The Interpretation of Murder

Author's Note

The Interpretation of Murder is a work of fiction from beginning to end, but much is based on actual fact. Sigmund Freud did of course visit the United States in 1909, arriving aboard the steamship George Washington with Carl Jung and Sandor Ferenczi on the evening of August 29 (notwithstanding the fact that Ernest Jones's classic biography originally gave the date as September 27, 'corrected' in later editions to the still-erroneous August 27). Freud did stay at the Hotel Manhattan in New York City for a week before traveling to Clark University to deliver his famous lectures, and he did contract a kind of horror of America. While in the United States, Freud was indeed asked to render impromptu psychoanalyses, although never, so far as we know, by the mayor of New York City.

The Manhattan of 1909 described in this book was painstakingly researched. The architecture, the city streets, high society – almost every detail, down to the color of the paneling on the taxis, is based on fact. Errors undoubtedly remain; readers who find any are encouraged to tell me about them at www.interpretationofmurder.com.

I could not, however, stick to fact on every New York detail. To begin with, a few locations had to be changed. The main city morgue, for example, was at that time in Bellevue Hospital, on Twenty-sixth Street, whereas I have located Coroner Hugel – a fictional character – and his morgue downtown in an invented building. Similarly, I had to invent the Balmoral, where Elizabeth Riverford's body is found, but knowledgeable readers will recognize at once the real building – the Ansonia – on which the Balmoral, including its fountain with seals cavorting within, is based. Or again, while the Manhattan Bridge caisson is factual in most respects, it would have been filled with concrete by September 1909, and it did not have the pressurized debris- elimination chambers, opening onto the river, described as 'windows' in this book. In reality, there would have been a longer pressurized debris chute, but I needed the 'windows' for reasons I need not explain to those who have already read the book.

I have also moved certain historical events backward or forward in time. A small example involves Abraham Brill's reference to Theodore Roosevelt's 'hyphenated Americans.' History buffs will point out that Roosevelt did not give his well-known 'hyphenated Americans' speech until 1915. (The disparaging term was, however, already in widespread use by 1909, and the press would have reported Roosevelt's views before 1915. Interested readers may, for example, consult the New York Times of February 17, 1912, page 3, which tells us that Ropsevelt 'excoriate[e] hyphenated Americans' in an article he had just published in Germany.

Brill, conscious of his German accent throughout his life, would have been highly sensitive to this issue.) Or again, the texts Dr Younger consults to discover the cause of Nora Acton's vision of herself lying in her own bed are real, but several were written after 1909. On the other hand, Detective Littlemore might indeed have read H. G.Wells's short story describing a similar event; that story, Under the Knife, first appeared around 1896.

Another slight temporal relocation concerns the strike at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, where Betty is hired; the strike did not take place until November 1909 (the famous fire occurred in 1911). Another is Mrs Fish's fictitious ball at the Waldorf-Astoria. In reality, the 1909 social season in Manhattan would have begun later. Incidentally, the Waldorf-Astoria described here is not the hotel we know by the same name today, located on Park Avenue north of Grand Central Terminal. The first Waldorf-Astoria stood on Fifth Avenue at Thirty-fourth Street; it was demolished in 1930 to make way for the Empire State Building.

A more significant case of time-shifting is my treatment of Jung's break with Freud, which in reality occurred over a three-year period culminating around 1912.1 have telescoped the relevant events and moved some of them to America even though they took place elsewhere. Nevertheless, the scenes between Freud and Jung described in my book – amazing as they may seem – did apparently take place. For example, a loud and mysterious report really did interrupt the two men in the middle of an argument about the occult (with Freud taking a skeptical position), and Jung really did claim to have caused the noise telekinetically through what he called a 'catalytic exteriorization.' When Freud scoffed, Jung predicted an immediate recurrence of the sound to prove his point, and, inexplicably, his words came true. This episode took place, however, not in a room at the Hotel Manhattan in September 1909, but rather in Freud's house in Vienna in March of that year. Moreover, Freud twice fainted in Jung's presence, including one occasion on August 20, 1909, the day before the voyagers set off for America. Freud's enuretic 'mishap' in New York City was disclosed by Jung himself in 1951 – although Jung may have invented the story to discredit Freud.

Jung's biographers disagree about his alleged philandering, delusions, and anti-semitism. The portrait of Jung in this book is just that – a portrait, based on his writings, his letters, and the conclusions reached by some, but not all, of those who have written about him.

Readers may wonder whether Freud and Jung would really have expressed the views I attribute to them in The Interpretation of Murder. The answer, in almost every case, is that they did express them. Much of Freud and Jung's dialogue is drawn from their own letters, essays and statements reported in other published sources. For example, in my book Freud says, 'Satisfying a savage instinct is incomparably more pleasurable than satisfying a civilized one.' Interested readers can find the corresponding observation in Freud's 1930 Civilization and Its Discontents, in volume 21, page 79, of the Standard Edition of Freud's collected works. The physical attacks, however, and the murder mystery are of course entirely imaginary.

As Freud aficionados will have instantly recognized, Nora is based on Dora, the young woman described in Freud's most controversial case history. Dora's real name was Ida Bauer; she was not American, nor was she treated by Freud in America, although she died in New York City in 1945. Nora is in no sense a carbon copy of Dora, but the basic facts of Nora's predicament – the advances made on her by her father's best friend, her father's refusal to take her side, her father's affair with this same friend's wife, and the attraction Nora herself feels toward the wife – can all be found in the Dora case. The Oedipal interpretation of Nora's hysteria that Freud offers Younger in my book, including the oral component, is the actual interpretation that Freud offered the real-life Dora.

Mayor George B. McClellan's attempt to wrest control of the city government from Tammany Hall is well known. Indeed, it is even possible that McClellan would have personally supervised an important homicide investigation in September 1909, because he had at that time practically put the entire police department under mayoral control. On the other hand, McClellan's interest in securing a nomination for another term is pure speculation. Publicly, he insisted he was not running.

Charles Loomis Dana, Bernard Sachs, and M. Allen Starr are historical figures. They were in fact known as the Triumvirate; all were bitter enemies of Freud and psychoanalysis. I want to emphasize, however, that the villainous acts implicitly imputed to them here are completely fictitious. There was no plot to derail Freud's lectures at Clark. I have also, for dramatic purposes, exaggerated Dana's wealth and his blood relationship to the more prominent family bearing the same last name. Although Charles L. Dana apparently descended from the same illustrious ancestor as the more prominent Danas, he was born in Vermont and may not even have known his exact relationship to Charles A. Dana, the other New York Danas, or the Boston Danas. Smith Ely Jelliffe is another historical figure whom I have embellished. Jelliffe was not, for example, rich; nor is there any reason to think he was a womanizer. Incidentally, while the Players Club is real, the suggestion that prostitution went on there is pure speculation. It is the case, however, that Jelliffe was both a chief psychiatric expert for the murderer Harry Thaw and the publisher of Freud's first book in English – the Selected Papers on Hysteria, translated by Abraham Brill. It is also the case that Jelliffe attended meetings of the Charaka Club, the exclusive (but not secret) society that Dana and Sachs cofounded.

The accounts of Thaw's sadistic attacks on his wife and other young women are taken almost verbatim from documentary sources. For the record, Mrs Merrill's astonishing testimony was given not at Thaw's murder trial in 1907, but at one of Thaw's subsequent sanity hearings. Moreover, it is only an urban legend (although reported as fact countless times) that Thaw was tried at the Jefferson Market courthouse; he was arraigned there, but both his murder trials took place in the criminal courts building on Centre

Street, next to the Tombs. There is no evidence that Thaw ever visited Mrs Merrill's establishment during the period of his confinement in the Matteawan asylum. Given the ease with which he escaped, however, such an absence without leave would not have been inconceivable.

The body of Miss Elsie Sigel, granddaughter of General Franz Sigel, was indeed discovered in the summer of 1909 in a trunk in an Eighth Avenue apartment belonging to one Leon Ling. The character called Chong Sing in my book is a combination of the real-life Chong Sing and another individual also involved in the case. Miss Sigel's body, however, was found about two and a half months before Freud arrived in New York, and, needless to say, the discovery was not made by Detective Jimmy Littlemore, who is an entirely imaginary character.

Equally imaginary is Dr Stratham Younger, as is Younger s love affair with Nora.