The Story Behind Passion for Murder

It was while doing research for a book on the effects of catastrophes--both terrestrial and extraterrestrial--on the rise of ancient world cultures that Eric came upon the subject of Sigmund Freud and his mythic identification with Satan/Venus. Stimulated to his research efforts by the works and encouragement of I. Velikovsky, Eric discovered that Freud kept a huge collection of ancient gods statues and figurines, and that he would habitually finger a Venus statue favorite of his while practicing his so-called “talking therapy” – which became inextricably associated with Freud’s “science” of psychoanalysis. Eric soon discovered that Velikovsky has been the first psychoanalyst to himself psychoanalyze Freud himself but to publish his analysis in Freud’s own publication, Imago. Velikovsky who visited Freud on his 77th birthday in Vienna in 1932 and, over the years had an active personal correspondence with Freud—recognized that Freud was deeply disturbed, how deeply he had no idea. Velikovsky, who had deep ties to Jewish culture (and counted Albert Einstein amongst his best friends, as well as other great Jewish cultural figures) thought that Freud’s deepest conflicts involved his desire to convert to Christianity— in order to advance himself socially. When Velikovsky first examined Eric’s work he had, no doubt, strong cultural and even ethnic resistances to the idea that Freud was homicidal—but to his credit he ultimately credited Eric with a correct diagnosis, saying, “Elwood [“Eric”] I credit you with the correct psycho-analysis of Sigmund Freud.” On May 20, 1976 that Eric wrote the following communiqué to Velikovsky:

Dear Dr. Velikovsky, . . . I am taking the opportunity to inform you of a significant development in my work. In the past, I have written to you in regards to the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud in relationship to his Faust pact [i.e., Freud pact with the Devil] which you so brilliantly penetrated in 1941 in your monograph in Freud’s Imago. . . Following your footsteps I believe I have significantly broadened and sharpened the psychoanalysis of Freud.

All roads lead to Rome. Freud was suffering from a homicidal sadomasochistic repressed homosexuality. This brought him dangerously close to a set of circumstance which may very well have involved him in the deed of homicide. If he did not consciously and knowingly commit homicide,
the guilt and psychological pressures from which he suffered was certainly sufficient to force upon the objective reader the possibility of the event or events. . . “

And the letter went on to assert that once this understanding “becomes available to the public” Freud’s work will “never be seen again in the same light.” But, Eric did not rush to print, instead he continued to pour over and over Freud’s works, his writings, his personal letters, his biography, he launched transcontinental investigations and it was not until 7 years later, in 1983 that Passion for Murder: The Homicidal Deeds of Dr. Sigmund Freud was published, with over 500 footnotes and massive documentation of his thesis that Freud was a Serial Killer. Eric’s work validated the remarks, literally, of one of Freud’s most renowned biographers, Ronald W. Clark, that Freud’s personal biographic cupboard contained “more skeletons than a graveyard.” Interestingly, it wasn’t until just after publication of Passion for Murder that the F.B.I’s Behavioral Science Laboratory at Quantico developed, as a forensic tool, the official profile of the Serial Killer—an extremely rare and unique psychopathology, even among murders!


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