Occupational hazard
As one of the recent Freud biographers, Frederick Crews, In his Freud: The Making of an Illusion (2017), pointed out, For a long while, suicide was an occupational hazard of the psychoanalytic profession, whose practitioners tended to be no less unbalanced than their patients. Between 1902 and 1938, at least 9 of the 149 members of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Association killed themselves. *
Notably, once Freud died in 1939 (!), the plague of psychoanalytic suicides stopped as suddenly as it started, which seems to indicate that Freud may have had something to do with their death. Beware that, at the time, suicide was not a diagnosis a family would want to hear. Thus, many suicides, also including staged ones, were classified as cases of natural death. Without a doubt, there were more suicidal deaths, or murders staged as a suicide than had been reported.
* Crews, Frederic, Freud: The Making of an Illusion (2017, p. 655).
Was Freud a murderer?
Looking for contact details of Mr Peter Swales, a well-respected Freud researcher, I contacted one of his former friends, a former research fellow of the Freud Museum in London. (For the time being, I will be calling him Mr X.)
In my email to X, I informed him that, I have found out many more sordid details about Freud [more than Swales], and that's why I wanted to discuss them with Swales.
To which X replied: Peter Swales has very recently died, adding, I am curious about the "sordid details" about Freud that you have found. This is how our exchange started.
I wasn't sure he would be seriously interested in discussing the dark, or should I say, black side of Freud's personality due to his background which I pointed out.
From your short resume, I wrote, I found out that you are a former Research Fellow of the Freud Museum, London. Now, the things that I have to say will, no doubt, make the Freud Museum, let's say, unhappy, since all of a sudden, the saint will become a villain.
Notably, in the course of our exchange with X, he quickly steered our exchange toward the question of Freud being a murderer.
Books about Freud being a murderer
There are books that argue that Freud was actually a murderer, and many other things, he wrote. Your imputation that I might be shocked as a Research Fellow of the Freud Museum is absurd. As it turned out, it wasn't.
There are, indeed, books that argue that Freud was a murderer. Eric Miller, who wrote the book Passion for Murder - The Homicidal Deeds of Dr. Sigmund Freud, in 1984, accused Freud of being a killer of his nephew, John, living in Manchester (until he was killed by Freud). And, Paul Scagnelli, in Deadly Dr Freud: The Murder of Emanuel Freud and the Disappearance of John Freud, in 1994, following Miller's lead, accused Freud of a double murder, not only of his nephew but also of Freud's eldest half-brother.
Responding to my doubts about X's genuine interest in Freud's criminality, X wrote,
You think I didn’t know and discuss with Peter Swales in the early 1980s his hypothesis that Freud contemplated murdering Fließ?
So, also Swales believed Freud could've been a murderer. As X pointed out, the issue I raised near the beginning of our “conversation” was whether Freud was a murderer, not whether he had felt murderous or contemplated murdering someone.
Indeed, it was X that raised this issue, not me, and a good question is why. Why would he do that, unless he wasn't suspecting murderous criminality on Freud's part?
Megalomania
Thus, also X himself entertained the idea that Freud was a murderer. But soon our conversation deteriorated. Mirroring Freud's megalomania, X wrote:
You are fortunate in having the opportunity that a serious researcher like myself, even after the feeble arguments you have tried out on me, is still prepared - and curious - to know what you think is evidence that Freud was a murderer.
This wasn't unexpected. In the world of Freudian scholars, any arguments that damage Freud's saintly reputation will be rejected for the simple reason that Freudians still make good money from their psychoanalytic clients.
Could Freud have been a serial killer? Considering that, his grandson, Clement was exposed ... as a paedophile who sexually abused girls as young as 10 for decades (1), and that Clement's brother Lucien, would physically attack people, and send others anonymous death threats (2), why, for a change, couldn't Freud be a murderer?
World importance
X wrote further,
If you have such evidence then this will be a discovery of world importance and your name will be renowned in the realm of Freud scholarship.
Wow! Of course, I want my name, and a photo, to be on the cover of Time magazine which on a couple of occasions -undeservedly - featured Freud's face on its cover!
And X added, I personally will be fascinated. This sounded great.
Further X explained:
I must point out, though you will presumably not believe me, that I have no more emotional investment in Freud’s not being a murderer than in Sickert’s not being Jack the Ripper.
Ignorant of evidence
This is where X's politeness ends. Thus, he wrote:
I am simply curious as to whether, in your apparent incompetence, you may have (very improbably) stumbled on something. I am not the kind of person who claims to know things without evidence, and I do not claim to know Freud was not a murderer. I do think it unlikely, but it may be that I am ignorant of evidence that you have discovered. You now have an opportunity to enlighten me, and I will consider your case dispassionately and fairly.
Significantly, X stated, I do not claim to know Freud was not a murderer, which is an admission that he doesn't consider the idea outlandish, and one can only ask why.
"Serious fantasies” about murdering Fliess
This is what X had to say when it comes to considering Freud being a murderer
I discussed with Swales over many years a number of his (and my) hypotheses, speculations, and discoveries about Freud. At no time did he hypothesise or speculate, in discussion with me or in any other context I am aware of, that Freud was a murderer.
At most he speculated that Freud might have had “serious fantasies” about murdering Fließ at Achensee.
This sound like a reversal of what X wrote earlier about having discussed Swales', hypothesis that Freud contemplated murdering Fließ?
There's a big difference between having serious fantasies, and contemplating murdering someone, as Freud did. A denial of Freud's murderous nature? I didn't expect anything less from a Research Fellow of the Freud Museum.
Once Freudian, always Freudian? A tiger never loses its stripes.
This was the end of our conversation. When the time came to reveal the proof that Freud was a serial killer, X stopped responding to my emails. So much for being, as he claimed, a serious researcher. When discussing Freud's murderous, criminal past, the "serious" Freudian researchers clammed up. He wasn't the only one.
This is what Swales wrote about the Freudians:
thanks to my long-standing qualms about casting pearls before swine - the world of Freud studies remains almost completely ignorant and disinformed. (3)
The Biblical allusion is obvious, and one can only agree.
As Jesus said, do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. (4)
Now, let's see what the swine will do next.
(1) Evans, Martin & Rayner, Gordon, Sir Clement Freud exposed as a paedophile as police urged to probe Madeleine McCann links, The Telegraph, June 15, 2016.
(2) Moore, Charlie, Portrait of Lucian Freud, a dangerous, devoted artist. The Telegraph, October 6, 2013.
(3) Swales, Peter J., In Statu Nascendi: Freud, Minna Bernays, and the Creation of Herr Aliquis, Draft, 1998.
(4) The Bible, New International Version, Matthew 7: 6.