ÿþ<HTML> <HEAD> <style> BODY{ font-family: arial; color: black } h1{ text-align: center; color: aa0000; font-family: arial } h2{ text-align: center; color: aa0000; font-family: arial; font-size: 95% } p{ text-align: right; color: black; font-family: arial; } A{ text-align: center; color: 660000; font-size: 99%; font-family: arial; } li { font-family: arial; color: white; } </style> <meta name="description" content = "Shocking revelation that Dr. Sigmund Freud was a serial killer."> <meta name="keywords" content="Dr. Sigmund Freud serial killer, Dr. Freud serial killer, Edgar Allan Poe, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Dr. Freud, Poe, Freud, Edgar Allan, killer, murder, Freud, Edgar Allan Poe, homicidal, homicide"> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="./Images/favicon.ico"> <title>Passion For Murder: The Homicidal Deeds of Dr. Sigmund Freud</title> </head> <BODY bgcolor="000066" background="./Images/BeigePaperBG.jpg"> <BLOCKQUOTE> <CENTER><FONT COLOR=aa0000 size = "5"><B>Did Freud Plagerize Edgar Allan Poe s Writings In Creating Psychoanalysis and Use Them In His Murder Confessions?</B></FONT><BR><BR> <FONT COLOR=aa0000 size = "3">©by Eric Miller, November 1, 2008<BR><BR> <B>PART ONE</B></FONT> <BR><BR> <TABLE WIDTH=750 > <TR> <TD VALIGN="TOP"> <BLOCKQUOTE> What looks like Poe s eerie anticipation of psychoanalytic motifs may say as much about generic as about psychic structure. Certainly, the literary interest of Freud s case studies depends in no small part on an essentially cryptographic sense of power over the body. Despite Freud s frequent attempts to distance himself from writers of fiction, his early conception of psychoanalysis as  the task of making conscious the most hidden recesses of the mind (Freud, 1963a, 96), of rendering the body transparent to language, is driven by the same themes of cryptographic interiority at play in Poe s detective fiction. And Dupin s boast that  most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms (Poe 1984b, 401) is actually a more modest version of Freud s famous declaration in his study of Dora:  He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his finger tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore" (Freud 19633, 96). (pg. 168)<BR><BR> <I>The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe,</i><BR> <B> Detective Fiction, Psychoanalysis, and the Analytic Sublime. </B><BR> By Shawn Rosenheim </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <I>[In the following remarks I first make the case that Freud covertly confesses to murder much in the manner and style of Edgar Allan Poe in his  The Imp of Perverseness. I show that Freud used works of fiction by famous murder fiction writers to further his confessions. I then prove that Freud was a notorious plagiarist and then proceed to make the case that Freud plagiarized Edgar Allan s work in the creation of his  murder mystery science of psychoanalysis. Hopefully, the reader will have a little patience with the unfolding of my argument.]</I><BR><BR><BR> <B>Freud Oozes With Betray of His Murder Secret:</B><BR><BR> Freud s claim that his conception of psychoanalysis was to undertake  the task of making conscious the most hidden recesses of the mind <B>*</B> is an almost verbatim objective expressed by Johann Schiller, in his first Preface for his play, <I>Die Raübers (The Robbers)</I>, published in 1781. Interestingly, The Robbers is cited by Freud in reference to his alleged self analysis considered by Freudians to be the foundation achievement for the creation of psychoanalysis.<BR><BR> In <I>Interpretation of Dreams</I>, Freud recounted that he once acted in The Robbers, playing the role of Brutus to his nephew John s character of Caesar in one of the plays interlude scenes. Freud claimed that the play was enacted as a family dramatic fare on the occasion of John Freud s visit to Vienna from Manchester, England, where he lived, when Sigmund was 14 (which would have been after Freud s alleged birthday in May, 1856 <B>**</B>) in 1870. The interlude scene in The Robbers that Freud alleges to have acted in with John is a scene that takes place in the underworld and it is a scene where Caesar (John) directly charges Brutus (Sigmund) with murdering him. It is highly doubtful that Schiller s play was ever enacted in the family home as Freud claimed but it is virtually certain that he did, in fact, murder John in reality (see <I>Passion for Murder</I> and this website).<BR><BR> In the Interpretation of Dreams Freud states:<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE><I> Strange to say, I really did once play the part of Brutus. I once acted in the scene between Brutus and Caesar from Schiller before an audience of children. I was fourteen years old at the time and was acting with a nephew who was a year my senior. He had come to us on a visit from England; and he, too, was a revenant, for it was the playmate of my earliest years who had returned in him . . . as I have already hinted [he, John] ... had a determining influence on all my subsequent relations with contemporaries. Since that time my nephew John has had many reincarnations . . . unalterably fixed as it was in my unconscious memory . .. It must have been this scene from my childhood which diverted "Non Vivit" into "Non Vixit" . .. for in the language of later childhood the word for  He hit" is wichsen [pronounced like the English "vixen"] . . . This hostility must therefore certainly have gone back to my complicated childhood relations to John. </I></BLOCKQUOTE> In the above quotation Freud says that it was  strange to say that he "once" played the role of Brutus to John s Caesar and that John was a  returning ghost to his prescient consciousness which is what the French word  revenant means. Obviously, Freud implies that it was  strange that he once played Brutus to John s Caesar because he  coincidentally (as is clear in context) actually wanted to murder John from earliest youth. And it was due to this murder fixation on John that John was  unalterably fixed in his  unconscious mind. We will pass on the question, that, if John was really unalterably fixed in his  unconscious mind, how could he know that? One knows what one is  conscious of, not what one is  unconscious of. To be  conscious of what one is  unconscious of is, of course, a contradiction in terms, and obviously mere babble.<BR><BR> For clarification s sake,  Non Vivit means  not to be alive and  Non Vixit means  never to have lived. By means of this word play, Freud intends to indicate that he wanted John  never to have existed rather than he was  no longer alive. Certainly, if the law was on to him, he would have preferred that John never existed, rather than that he killed him. Notwithstanding that, what really is  strange to say is that that John, in reality,  vanished in 1875, according to Freud family records in England where he lived, and that Freud continued to refer to him as  now living in Manchester, in 1900, 25 years after John mysteriously disappeared. And,  strange to say John disappeared right after Freud visited him in Manchester! The fact of John Freud s real disappearance, lied about by Freud, was never investigated or became public knowledge until I published <I>Passion For Murder</I> in 1984. <BR><BR> Actually there is no evidence that Freud ever acted the role of Brutus to John s Caesar, as Freud claimed. Freud's high school records, however, reveal that he really was in the play, Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, in 1871 (not 1870), when he was 15, and did, in fact, play the part of Brutus. The event interestingly took place at his school on July 29th, the very day of his mother Amalia's and Jacob's marriage date (McGrath, pg. 83). Freud was not likely to have forgotten it, and these facts almost certainly put the lie to his claim of  once acting the role of Brutus. What would have been more  strange to say would have been the fact that he twice acted the role of Brutus, once at 14 and once at 15.<BR><BR> Freud claims he was 14 at the time of his alleged dramatic performance in Schiller s play with his much hated <B>***</B>  nephew (actually his half brother), John (b. Johann). If this were true the family children for whom the drama was allegedly enacted were ages 11, 10, 9, 8, 6, and 4. The play is about maniac murderers, a band of robbers, and family incest and two brothers who both planned to murder each other. Both brothers lust after Amalia, who is their cousin. One of the  Moor brothers wants to murder their father as well. One of the  Moor brothers is pathologically ambitious and sees himself as a  great man above all the restrictions of morality and the law in his drive for unhampered advancement just as Freud confessed was true of himself. Both brothers are maniac murderers, one commits suicide, the other turns himself in to the authorities.<BR><BR> <IMG SRC="http://www.ufrgs.br/faced/slomp/edu01135/freud2.jpg" WIDTH=185 HEIGHT=150 ALIGN="RIGHT">It is highly doubtful that even a family steeped in incest, as Freud admits was true of his own family, would have produced such fare for family entertainment for such young children. One of the main characters in the play was named Amalie (Freud s mother was named Amalia) who is murdered in the play by her lover cousin; both of the murderous brothers had the surname of Moor, and Freud alleges that he was given from birth the nickname of  the Moor, due to his dark tangled hair. All this gives us the situation where a  Moor, their brother, Sigmund, lusts after then murder  Amalie, their mother! The Old Man Moor, for whom their father Jacob, is a good stand in, as there are many references to Jacob and his son Joseph by the Old Moor in the play. the Old Moor is imprisoned and is also threatened to be murdered. But, even without this, the Freud family constellation in the play must be pronounced completely inappropriate for children of such an age even without the Freud family constellation in The Robbers. When it was first produced it horrified the adult public and called down imprecations on the head of Johann Schiller.<BR><BR> Again, we only have Freud word for it that any of this is true, that such a play was ever enacted for  the children. Indeed, as for myself, I seriously doubt Freud ever had the nickname  Moor let alone acted, with John, in The Robbers. Serial killers are well known to be notorious liars, just for the delight in lying. Often they even claim to kill more people than they really did, just because they cannot pass by a good opportunity to tell another good lie. Below are a few of the startling correspondences between the murder Freud family and the Moor murder-family:<BR><BR> Amalie (cousin lusted after) = Freud mother, Amalia, lusted after by Freud (Freud s own confession) and both his  brothers. Amalie is betrothed to her cousin, Karl. <BR><BR> Old Man = Freud s father, in the play the patriarch Moor identifies with  Jacob, in the Bible. Freud s father was 20 years older than their mother, Amalia<BR> Brother plots to murder brother = Freud plotted to murder his brother<BR> Playwright Johann Schiller = Playmate, Johann Freud (Freud was the  Killer )<BR> K. Moor wants to murder his brother= Freud murdered Johann Freud, his half-brother<BR> Phillip, Freud s brother = opening speech of  Brutus mentions  dread fields of Phillippi <BR> Family incest = Freud s family, according to Freud, an incest family, it was planned for him to marry his half sister, Pauline; Freud wanted (and probably had) sex with his mother and sisters, held that sex with mother and father necessary for  happiness <BR> Murderer  Moor = Freud, the murderer claims his nickname was  the little Moor Moor Family of Robbers = Freud s Uncle was a convicted robber, served 10 years in prison for it); brothers involved in counterfeit (robbing) plot, Freud was a plagiarist, a robber.<BR> Franz Moor wanted to murder his father = Freud  Moor admitted he wanted to murder his father; created a theory <I>everyone</I> wanted to murder their father, the desire to murder the father was an <I>instinct.</I><BR> Franz Moor was pathologically ambitious = Freud  Moor was by his own admission  pathologically ambitious; Freud habitually confessing to being maniacally ambitious<BR> Karl Moor threatens to murder his fiancé = Freud threatens to murder his fiancé, Martha<BR> Karl Moor  sacrifices his  angel Amalie = Freud in letters to his friend proposed that they sacrifice their girlfriend angels and bury them beneath an imaginary building<BR> Caesar (John) in <I>The Robbers</I> was a  ghost = John was a  ghost to Freud, a  revenant ; other of Freud s murder victims became haunting  ghosts <BR><BR> I am not the first to note these powerful associations in Freud s family background and mentality, only the first to establish that Freud was actually a murderer and that all of the above constituted his serial killer  fun of confessing without getting caught.<BR><BR> McGrath, one of the most  renowned Freudian scholars stated that The Robbers  occupied a unique place in Freud s psychic world that  it became a vehicle for the powerful feelings involved in Freud s  family complex.  He noted, as I did, that the old patriarch was Freud s father figure and that in the play  Jacob and Joseph figure prominently. Professor Scagnelli, a clinical psychologist, notes:<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> McGrath argued forcefully that Freud identified himself with both [murderer] brothers, Franz and Karl Moor. . . Also, notice Freud and Franz Moor were alike in their pathological ambitiousness; their murderous feelings toward a brother and father figure; and their vulnerabilities to psychosis and self-destructiveness. At times, each hear hallucinatory  voices (Freud s  voices called his name during his sojourn in Paris) Also, both of them had strong  incestuous feelings towards maternal figures named Amalie (Amalia) (Scagnelli, pg. 120 21). </BLOCKQUOTE> McGrath, incidentally published his book two years after <I>Passion For Murder</I> in 1986 and credits Peter Swales with providing him information. I communicated with Peter Swales in 1984, who told me he had my book and read it. Swales himself, though often posing as an  anti Freudian is a shadowy character who plays a significant role in the history of the concealment of Freud s murders while, curiously, claiming here there and everywhere that Freud was a would be murderer. (See below for a footnote involving Swales and McGrath).<BR><BR> Despite the fact that I established the  case that Freud actually murdered John and gave proof of his  mysterious disappearance right after Freud visited him in England (either in 1873 or 1875, when he first went to England) no scholar has had the courage to face the facts, other than Scagnelli, to credit the fact that Freud was a murderer! This despite the fact that most ALL major Freud scholars admit Freud had a murder complex, was obsessed with murder and had murder at the heart of his psychoanalytical theory. (See various postings at this website and <I>Passion For Murder</I>).<BR><BR> The details of the story of The Robbers must have seemed perfect to Freud for another John murder confession. No doubt, however, when Freud wrote <I>Interpretation of Dreams</I> (wherein he concocted he story of him playing Brutus to John s Caesar) he failed to imagine that there would be a surviving school record of the actual play that he was in as opposed to his invented and transposed one one might even say plagiarized  biography ! It is, of course, virtually certain that Freud made up the entire story merely for the purpose of both disguising and revealing his actual murder of John and his serial killer nature quite in character with the actions of SFSK (Sigmund Freud Serial Killer). Schiller wrote in his Preface to the first edition of <I>The Robbers</I> that he wrote the play  for the purpose of tracing out the innermost workings of the soul. . . which, all in all, as said, seems an adopted phrase for Freud s  task of making conscious the most hidden recesses of the mind. And, indeed, Freud explicitly claimed that his method of psychoanalysis was equivalent to a "a detective engaged in tracing a murder" <B>xx</B> (Introductory Lectures 15.27). In my book <I>Passion For Murder: The Homicidal Deeds of Dr. Sigmund Freud</I> I document the fact that Freud s entire psychoanalytical construct has at its root the theme of murder and that every biography of the great men that he examined for his purposes, that of Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Leonardo da Vince, etc., he invariably concluded that they, and humanity at large, were  murderers. Moreover, I document the fact that whatever Freud s subject murder was the theme. I wrote:<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> Through a prodigious outpouring of writings (comprising some 24 volumes in the Standard Edition of his works, plus numerous papers and literally thousands of personal letters) he incessantly sounded and resounded the theme. Whatever he wrote about, be it history, religion, sex, ethnology, anthropology, psychology, or the lives of such men as Shakespeare, Goethe, Dostoyevsky, Leonardo Da Vinci, Moses, Michelangelo- whatever the subject, the content of his analysis invariably and ultimately insisted that here was the theme of murder! Not simply the theme of sex as has been popularized. Freud endeavored to indoctrinate an age with the idea that all of our most personal motives, ideals, beliefs, loves and dreams are the products of an immutably sick genetic inheritance, against which there is no antidote. </BLOCKQUOTE> Now, it is a fact that Freud confessed that it was always his desire to become a creative writer, a novelist, that he was never a man of science but was at heart a  conquistador and an  adventurer. His dreams and writings are full of allusions to plays, novels, short stories. He habitually uses them as a means to illustrate his theories, his  self analysis and to make confessions of and identifications with his own deep inner compulsions. He compulsively quotes in particular from Johann Goethe, and routinely quotes from or refers to Johann Schiller, as well as Shakespeare, Dante, Ovid, in addition to the popular writers of his time. And it is a fact that, certainly in his earlier years, he was so immersed in reading English books that he referred to his compulsion as his  English disease. Freud confessed to having a sadistic nature, that he had a strong affinity for the  grotesque and the  perverse psychological and the gruesome. Everywhere, in all that he writes, he habitually refers to the  riddles of existence, its dark  secrets,  puzzles  conundrums. He wrote about and was fascinated with the macabre, the uncanny, stories of demonic haunting and unlaid ghosts and, of course, murder stories. Freud s famous  classical case histories were all, in fact, novellas, constructed to achieve a literary effect not one of them resulted, as he fraudulently claimed, in a cure. These facts are documented in my book and supported by many of the most prominent Freud scholars and further evidence is also provided at the website where this essay is now available. <BR><BR><BR> <B>THE CASE: FREUD S PLAGIARISM</B><BR><BR> It is an unfortunately a too little known fact that Freud was a documented plagiarist from his early years. His first scientific paper robbed the work of a then little known Russian, as pointed out by Dr. Bernfield. The great Thomas Mann pointed out that the conceptual basis for the foundations of psychoanalysis was  out and out Schopenhauer and that Nietzsche work was in many respect remarkably close to Freud s. Freud steadfastly always denied that he had ever read those scions of German philosophy but recent investigative work by Santana M. Chapman of Samu Hospital, Vitoriada Conquista, Bahai, Brazil, conclusively  outs Freud s plagiarism. After a detailed study of Nietzsche s works and the unpinning of Freud s concepts he concludes:<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> Concepts of Nietzsche which are similar to those of Freud include (a) the concept of the unconscious mind; (b) the idea that repression pushes unacceptable feelings and thoughts into the unconscious and thus makes the individual emotionally more comfortable and effective; (c) the conception that repressed emotions and instinctual drives later are expressed in disguised ways (for example, hostile feelings and ideas may be expressed as altruistic sentiments and acts); (d) the concept of dreams as complex, symbolic  illusions of illusions and dreaming itself as a cathartic process which has healthy properties; and (e) the suggestion that the projection of hostile, unconscious feelings onto others, who are then perceived as persecutors of the individual, is the basis of paranoid. Some of Freud s basic terms are identical to those used by Nietzsche. </BLOCKQUOTE> In his work, Dr. Chapman gave the following conclusion to his  The Influence of Nietzsche on Freud s Ideas :<BR><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> CONCLUSION: Freud repeatedly stated that he had never read Nietzsche. Evidence contradicting this are his references to Nietzsche and his quotations and paraphrases of him, in casual conversation and his now published personal correspondence, as well as his early and later writings.<P ALIGN="right"> (Br. J Psychiatry. 1995 Jun; 166 (6): 825 6<BR>& Br. J Psychiatry. 1995 May; 166 (5): 680 1)</P> </BLOCKQUOTE> Of course,  evidence contradicting simply means Freud was a liar a fact not at all new to me or anyone who has made an in depth study of Freud and his life and works. To further make the point, I quote from arguably the greatest German writer of the 20th century; I speak again of Thomas Mann, on another of Freud s denied sources, besides Nietzsche, for his supposedly unique creation of a new  science of psychoanalysis.<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> But Freud s description of the id and the ego is it not to a hair Schopenhauer s description of the Will and the intellect, a translation of the latter s metaphysics into psychology? So he who had been initiated into metaphysics of Schopenhauer and in Nietzsche tasted the painful pleasure of psychology he must needs have been filled with a sense of recognition and familiarity when first, encouraged thereto by it denizens, he entered the realms of psychoanalysis and looked about him.<BR> <P ALIGN="RIGHT">Essays by Thomas Mann, Vintage Books, 1929, <BR> Freud and the Future </P> </BLOCKQUOTE> And, Mann, either too trusting in Freud s denial of familiarity with Schopenhauer, or too polite to bluntly state the obvious, that Freud was a plagiarist, goes on to draw the extremely close parallels between Schopenhauer s system and Freud s. I myself was aware of these matters of plagiarism of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer when I wrote <I>Passion For Murder</I> and stated as much:<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> In terms of philosophy, Freud presents nothing at all new and, in fact, Mann intimates that the entire philosophical scheme presented by Freud as his own is nothing but out and out Schopenhauer. And if Nietzsche s concept of the immoral superman were added to Schopenhauer's philosophy of despair, Freud's true ideological heritage would be precisely defined. </BLOCKQUOTE> So much for Freud s massive plagiarism, which, after all has  gone under the wire so to speak, vis a vis the field of philosophy, because the huge populations of psychoanalysts were too uneducated in philosophy and literature and naively believed Freud was telling the truth when he denied his knowledge of these German philosophers. Before moving on, I must state that Mann himself was actually quite deficient in detailed knowledge of Freud his biography, the morbid revelations contained in his personal letters, and the facts of his vicious nature and fraudulent claims to cures. He was so uninformed as to  buy into the myth of Freud himself. Mann states in his essay, quoted above, nonetheless, that from his earliest encounter with Freud s thought he sensed in him a guise, a guise of Death and the Devil. And in that Mann went to the heart of the matter. <BLOCKQUOTE> In this guise of man and gallant knight, a knight between Death and the Devil, I have been used to picture to myself our psychologist of the unconscious, ever since his figure first swam into my mental ken. </BLOCKQUOTE> And continuing, after indicating, wrongly I must add, that Freud had a  bond between two elements: <BLOCKQUOTE> first a love of the truth, in a sense of truth. . . a clarity of vision to such an extent that the conception of truth actually almost coincides with that of psychological perception and recognition. </BLOCKQUOTE> First, Freud was an habitual liar, as is characteristic of serial killers. Secondly no one these days, I dare say, other than co religionists of the Freudian doctrine believes this assessment anymore, but Mann s second point strikes, intuitively, to the truth beneath the deception, with one <I>caveat</I>: <BLOCKQUOTE>And secondly, it consists in an understanding of disease, a certain affinity with it, outweighed by fundamental health, and an understanding of its productive significance. </BLOCKQUOTE> An  affinity with disease that is correct, so, too, is the observation that Freud was a man whose mind existed in that realm between Death and the Devil all that is quite correct how much so, however, Mann could never have dreamed. Mann s above quoted description, that Freud s psyche was  outweighed by fundamental health , can hardly be maintained of any serial killer. Mann simply failed to see the threatening coils of fatality in Freud s diseased doctrines. Much as, no doubt, he, nor hardly anyone else, could not have imagined in 1929 the horrors that Hitler was capable of (Mann made his remarks on Freud in 1929 it should be noted in fairness). Freud s correspondence wasn t available. His alleged cures were accepted as fact. The subterranean machinations of the Freudian gang to gain political sway over the medical profession were little known to the public at large. Nonetheless, to indulge a little in a gentle polemic against Mann himself, a writer greatly revered by me and, indeed, the whole literate world, I must make a couple quick observations for the record.<BR><BR> Mann, to speak of Freud s  outweighing fundamental health, could not have read, for example, a number of Freud s other writings such as Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) where Freud s discussion of the perversions clearly shows himself to have been severely perverted in his advocacy of incest and sister mother sex as a new indicated direction for the world s new mores Freud s  new sexual aim as it called it. <BLOCKQUOTE> It has an ugly sound, and it is also paradoxical, but nevertheless it must be said, that whoever is to be really free and happy in love must have overcome his deference for women and come to terms with the idea of incest with mother or sister. </BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE> Freud,  On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love , 1912 </BLOCKQUOTE> It  has an ugly sound because it is ugly and perverted. And if one need not scruple to avoid incest with one s mother and sisters,  to be really free and happy in love why stop at sex with them, why not one s father and brothers as well, why not one s dog or dead bodies?  Fundamental health ? I think not, nor do I think Mann would have himself mistaken such perversions for  fundamental health had he known of Freud s <I>real</I> beliefs.<BR><BR> Also, In <I>Three Essays</I>, Freud defends necrophilia and other gruesome perversions to be  normal if they do not totally oust all other normal impulses. <BLOCKQUOTE> In the majority of instances the pathological character in a perversion is found to lie not in the content of the new sexual aim but in its relation to the normal. If a perversion, instead of appearing merely alongside the normal sexual aim and object, and only when circumstances are unfavorable to them and favorable to it  if, instead of this, it ousts them completely and takes their place in all circumstances if, in short a perversion has the characteristics of exclusiveness and fixation then we shall usually be justified in regarding it as a pathological symptom. [all italics are in the original] (pg. 52) </BLOCKQUOTE> That Freud specifically had in mind that these perversions that were not to be considered pathological unless they ousted all other normal activities, included necrophilia and licking of feces, is further confirmed by the below quoted passage which immediately precedes the above paragraph: <BLOCKQUOTE> Nevertheless, in some of these perversions the quality of the new sexual aim is of a kind to demand special examination. Certain of them are so far removed from the normal in their content that we cannot avoid pronouncing them  pathological. This is especially so where (as for instance in cases of licking excrement or of intercourse with dead bodies) the sexual instinct goes to astonishing lengths in successfully overriding the resistances of shame, disgust, horror or pain. But even in such cases we should not be too read to assume that people who act in this way will necessarily turn out to be insane or subject to grave abnormalities of other kinds. (pg. 51) </BLOCKQUOTE> The key word in the above is  successfully overriding resistances of shame, disgust, horror, etc. One is  successful is one can overcome these  resistances. The key for Freud is the term  exclusivity. If one has sex with dead bodies <I>exclusively</I> then we  probably cannot  avoid pronouncing the  habit as insane. Obviously, by extension, serial killers, also should not be considered  pathological if at times they do respect others rights to life, even if they have murderous feelings for them, that is if the respect for life has not been totally  ousted from their behavior. Truly, Freud s comment that people who practice necrophilia, sex with dead bodies, and eat feces are not necessarily  insane or subject to grave abnormalities of other kinds is itself insane. A central point pathetically lost on the legions of psychoanalytic believer s in Freud s theories, <I>and all those Freud experts who intimately know his work.</I><BR><BR> I am fully confident that, if Mann had had a deeper, more intimate knowledge of Freud, his biography and his works, he would never have uttered the opinion that Freud s diseased Death Devil psyche was fundamentally  outweighed by the healthy.  Health and  Death Devil are mutually exclusive terms.<BR><BR> <TABLE WIDTH=750> <TR> <TD>But, to briefly return to the subject of plagiarism and Freud before making my case that Freud also probably plagiarized Poe. Freud s oldest and  dearest friend who probably knew Freud best of all (a man now universally regarded as a maniac, even by Freudians, Dr. Wilhelm Fliess), also directly accused Freud of plagiarism. In 1906 Fliess made a public accusation that Freud was the  instigator in a plot to plagiarize. The claim was  well founded. (Scagnelli, pg. 152). And it is a well known fact that Freud <I>even plagiarized himself</I>, and credited to one of his  disciples words that had emanated from his own pen. All this is part of the ruse and deception that Freud habitually practiced to gain adherents to his new religion of  psychoanalysis. It is a fact, Freud stole from many and credited few perhaps much to their relief! </TD> <TD><IMG SRC="http://enciclopedia.us.es/images/thumb/e/ed/Edgar_Allan_Poe.jpg/180px-Edgar_Allan_Poe.jpg" HEIGHT=150 WIDTH=130 ALIGN="RIGHT"><BR><BR> <P ALIGN="RIGHT"><B>Edgar Allan Poe</B></P> </TD> </TR> </TABLE><BR> Having made the case that Freud really was an inveterate plagiarist, did not scruple to use the works of other writers as a springboard for his own confessions, let us now turn to the focus of our subject, to wit, Freud s daring plagiarism of Edgar Allan Poe. <BR><BR><BR> <B>FREUD AS C. AUGUST DUPIN</B><BR><BR> Above I noted that Freud, in his Introductory Lectures, likened  his psychoanalytic method to that of a detective investigating traces of a murder. Given the fact that Freud assumed a priori, via  projection, (seeing in others what is true of oneself) that everyone is a murderer at heart, and given the fact that it is Freud s self analysis that lies as the presumed  empirical basis for his psychoanalytical method, Freud s remark (or confession, if you will) is strikingly interesting. (Freud stated:  I can only analyze myself through objectively required informa tion. ) Freud s comment itself would no doubt be evidence to Edgar Allan Poe s famous murder detective, C. August Dupin as we shall see.<BR><BR> Poe s murder detective C. August Dupin (who appears in three of Poe s detective stories) interestingly enough was, before Freud, the first one to adopt the  Freudian methodology of analyzing apparently insignificant details to unravel murder  riddles and mysteries. Indeed, Freud s aping of Poe (without apparently realizing it) is used to good effect in a recent bestselling novel, Interpretation of Murder, by Jed Rubenfeld, where Freud is cast into the role of a Dupin like role. Ironically, Freud is cast in the role of a  detective trying to capture a serial killer. Rubenfeld apparently had only a superficial knowledge of Freud. Below, is a brief description of Dupin s method in Wikipedia (with footnote numbers deleted):<BR><BR> <FONT COLOR="BLUE">[Dupin s] Method</FONT><BR><BR> Dupin's deductive prowess is first exhibited when he appears to read the narrator's mind by rationally tracing his train of thought for the previous fifteen minutes. He employs what he terms "ratiocination". Dupin's method is to identify with the criminal and put himself in his mind. By knowing everything that the criminal knows, he can solve any crime. In this method, he combines his scientific logic with artistic imagination. As an observer, he pays special attention to what is unintended, such as hesitation, eagerness or a casual or inadvertent word. Dupin is portrayed as a dehumanized thinking machine, a man whose sole interest is in pure logic.<BR><BR> Freud, like Dupin,  pays special attention to what is unintended, such as hesitation, eagerness or a casual or inadvertent word. Dupin explains his  ratiocinative [read  psychoanalytical] method, for example, in The Murders In The Rue Morgue. Dupin gives an analogy of tracking a murderer to playing cards: <BLOCKQUOTE> I mean the perfection in the game which includes a comprehension of all the sources when the legitimate advantage may be derived. These are not only manifold, but multiform, and lie frequently among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible to the ordinary understanding. To observe attentively is to remember distinctly; and, so far, the concentrative chess player will do very well . . . Thus to have a retentive memory and proceed by  the book are points commonly regarded as the sum total of good playing. But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe. . . He examines the countenance of his partner, comparing it carefully with that of each of his opponents. He considers the mode of assorting the cards in each hand; often counting trump by trump and honor by honor. . . He notes every variation of face as the play progresses, gathering a fund of thought from the differences in the expression of certainty, of surprise, of triumph of chagrin. . . A casual or inadvertent word; the accidental dropping or turning of a card. . . The accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to its concealment. . . embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness, or trepidation all afford , to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of the true state of affairs. . . Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between fancy and the imagination but of a character very strictly analogous. It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are also fanciful, and the <I>truly</I> imaginative never otherwise than analytic. </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <B>FREUD S USE OF DUPIN S METHOD</B><BR><BR> Freud, in the example to follow, merely uses a different analogy and expresses exactly the same modus operandi of Dupin. Freud, in Introductory Lectures surely must have been consciously, or unconsciously,  aping Poe. Freud begins, like Dupin, expressing his disdain for the law enforcement  analysts (Poe was the first to coin the term  detective it did not exist before him). Indeed, Freud even <I>sounds</I> like Poe in his comments on the same subject: <BLOCKQUOTE> I should reply: Patience, Ladies and Gentlemen! I think your criticism has gone astray. It is true that psycho analysis [read Poe s  ratiocinative] cannot boast that it has never concerned itself with trivialities. on the contrary, the material for its observations is usually provided by the inconsiderable events which have been put aside by the other sciences as being to unimportant the dregs, one might say, of the world of phenomena. But are you not making a confusion in your criticism between the vastness of the problems and the conspicuousness of what points to them? Are there not very important things which can only reveal themselves, under certain conditions and at certain time, by quite feeble indications? I should find no difficulty in giving you several examples of such situations. if you are a young man, for instance, will it not be from small pointers that you will conclude that you have won a girl s favor? Would you wait for an express declaration of love or a passionate embrace? Or would not a glance, scarcely noticed by other people, be enough? a slight movement, the lengthening by a second of the pressure of a hand? And if you were a detective engaged in tracing a murder, would you expect to find the murderer had left his photograph behind at the place of the crime, with his address attached? or would you not necessarily have to be satisfied with comparatively slight and obscure trace of the person you were in search of? </BLOCKQUOTE> <IMG ALIGN = "LEFT" SRC="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Sherlock_Holmes_-_The_Man_with_the_Twisted_Lip.jpg" HEIGHT=150 WIDTH=150 > <FONT SIZE=2>Sherlock Holmes was one of several fictional detectives influenced by Dupin.</FONT><BR><BR> Dupin, Wikipedia further informs us  helped established the genre of detective fiction, distinct from mystery fiction, with an emphasis on the analysis and not trial and error. Brander Mathews wrote:  The true detective story as Poe conceived it is not in the mystery itself, but rather in the successive steps whereby the analytic observer is enabled to solve the problem that might be dismissed as beyond human elucidation.' In fact, in the three stories which star Dupin, Poe created three types of detective fiction which established a model for all future stories: the physical type ("The Murders in the Rue Morgue"), the mental ("The Mystery of Marie Rogêt"), and a balanced version of both ("The Purloined Letter"). <BR><BR><BR> <B>FREUD VS POE</B><BR><BR> A brief,  austere foreword by Freud for Marie Bonaparte s ( my friend and pupil')  psychoanalysis of Poe is the only acknowledgement I know of that Freud ever even knew of the existence of Edgar Allan Poe despite the fact that Poe s work was well known throughout Europe, was highly praised by Dostoyevsky and was the known precursor to Sherlock Holmes. Freud s remark was: <BLOCKQUOTE> Thanks to her interpretative effort we now realize how many of the characteristics of Poe's works were conditioned by his personality, and can see how that personality derived from intense emotional fixations and painful infantile experiences. Investigations such as this do not claim to explain creative genius, but they do reveal the factors which awaken it and the sort of subject matter it is destined to choose.. . . a great writer of a pathological type. <P ALIGN="RIGHT">(Freud, SE XXII,p.254).</P> </BLOCKQUOTE> Well, of course, everyone is of a  pathological type to Freud. Obviously, Freud thought the less he said about Poe the better. This for the same reason, no doubt, that he eschewed relating his work to works of fiction. From the book The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe, by Shawn Rosenheim, Stephen Rachman, Published by JHU Press, 1995, we learn: <BLOCKQUOTE> Although critics have remarked on the embarrassing frequency with which detective stories draw on stock psychoanalytic imagery, no one has yet called attention to how thoroughly  [The Murders of the] Rue Morgue seems to gloss the analytic process itself. Freud described the  essence of the psychoanalytic situation as follows: <BLOCKQUOTE> The analyst enters into an alliance with the ego of the patient to subdue certain uncontrolled parts of his id, i.e., to include them in a synthesis of the ego. . . [IF] the ego learns to adopt a defensive attitude towards his own id and to treat the instinctual demands of the latter like external dangers, this is at any rate partly because it understands that the satisfaction of instinct would lead to conflict with the external world. (Under the influence of its upbringing, the child s ego</BLOCKQUOTE> </BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE> accustoms itself to shift the scene of the battle from outside to inside and to master the inner danger before it becomes external.) Freud 1963b, 253). (Pg. 169) </BLOCKQUOTE> </BLOCKQUOTE> Murder is everywhere present in the Freudian view: <BLOCKQUOTE>  [T]he struggle between physician and patient, between intellect and the forces of instinct, between recognition and the striving for discharge, is fought out almost entirely on the ground of transference manifestations [the patient s relation to the psychoanalyst]. This is the ground on which the victory must be won, the final expression of which is lasting recovery from the neurosis. . .in the last resort no one can be slain in absentia or in effigie just such ego training sessions, teaching the reader  to shift the scene of the battle from outside to inside : from behaviors to an internalized encounter with the text.  P. 171 </BLOCKQUOTE> Apparently Freud thinks someone needs to be  slain or killed in absentia or in effigie and that the  scene, the primal murder scene, needs to be  shifted from the world of reality, the  outside to the  ego training sessions of the  inside. The  Rue Morgue is unquestionably a precursor of the  physician/patient or, more accurately, the  prosecutor/defendant as Freud describes it though it is Freud s pathological view that we are all murderers, not Poe s. <BLOCKQUOTE> But though Dupin s cryptographic power is specifically predicated on his linguistic prowess, the resolution of this case is not a matter of language alone, instead, Dupin now finds himself confronting the tangible world, carefully measuring the  impression made by the orangutan s fingers on Camille L Espanaye s neck again the span and pattern of a human hand, only to find that the prints on the strangled woman are not even approximately the same. </BLOCKQUOTE> Freud, on the other hand, used the  talking method almost exclusively and repeatedly stated that the royal road to the discovery and alleged cures of psychoanalysis was through his unmasking  verbal associations. Though Freud stated in his private letters to Fliess that he could only conduct his self analysis (which he later admitted was impossible) through  objectively acquired knowledge though there is little evidence of this and it is not likely any information passing through Freud s mind could be deemed  objective  it is a fact that virtually every in depth analysis of Freud underscores the fact of his frequent, if not persistent,  projection  reading into others thoughts what was in his own mind. However the authentic  psychic ability was one which Dupin possessed <I>par excellence</I> and could be (and was) explicated  ratiocinatively with great skill and persuasiveness. Dupin s  mind reading was based on artistic sensitivity and an extraordinary skill in deductive reasoning from determinable  facts. Freud s best friend, Fliess, observed and told him that Freud himself merely read into other s minds what was in his own he was  a thought reader. And in this Fliess was correct. And that is the explanation of the reason why Freud developed his Death Instinct theory, for example, believed that everyone was a murderer or potential murderer; that everyone wanted to murder their fathers, have sex with mothers and believed every case of sexual perversion and hysteria could be explained by the  fact that the father, like his own, was a sex pervert. Need I say more? It really is embarrassing how many prominent people have been so gullible!<BR><BR> Turning, for a moment to a key story by Poe, in which I have found apparent clear evidence that Freud actually plagiarized Poe s story,  The Imp of the Perverse , as he plagiarized The Robber to make his murder confessions and even to construct his theory of the Death Instinct. What is so significant about  The Imp is that, in it, Poe seems to fathom, perhaps as no other writer the psyche of the serial killer, which Freud s own works and confessions  ape. One of the key almost unfathomable characteristics of the serial killer is that speak of there being a terrible  nothingness inside of them, literally like the  black hole of modern physics conception of the universe. Serial killers often appear to murder to save themselves from a feeling that they are  dead , to save themselves from some horrible self annihilation. They kill and by killing use the  consumed life to gives fuel to life inside of their  dead selves. This seeming terror of and horrible attraction to a compulsion to annihilation, of self and others is amazingly dealt with by Poe as a horrible form of  perverseness. In his discussion of  The Imp of the Perverse in his  Being Odd, Getting Even, Stanley Cavell takes on the issue posed by Poe: <BLOCKQUOTE> The Imp of the Perverse clearly spells out Poe s fundamental conception that it is man s fate to act against his own best interest. . . True, the imp may have to forfeit perverseness as a  safeguard against injury ; that is not the kind of need that the evolution of perverseness can be understood to serve. . . . But perhaps it is a safeguard against something else, something more original, even humanly more needful a safeguard against annihilation, the loss of (the proof of) identity or existence altogether. pg. 34 (Stanley Cavell) </BLOCKQUOTE> And at the heart of it, this annihilating dynamic, found almost uniquely in the serial killer certainly as an individual psychological issue the question and issue of the horrible  black hole in the human heart begs the question whether is really is a human heart, or the heart of a monster an identify Freud frequently applied to himself. The question is not only of  proof of existence but what kind of existence comes to the fore. <BLOCKQUOTE> One has to distinguish what it is that proofs of my existence are supposed to, or do, prove; what question it is one has to answer. Descartes proof proves my existence as mind; it answers the question  am I a mind or a body? Psychoanalysis has distinguished the question  Am I a woman or am I a man? from the question  Am I alive or dead?  the former as the hysterical question, the latter as the obsessional. Obviously I am taking the latter as Poe s question. But I earlier complicated what this will mean by in effect also giving the question  Am I a human being or a monster? (Rosenheim, pg. 35) </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <B>POE IS NOT A FREUDIAN</B><BR><BR> We cannot leave off this part of our discussion without categorically asserting that Poe, the genius creative artist and thinker, was in no wise a Freudian. Anyone who has read and studied, for example, his Eureka, can have no doubt about the matter if they have any sound knowledge of Freud and his theories. Freud was a Devil worshiping atheist, and he personally identified with the Devil (as this website makes clear); he was himself a sex pervert, and denied the meaningfulness of life itself. Where we find a maniac murderer in Poe s work we have a finely wrought artist s sensitive study of madness; in Freud we have a true self portrait of the psychodynamics of a serial killer.<BR><BR> The quotation we used to commence our remarks had it that  What looks like Poe s eerie anticipation of psychoanalytic motifs may say as much about generic as about psychic structure. . .  In view of the above and more to follow, there may be no  eerie anticipation of psychoanalytic motifs by Poe, but rather we merely deal with the subject of Freud s plagiarism of Poe.<BR><BR><BR> <B>Footnotes:</B><BR><BR> * I do not have the German for this quote at hand. Given the fact that Bruno Bettleheim in his book Freud & Man s Soul (1983), reminds us that Freud s actual words are routinely corrupted in English translation and reveals  how in the English version nearly all of Freud s references to the soul have been corrupted (for example, Seelentatigkeit  activity of the soul  is translated as  mental activity ) the use of the word  mind may in fact be  soul giving an exact  borrowing from Schiller. Bettleheim, by the way, fails to mention that Freud who constantly referred to  soul was an out and out atheist who despite this considered it a  miracle that he was born a Jew.<BR><BR> ** Contrary to the myth, Freud was born on March 6, 1856 as I document in <I>Passion For Murder</I><BR><BR> *** Incidentally, though Freud constantly references his hatred for John he only speaks of that hatred as a supposed child between the ages of one and three. This is a period of time, Freud himself specifies as being to early for the development of lasting childhood hatreds. And, whether Freud believes it or not, I think the overwhelming majority of parents would not credit that a murderous hatred developed and rooted in a child between the age of 1 and 3, especially when it was when Freud was about 3 that John moved to Manchester, England with his family deserting Sigmund. The point is, the hatred that must have developed, developed in fact when John came to visit the Freud family in Vienna. McGrath offers the following about this mysterious relationship with John: <BLOCKQUOTE> According to a letter Oliver Freud (Freud s son) wrote to Bernfield on April 13, 1944, when John was very young he lived for a year with his grandparents after they moved to Vienna, and then again later when he was fifteen or sixteen he visited for a winter in order to learn German. Peter Swales communicated this detail to me on the basis of </BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE>his personal inspection of the Bernfield papers at the Library of Congress (restricted access). (pg. 67) </BLOCKQUOTE> It is to be noted that anything related by Peter Swales cannot be accepted at face value. The letter will speak for itself when, and if, we are able to get it released from the  secret , i.e., restricted letters held by the Library of Congress. It is strange that Freud nowhere mentions this extended visit of a year at when he was  very young or then again  for a winter other than what we note above discussion regarding John s alleged participation in The Robbers. It is almost certain then, that it was at the later age that Sigmund developed his murderous hatred, jealousy, no doubt for John. Not when he was 2 or 3 years old. In other words, at the very time of John s stay and the alleged performance of The Robbers that Freud mentions. We know from my Census document published in <I>Passion For Murder</I> that John was in Manchester in April 12, 1871. Oliver would certainly have known if John was alive in 1900 when his father claimed John was  jetz im Manchester or  now in Manchester. (In addition to Freud s claim in Interpretation of Dreams that John was then alive, he also made the same claim to his collaborator, Dr. Fliess, in October 3, 1897, see Masson) And certainly Bernfield would have known that Freud claimed he was still alive in 1900 and would have asked Oliver about it. Yet there is not a word about this, which I know of, from Bernfield, Swales, or McGrath. Are they all in a conspiracy to conceal material evidence of a murder? I mention the above as I shall draw an analogy between Freud s situations, how he handled so casually his hatred of John, and then ends by habitually confessing, much as the character in  The Tell Tale Heart, by Poe , to his murder.<BR><BR> <B>xx</B> In a speech at the last Congress which Freud was to attend, Jones treated the audience to his brand of humor: <BLOCKQUOTE> In English we have two notable proverbs. 'Charity begins at home.' and 'Murder will out.' If we now apply the mechanism of condensation and displacement to these [statements] we reach the conclusion that 'Murder begins at home,' a fundamental tenant of psychoanalysis, and  Charity will out, which is illustrated by the difficulty of keeping secret the name of the generous donor of the Berlin Policlinic. </BLOCKQUOTE> Jones reports that Freud particularly complimented him on his speech and that he was  most amused by the above quoted passage. (see <I>Passion For Murder</I>, pg. 254, Where those assembled at the Congress  in the know about Freud s personal example of  murder begins at home ?<BR><BR><BR> *******************<BR><BR><BR> <FONT COLOR="BLUE"><B>SOURCES</B></FONT><BR><BR> Freud, Standard Edition, volume 14; Preface to Marie Bonaparte's <I>The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho Analytic Interpretation (1933).</I><BR><BR> Freud, <I>The Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,</I> James Strachey, Editor; Avon Books, New York, 1965<BR> Jones, Ernest, <I>The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud,</I> Vol. 3, Basic Books, New York, 1961, pg. 88<BR><BR> Mann, Thomas, <I>Essays of Thomas Mann,</I> Vintage Books, New York, 1957<BR><BR> Masson, Jeffery, <I>The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887 1904</I>, Belnap Harvard Press, New York, 1985<BR><BR> McGrath, William, J., <I> Freud s Discovery of Psychoanalysis,</I> Cornell University Press, New York, 1986<BR><BR> Miller, Eric, <I>Passion For Murder</I>: The Homicidal Deeds of Dr. Sigmund Freud, New Directions Publishing, San Diego, 1984<BR><BR> Poe, Edgar Allan, <I>The Best Known Work of Edgar Allan Poe,</I> Blue Ribbon Books, New York, 1927<BR><BR> Scagnelli, Paul, <I>Deadly Dr. Freud, The Murder of Emanuel Freud and Disappearance of John Freud,</I> Pinewood Publishing Company, Durham, N.C. (1994)<BR><BR> Rosenheim, Shawn; Rachman, Stephen, Editors, <I>The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe,</I> JHU Press, 1995<BR> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Being Odd, Getting Even, pg. 35 (Cavell)<BR> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Detective Fiction, Psychoanalysis and the Analytic Sublime, pg. 168 (Rosenhem)<BR><BR>  The Influence of Nietzsche on Freud s Ideas : Santana M. Chapman of Samu Hospital, Vitoriada Conquista, Bahai, Brazil,<BR> (Br. J Psychiatry. 1995 Jun; 166 (6): 825 6<BR> & Br. J Psychiatry. 1995 May; 166 (5): 680 1) <BR> </TD> </TR> </TABLE><BR><BR> <CENTER><A HREF="Home.htm">Home</A></CENTER>