Freud had a marked interest in stories of crime, and he particularly delighted in reading the tales of Sherlock Holmes. Interestingly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (18591930) modeled his famous creation partially on Poes Dupin, but mainly on his mentor and medical professor Dr. Joseph Bell (Accardo 1992). That Doyle was a physician is no secret. It is therefore not surprising that the medical method of detectionin other words, the technique of history takingwould feature prominently in his fiction, albeit adapted for the crime scene. Doyle had more than once noted his mentors observation of detail and had incorporated it into his writing: he noted his mentors penetrating grey eyes, eagle nose . . . and of his eerie trick of spotting details (Doyle 1924, p. 63). In his lectures, Bell emphasized that I always impressed over and over again upon my students the vast important of little distinctions, the endless significance of the trifles (Accardo 1992, p. 119).What was unconventional about Holmess and Freuds method is that they both seem to fixate on details that initially appear to be trivial, or to weigh the clues in an entirely different manner from everyone else, despite having received the same information. For example, in Valley of Fear, a ruthless murder has occurred in a fortress-like English country house, with a secret society lurking behind the murderer. Despite numerous accounts from contradictory witness, the sighting of an unknown man, and suspicion being cast on an illicit couple, Holmes bases his entire solution on one missing dumbbell. How did one dumbbell hold the key to the entire mystery? And more importantly, how did Holmes know that the dumbbell is the key to solving the crime? There are, of course, key differences in Holmess model of deduction and Freuds method of psychoanalysis. For one, on the surface Holmess deductive reasoning appears to result from an objective survey of the surroundings and a careful internal assessment of possible exclusions. However, as Doyle himself acknowledged, on deeper examination Holmess reasoning is anything but rational. In stories such as The Sign of Four, Holmes has to correct himself from an overzealous inference and return to a simpler explanation. It is the quality of their storytelling that draws readers into both Freuds and Doyles works, yet it is the same style that ultimately misguides readers into thinking that what has happened is factual, when in reality it is simply a reconstruction of the facts in the storytellers mind.
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Created in the late 19th century, Holmes represents the last of the Victorian heroes: a man thoroughly convinced of the infallibility of logic and reason, a man who trusts that observation and deduction will lead to the source, a figure that epitomizes the ability of a trained mind to extrapolate from details and reconstruct the grand story (Jann 1995). Holmes reflects a period that seemed to put nearly unlimited faith in science and progress, a period of confidence shortly before the disintegration into chaos and unease that characterizes the early 20th century. This era of fragmentation also gave birth to Freud and his search into the unknown, into what was, and still can be, considered the final frontier of human knowledge: the source of it all, the human mind. The affinity of psychoanalysis for crime detection was not lost on Freud. Freuds main goal was to help shed light on the concept of neurosis, and in the process to bring order into something long viewed as chaotic and incomprehensible. He believed that the tools of psychoanalysis could benefit the art of detection, and in his 1906 paper Psychoanalysis and the Ascertaining of Truth in Courts of Law, he stated that
In both we are concerned with a secret, something hidden. . . . In the case of the criminal it is a secret which he hides from you, but in the case of hysterics it is a secret hidden from himself. . . .The task of the therapeutist is, however, the same as the task of the judge; he must discover the hidden psychic material.To do this we have invented various methods of detection, some of which lawyers are now going to imitate. (Freud 19241950, p. 98)
What Freud particularly brought to the detective community was the concept of utilizing the unconscious to aid in crime solving. In his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (191517), Freud described at length the phenomenon of parapraxes, which he described as errors that reveal repressed motives, such as slips of the tongue. For example, Freud described a womans remark when asked about her husbands health:The doctor told him that he has no need to diet: he could drink and eat whatever I want (p. 61).The woman clearly meant to say that her husband could eat or drink whatever he wanted, but in her mind she was thinking What should the husband want to eat, but what I want him to eat? In this and other examples, Freud saw the slip not as by chance or accident, as some of his contemporaries did, but rather as a mental act that resulted from two opposing intentions of the mind. Freud extended this interpretation into other accidents of life, what he called bungled actions. For example, a man who was made against his will to visit someone in another town, took a train there only to transfer to the wrong train at the junction station, and ended back in his original town. Freud saw this as a way for the unconscious mind to fulfill a wish that a person had consciously refuted. The phenomenon of parapraxes, when applied to criminal detection, can offer a very different perspective of the same crime scene. In A Study in Scarlet (1887), Holmes and Watson arrive at a crime scene at which a man has been
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murdered, with the word RACHE written in dried blood. For the police detective, the writing seems obvious: the dead man was trying to express his last message to his mistress Rachel but expired beforehand. Holmes reaches a different conclusion: he sees it as the murderers attempt to mislead the investigators about the identity of the murderer. Rache is German for revenge, and perhaps the murderer was creating a distraction. However, if Freud were at the crime scene, he would undoubtedly give a different explanation. For why would the murderer take time to write anything, except to give the investigators an extra clue about the nature of the crime? The murderer could very well have walked out of the house, leaving few traceable marks, and vanished from the scene forever. Yet that was not what he did. He stayed in the house long enough to write the letters on the wall, risking the chance of been discovered as he performed the task, and also giving away his motive for murder. For Freud, the case would be clear: even if the murderer consciously attempted to convince himself that the clue was to distract the investigators, the ultimate reason for his act arose from his unconscious desire to be discovered, perhaps as a desire for recognition, perhaps as atonement for the crime, or perhaps as an alleviant for his guilt. It is the same for the murderer who goes back to the scene of crime, or who sends the police department a picture of the crime afterwards, or who accidentally leaves behind a piece of identifying information.
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by paranoia and internal torment. Characterized by disorientation and self-conscious alienation from the viewer, the movies often display ambivalence toward the sexual perpetrator. While the earlier films featured prominent Freudian symbolism, one of the most ardent fans and influential filmmakers of the psychoanalytic perspective was none other than the master of suspense films, Alfred Hitchcock. Several of Hitchcocks works, including the classics Spellbound (1946) and Psycho (1960), practically necessitate a psychoanalytical reading by virtue of their prominent Freudian paradigms.Themes such as the omnipresence of the mother figure, the anal-compulsiveness of the protagonists, and the unsuccessful repression of the illicit desire that ultimately leads to the protagonists own undoing, recur throughout several films (Gordon 2008). These movies depart from the preFreudian detective stories not only in terms of their portrayal of criminal motive, but also in their attempt to link the motive to a source from the past. In Spellbound, the so-called Dr. Edwards, the newly appointed director of a mental asylum, is found to be an impostor with amnesia, and very quickly he is suspected of murdering the real Dr. Edwards. Dr. Constance, the psychoanalyst heroine in the film, is convinced otherwise, and she tries to establish his innocence while falling in love with him (actual name of Ballantine). Perhaps the most famous sequence in the film is the surreal Dali dream scene that Constance tries to analyze in order to establish her mans innocence, in which a huge scissor is seen cutting an eye painted on a curtain. In the movie, Constance is repeatedly seen as a motherly figure who tries to rescue the childlike Ballantine. She says to him, in a quote lifted almost directly from Freud:People often feel guilty over something they never did. It usually goes back to their childhood.The child often wishes something terrible would happen to someone, and if something does happen to that person, the child believes he has caused it. And he grows up with a guilt complex over a sin that was only a childs bad dream. Interestingly, Dr. Brulov, the psychiatrist mentor in the film, bears an uncanny resemblance to Freud. Besides the symbolism of the dream and the overt psychoanalysis reference, Spellbound, like so many Hitchcock films, conveys an overt oedipal overtone. Constance is depicted in the film as a mother figure, and Ballantines guilt over the murder and her attempt to save him can be interpreted as his guilt over the murder of a missing father and his desire for the mother figure. A similar oedipal theme exists in Psycho, in which the psychiatrist at the end of the movie reports that Normans mother was a clinging and demanding woman, and for years the two of them lived as if there was no one else in the world. Then she met a man, and it seemed to Norman that she threw him over for this man. Now that pushed him over the line and he killed them both. The forbidden desire Norman Bates held was temporarily repressed, before returning as neurosis, subsequently causing a complete mental breakdown that causes him to mentally res-
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urrect his mother and ultimately to retreat into his fantasy, a refuge in which he can be reunited with his mother (Gordon 2008).
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May, C. 1991. Edgar Allan Poe: A study of the short fiction. Boston:Twayne. Merken, D. 2004. Secrets of the soul: Is psychoanalysis science or is it toast? NY Times Book Rev, Sept. 5. Metropolitan Police Service. History of the Metropolitan Police Service. http://www. met.police.uk/history/index.htm. Poe, E. A. 1912. Tales of mystery and imagination. London: J. M. Dent. Poe, E. A. 1917. Eleonora,The fall of the house of Usher and The purloined letter, vol. 10, part 3. Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. New York: P. F. Collier; Bartleby.com, 2000. http: //www.bartleby.com/310/3/. Poe, E. A. 1984. Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and tales. New York: Library of America. Rosenheim, S. 1995. Detective fiction, psychoanalysis, and the analytic sublime. In The American face of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. S. Rosenheim and S. Rachman, 15376. Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press. Sayre, F. B. 1932. Mens rae. Harvard Law Rev 45(6): 974. Shepherd, M. 1985. Sherlock Holmes and the case of Dr. Freud. New York:Tavistock. Spence, D. P. 1987. The Freudian metaphor: Toward paradigm change in psychoanalysis. New York: Norton.
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