Johann Wolfgang Goethe- Universität Frankfurt am Main

Institut für England- und Amerikastudien

SS 2005

What`s your Method Mr. Holmes? ­
Deduction, dear Freud, Deduction.

- a term paper for the seminar
Case studies: Forensische Erzählmuster in der Literatur
des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts

by: Verena Blümel

handed in on
11 June, 2008

Table of Contents

Table of Contents 2
1. Conception of the Paper 3
2. The "Morelli-Method" 4
3. Sherlock Holmes and his Method 6
3.1. Applying the Method: A Scandal in Bohemia 8
4. Sigmund Freud and his Method of Psychoanalysis 10
4.1. Applying the Method: The Wolf-Man 11
5. The Similarities between Freud and Holmes 13
6. The Limits of their Methods 17
7. Conclusion 19
8. Works cited 21
8.1. Primary Literature 21
8.2. Secondary Literature 21

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"From a drop of water", said the writer, "a logician

could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a

Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the

other. [...] Like all other arts, the Science of

Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be

acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long

enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest

possible perfection in it."

(A Study in Scarlet, ch. 2, p.1)

1. Conception of the Paper
In the movie The Seven -Per -Cent -Solution1, Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes join their forces in a rather weird series of adventures. In this paper, these two legendary figures will meet again: Freud, a detective of the unconscious, and Holmes, the famous Victorian investigator of the criminal side of human nature. The first, a historical character who has entered popular imagination; the latter, a fictional one so well known that he has often been taken for real.
So why will they meet again? Well, apart from their love of cocaine2, Holmes and Freud share a certain style of reasoning, more precisely, both of them make use of a method of reading signs known as the "Morelli-method". One part of this paper primarily deals with the style of reasoning Sherlock Holmes is making use of and how he applies his method. Therefore, the term paper will mainly refer to Arthur Conan Doyle`s detective novels A Scandal in Bohemia and The Sign of Four. Another part of the paper will give a closer look at Sigmund Freud and his method. Therefore, a short introduction of his theory of psychoanalysis will be given, followed and underlined by examples from one of his ingenuous case studies, commonly known as The

^{1 The film from 1976 is based on an equally-named novel written by Nicholas Meyer. In his psychoanalyticalhistoric crime-novel, written in 1974, Meyer tries to find the missing biographical link between Holmes and Freud in regard to their similar methods. The novel begins at the point where Arthur Conan Doyle "kills" his character Holmes and reinterprets the death as a cover-up to disguise Holmes`s real identity as a hopeless drug addicted man suffering from delusional paranoia focused on Professor Moriarty.
2 Holmes quite openly takes both cocaine and morphine in several of Doyle`s stories. The Sign of Four opens, for example, with: "Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction." And a little later in the story Holmes states, "It is cocaine, a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?" This comment formed the basis for the above mentioned novel The Seven-Percent-Solution.}

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Wolf-Man.3 Especially the centerpiece of this case-study, the analysand`s dream, will be discussed.

After that the collected similarities between Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud respectively the analogies between the literary and the scientific discourse of the time of the late 19th and the early 20th century will be summarized. This will form the main part of this paper. It will turn out that Holmes and the Viennese professor do not only use a similar method to solve their cases ­ which is well observed and described by Carlo Ginzburg in the essay Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method.4 Even the narrative structure of their case-studies is of striking ressemblance.

The conlusion will emphasise in general the importance of Holmes and Freud for the Victorian society of their days. But before shedding some light on these two brilliant thinkers, it is necessary to take a short glimpse on the so-called and already mentioned "Morelli-method".

2. The "Morelli-Method"

Giovanni Morelli was born in 1816 in Verona, Italy. The later senator, doctor and art critic identified paintings by great masters that had been incorrectly attributed to minor artists. Other art critics of Morelli`s time made their determinations of authorship based upon the obvious elements of a painting like themes, compositions, figures. They looked at the piece as a whole and analysed only macroscopic characteristics and prominent features. Morelli, however, was sure, that the most obvious elements of a painting were the easiest to copy. Instead, he was convinced, that "[...] one should concentrate on minor details, especially those least significant in the style typical of the painter`s own school: earlobes, fingernails, shapes of fingers and toes."5 These minor details, being the result of the painter`s unconscious habits, provided greater evidence of authenticity than the obvious details.6 By the way, Morelli was a specialist for compareing anatomy!

^{3 The term-paper refers to the edition: ,,Aus der Geschichte einer infantilen Neurose. [,,Der Wolfsmann"]". In: Freud-Studienausgabe. Fischer. Frankfurt, 1989. In the following quotet as Freud (1989).
4 The original text was published under the title "Spie. Radici di un paradigma indiziaro". In: Aldo Gargani (Hrsg.), Crisi della ragione. Nuovi Modelli nel rapporto tra sapere e attività umane. Turin. 1979, p. 57-106.
5 Ginzburg, Carlo. ,,Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method." In: Eco, Umberto and Thomas A. Sebeok, eds. The Sign of Three. Dupin, Holmes, Pierce. Bloomington : Indiana University Press. 1983. p. 82. In the follwing quotet as Ginzburg (1983).
6 Morelli presented his new method to identify the creators of antique masterpieces under the alias Ivan Lermolieff. Between 1874 and 1876 he published a series of articles in the German art history journal Zeitschrift far bildende Kunst. The articles, proposing the new method for the correct attributes-of old masters, provoked much discussion and controversy among art historians. See Ginzburg (1983): p 81-83.}

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In Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method Carlo Ginzburg tries to show that the method of Holmes and Freud consists of assigning the same great significance to circumstantial evidence gathered from observations and through "backward reasoning," from consequence to cause, bringing it together in a coherent narrative: the history of a crime or of a neurosis.

The discourse of signs increasingly aroused in the 19th century, focusing on detail in a lot of different scientific disciplines, influencing the detectiv novel, psychoanalysis and medical science in general, all inferring from small traces at the surface to deeper meanings and causes. Ginzburg calls this process a semiotic paradigm or a paradigm of signs.7

Conveying the "Morelli-method" to the analytical work of a detective like Holmes the result is, that seemingly unintended signs left behind on a crime scene might be of importance. Like a painter who leaves behind traces on a canvas a criminal leaves traces on a crime-scene. For Morelli brushstrokes and drapery reveal the creator, for Holmes it is all about footprints in the mud or a cigarette stub left behind on the floor. Both seek for hidden fingerprints to detect the originator. In one case the originator of a crime, in the other of a painting.8

Looking at the psychologist Freud Ginzburgs notices, that his method of psychoanalysis is, like the Morelli-method, based upon seemingly worthless details. Freud himself read Morelli and referred to his method in his essay The Moses of Michelangelo from 1914. He writes: ,,It seems to me that his [Morelli`s] method of inquiry is closely related to the technique of psychoanalysis. It, too, is accustomed to divine secret and concealed things from despised or unnoticed features, from the rubbish-heap, as it were, of our observations."9

In an addendum to the Wolf-Man-case, Freud notes:

,,In vielen Analysen geht es so zu, daß [...] plötzlich neues Erinnerungsmaterial auftaucht, welches bisher sorgfältig verborgen gehalten wurde.[...] und endlich erkennt man in jenem geringgeschätzten Brocken Erinnerung den Schlüssel zu den wichtigsten Geheimnissen, welche die Neurose des Kranken umkleidet."10

Like the details in Morellis` case studies, the symptoms Freud has to decipher are supposed to reveal one`s personality coming directly from the unconsciousness. Thus, Freud supports Morelli in a decisive point: that one`s personality can befound where less applied. And the

^{7 Ginzburg (1983): p. 88.
8 Compare Ginzburg (1983): p. 87.
9 Freud, Sigmund. ,,Der Moses der Michelangelo". In: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. X, Frankfurt: Fischer 1967, p. 185; here quoted from Ginzburg (1983), p. 85.
10 Freud 203. To make clear the connection to Morelli , I highlightened the important part of the passage in italics.}

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