Murder on Freud's mind

The following writers revealed the murderous nature of the true Freud.

Unfortunately, Maylan's revelations were ignored

Psychoanalysing Freud

In 1929 – Freud was seventy-three at the time - a German-American psychoanalyst, Dr Charles E. Maylan, (1886-1981), published a book titled Freud's tragic complex: An Analysis of Psychoanalysis. The book was an attempt at analysing Freud, and his new “science”, by employing Freud's own psychoanalytic method. Maylan analysed Freud's autobiographical material - in the first place his so-called dreams - appearing in the Interpretation of Dreams (1900). Maylan concluded that the perversions and failings of psychoanalysis reflected those of its creator.
             Moreover, Maylan determined that Freud was a murderous psychopath, who created a false discipline of psychoanalysis seducing his followers and patients into believing his mad doctrines. Maylan considered Freud mentally ill, psychoanalysis the symptom of his illness. Notably, Maylan claimed that Freud’s “analyses” of famous persons are autobiographical, describing Freud’s own personality.
             As Yerushalmi pointed out, according to Maylan, at the root of the shortcomings and perversions of psychoanalysis lie those of its founder. (1)
             As one would expect, Freud wasn’t happy with Maylan’s portrayal of him. Thus, writing, on October 8, 1929, to the early translator of his books into English, Abraham Brill, Freud denigrated Maylan stating:
he [is} a queer, abnormal customer unfitted for our work. The book is his personal revenge. (2)
Judging by Freud’s vehement reaction, Maylan was right on the money.
             And what did Freud’s former followers, who knew Freud well, had to say about Maylan's book?
             Dr Alfred Adler, a close collaborator of Freud’s, at least until their break-up in 1912, agreed with Maylan’s analysis of his former master stating,
Maylan has set out to give the psychology of Freud. I cannot express how ingeniously and authoritatively he accomplished this. (3)
             And Carl Jung, Freud’s intended crown prince, who broke up with Freud in 1913, concurred stating:
Maylan's unmerciful … book is staggeringly true. … It is the true key to Freud's psychology, not only of his persona! psychology, but also of … psycho-analysis. (3)
 (1) Yerushalmi, Yosef, Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable, (1981, pp. 58-59).
(2)  Falzeder, Ernst, Is There Still an Unknown Freud? A Note on the Publications of Freud's Texts and on Unpublished Documents, In Psychoanalytic Filiations: Mapping the Psychoanalytic Movement, Psychoanalytic Filiations, ( 2015, p. 167),
 (3) Charles E. Maylan, Pioneer in Psychology Will Lecture at Woman's Club, (publication title unknown), (1929).

Death of disciple

In 1970, another Freudian researcher, Paul Roazen in his book, Brother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk, about the alleged suicide of Freud’s forgotten disciple, Victor Tausk. In this book, Roazen intimated that Freud had murdered Tausk.

Guilty as charged?

In 1984 Eric Miller published a book aptly titled. Passion for Murder -The Homicidal Deeds of Dr. Sigmund Freud, based on his meticulous research into Freud's criminal past. In this book, Miller accused Freud of being a serial killer.
His research concentrated on the disappearance of Freud's nephew John, residing in Manchester, England, but he also intimated that Freud killed other people, his doctor "friends", and acquaintances. As Miller explained, The Non Vixit Dream contains not only his confession to the murders of [professor] Fleischl and [doctor] Paneth and [his nephew] John, but also a death-threat against [Freud's boyfriend, doctor] Fliess should he ever reveal the fact of these murders. *
 Elsewhere Miller pointed out that the dream book contains, Freud’s confessions to having caused the deaths of [his patient] Mathilde and Fleischl. Moreover, as Miller pointed out, Freud himself had supplied enough other information to question his involvement in the deaths of Josef Paneth, [the fiance of Minna Bernays] Ignaz Schonberg, [his follower] Victor Tausk and [doctor] Nathan Weiss),**

* Miller, Eric, Passion for Murder -The Homicidal Deeds of Dr. Sigmund Freud, (1984, p. 136).
** Miller, (1984, p. 292).

The murder of Emanuel Freud and disappearance of John Freud

Following in Miller’s footsteps, Paul, Scagnelli, in his book titled, Deadly Dr. Freud: The murder of Emanuel Freud and Disappearance of John Freud, of 1994, posited that Freud bad paid an unknown assessing to have his eldest half-brother, Emanuel, living in Manchester, murdered, and that he also killed his nephew, and Emanuel’s son., John Freud.

Violent Freud

Yet another Freud researcher, Peter Joffre Swales, recounted Freud's murderous nature. During Freud's last meeting with Fliess, in August 1900, in Achensee,  Freud and Fliess argued. This is how Fliess recalled their meeting, On that occasion, Freud showed a violence toward me. 
As he alleged, it was Freud’s intention to lure him into a lonely mountainous region, then to push him over a precipice or into water below. Luckily for Fliess, he erred on the side of caution and escaped unharmed. Fliess claimed, he escaped because he had cause to suspect Freud’s intention. (1)
 He most probably had read all about it in Freud's dream and psychopathological books, as well as in Freud's letter of March 23, 1900, (2) in which  Freud alluded to the murderous ambivalence of Count Oerindur (3).
(1) Malcolm, Janet, In the Freud Archives, (1964, pp. 133).
(2) Freud, Sigmund, The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904, (1985, p. 406).
(3) Schur, Max, Freud Living and Dying, (1972, p. 206).

A murderous advice

In his Fragment of a Great Confession (1949), one of his most devoted disciples, Theodor Reik, recounted his psychoanalytical session with Freud.
Reik's wife was severely ill, and Reik met a young woman, who, many years younger than myself, attracted me in many ways, not only sexually.
During the session, Reik confessed [to Freud] that the thought had sometimes occurred to me to get a divorce from my wife, and to marry this girl, but ... you cannot divorce a wife who is dangerously ill.*
(True, but one can kill her.)
 Then Freud asked him Do you remember the novel The Murderer by Schnitzler? * Reik did.
The novel is about a man who poisons his sickly mistress to marry another woman. It was then, Reik realised that he had an unconscious death wish towards his ill wife.
             At the end of the session, Freud added, I would have thought you stronger.*
Apparently, Freud was advising Reik to murder the ailing wife as a solution to his problem.
Did Reik, following Freud's advice, kill his wife? Reik didn't reveal what he did or didn't do to her but the title of his book, supposed to be his cofession, hints at his guilt.
Reik's wife, Ella, died in 1934. Subsequently, Reik married the young girl he was attracted to.**
 * Reik, Fragment of a Great Confession, (1949, pp.  425, 426, 439-440).
 ** Sherman, Murray H., Reik, Schnitzler, Freud, and “the murderer": The Limits of Insight in Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Review, 100(5), October 2013.

Putnam was gullible, Freud was mad...

I was a murderer!

James Putnam, the American neurologist, who fell under Freud's bizarre spell, recounted in the letter of 1913, that
             Dr. Freud pointed out to me ... that I was a murderer! Think of that. ...  I suppose he meant ... I was to be ... better able to stop being a murderer. *
 Freud was lying to him. It was Freud that was a murderer (an assassin), and he had no intention of stopping.
            Oddly, Putnam seemed to accept Freud's murderous characterisation of him, not realising it was Freud that was a murderer - as in most contexts - projecting his own criminal personality on the gullible Putnam.
             Having accepted Freud's perverse diagnosis, Putnam calmly observed that he, too, sometimes felt like killing someone **, not realising the difference between feeling like killing someone and, like Freud, acting on those feelings, and killing someone.
 * Putnam, James J., James Jackson Putnam and psychoanalysis : letters between Putnam and Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones, William James, Sandor Ferenczi, and Morton Prince, 1877-1917, 1971, p. 40., (to Fanny Bowditch, December 10, 1913).
 ** Putnam, (1971, p. 60).

Freud's contributions to the local graveyard...

May you all die. 

There's no doubt that Freud was the epitome of a murderer. As his private doctor, Schur, recounted In his Freud's biography,
in terms of wishes ... he [Freud] wanted Fliess [his boyfriend], Fleischl [his supervisor], his father, his brother Julius, his sister Anna, and anyone else he hated to die.(1) And Freud hated lots of people. Unsurprisingly, many of those, who came close to Freud, were dying like flies. 

Wishing sons dead

As one of the more inquisitive Freud's researchers, Roazen, revealed, Freud certainly harbored death wishes against his own sons, as he himself recorded. (2) The sons were lucky to escape with their lives.             

Patients' "funny" suicides

Oddly, the Freud family's housekeeper, Paula Fichtl, who, having worked for the family for 53 years, had firsthand knowledge of what went on in the Freud household, found it, Funny that so many of the patients of the daughter (Anna Freud) and the professor had taken their own lives.  (3)
Remarkably, just like her father, also Freud's daughter – hardly a coincidence - had been a dedicated contributor to numerous deaths by psychoanalysis.

Killing off the wife

 In addition, as a renowned Freud researcher, Peter Swales, stated, Freud had some fantasies about killing off his wife! (4) Although, in her case – too close to home - Freud didn't act out his fantasy.
             The death of Freud's father deserves special attention and will be explored later. Fleischl, whom Freud "treated" with cocaine for morphine addiction, became a cocaine addict. As Freud admitted in his dream book, his "cure" hastened Fleischl's death. There's little doubt that, as Schur pointed out, Freud intention was to kill Fleischl.

Killing Julius
When Freud was 25 months, Freud's brother Julius died only 6 months old.
I greeted my one year-younger brother (who died after a few months), Freud confessed, with adverse wishes and genuine childhood jealousy; and that his death left the germ of (self-)reproaches in me. (5) But wishes cannot kill! So, why would Freud felt guilt about Julius death, if he wasn't involved?
             What happened to Julius?  A small child, Freud explained, attempts to injure him [new brother] and even murderous assaults are not unknown. (6) And, disguised as a female, Freud "confessed" that he knew of, a girl, not yet three years old, tried to strangle a suckling in the cradle. (7) Apparently, in Julius' case, "she" succeeded. No wonder, having killed his sibling in the crib, Freud felt pangs of conscience.
Incidentally, his sister Anna, whom he also hated, survived his lethal attentions.

Wishing for the death of the family, incest and bisexuality

As Schur explained, in himself, Freud discovered, murderous wishes against his parents and siblings, as well as wishes of incest and of bisexuality. (7)
What Schur didn't reveal was the fact that Freud wasn't satisfied with only wishing for murder, incest, and bisexuality, instead acting out those wishes in real life.

Unconscious travelling death wishes

Moreover, Schur also revealed, Freud's fearful preoccupation with the danger of a train accident when members of his family, or Fliess, went on a trip. As Schur pointed out, Freud's fears were also an expression ... of unconscious death wishes.* (8)
In other words, every time anyone close to him travelled, Freud hoped they would be killed.  Unfortunately, he was out of luck. No one of the members of his family, nor Fliess, was killed while travelling. No problem, Freud was happy to kill, at least some of them when they weren't travelling.
 (1) Schur, Freud: Living and Dying, (1972, pp. 341-342).
 (2) Roazen, Paul, Brother animal: the story of Freud and Tausk, (1970, p. 112).
 (3) Berthelsen, Detlef, Alltag bei Familie Freud. Die Erinnerungen der Paula Fichtl, (1987, p. 59).
 (4) Rudnytsky, Peter L, Psychoanalytic Conversations: Interviews with Clinicians, Commentators, and critics, (2000, p. 343).
 (5) Freud, Freud, Sigmund, The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904, (1985, p. 167). Letter to Fliess, October 3, 1897.(6) SE 15, p. 204.
 (7) Schur, (1972, p. 135).
 (8) Schur, (1972, p. 181).

Unlike Bundy, Freud was never caught!

Murderous impulse

Freud was superstitious. This is how he explained it.
 The superstition in obsessional neurotics [like Freud] is the result of their rage, anger and a murderous impulse. And since the repressed sadistic component is attached to love, the murderous impulse is directed against the loved person.
As Freud explained his own superstition has its roots in suppressed ambition. (1)  As he revealed in his dream book, Freud was pathologically ambitious.
             In translation, Freud's superstition meant that he was a murderous sadist who wanted to kill the very people whom he "loved" (like his lover Fliess, and members of his own family).
             According to Freud, judged by our unconscious wishful impulses, we ... are ... a gang of murderers.  (2) He was, of course, talking about himself, projecting his murderous mentality on humankind in general.
And in his dream book, the elated Freud exclaimed,
How many people I’ve followed to the grave already! But I’m still alive. I’ve survived them all; I’m left in possession of the field. (3)
Freud was alive, but the open question is how many of those people he survived, he sent to the grave. Most certainly, a lot.
 * SE 6, p. 250.
 ** SE 14, p. 297.
 *** SE 5, p. 485.

Not to be feared!

Freud was a dangerous murderer. And his crown prince was lucky to remain alive. He never knew how dangerous Freud was. Thus, in his letter to Carl Jung of February 29, 1912, Freud hinted at his murderous urges relating them to his sexuality. This is what he wrote, I took myself in hand and quickly turned off my excess libido. In translation, not having access to Jung, Freud found an outlet for his sexual urges somewhere else. Notably, Freud was already 66 at the time, a sexual superman always looking for more.
It was lucky for Jung that Freud managed, in time, to turn off his excess libido or the consequences would have been dire. As the pacified Freud explained: Since then I have become undemanding and not to be feared.*  This is killer talk.
 * Freud, Sigmund & Jung, Carl, G., The Freud/Jung Letters: The Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung, (1974, p. 488).

Murderous Jehovah

Most if not all of Freud's writings are autobiographical. Notably, in his defamatory essay Freud claimed that President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924):
          In his unconscious he had identified himself with the Hebrew Jehovah who delighted in smiting his enemies. *
Of course, Freud knew nothing about the president, whom he never met, but knew all about himself.
            No doubt, the quote applies to the Jewish Freud, rather than to the gentile Wilson. It was the insane Freud who, identified himself with the Hebrew Jehovah.
As Freud revealed in his dream book, he was delighted when his acquaintances were dying by his hand.
             Significantly - not for a normal person but for Freud - Wilson was born in the same year as Freud, without doubt increasing Freud's identification with him.
 * Freud, Sigmund & Bullit, William C., Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study, (1967, p. 160).

Freud was a keen Sherlock Holmes reader.

Sherlock Freud

This is how Freud explains the logic of a murderer. Indeed, he knew what he was talking about.
             If you were a detective ... would you expect ... that the murderer had left his photograph ... at the place of the crime, with his address attached? or would you ... have to be satisfied with ... obscure traces? *
             And again, shortly before his death, Freud wrote, a murder: the difficulty is not in perpetrating the deed, but in getting rid of its traces. **
             Has Freud left enough obscure traces to be identified as a serial murderer? Not, if one is looking for smoking guns all over the place, in the bathroom, bedroom, in the closet, under the table. Only stupid people, and most if not all of Freud's biographers, believe in the idea of a murderer leaving a smoking gun lying on the table and a murder's visit card.
             Freud wasn't stupid enough to incriminate himself. The biographer shouldn't be silly, either. Listen to your master and don't be fooled... There's enough incriminating circumstantial evidence in Freud's papers and writings to have him hanged - but only if one is as clever, or cleverer than the master criminal, Freud.            
* SE 15, p. 27.
 ** SE  23, p. 43.

Disillusioning truth

In a letter of February 10, 1952, to Sidney Horrocks at Manchester Central Reference Library, Dr Leslie Adams, who was researching Freud family's past, wrote:
the Freud family are morbidly reticent about their family history... any work which may be done in this direction must be in spite of their non-cooperation.
 This indicates that behind this history there is some desperately disillusioning truth.*
Considering Freud' elevated position at the time as the psychoanalytical prophet, one would expect the family would be more than happy to bask in the reflection of the Freudian glory. But, nothing like that happened. Instead, the British family behaved like the proverbial fish, not even gasping for air. And the obvious question to ask is why. Was the reticence of the Freud family a cover-up for Freud's murders?
* Gall, Alan, The Deadly Doctor Freud - A Tale from the Archive, The Journal, 08. 2008.

The murderous Freud


This is Freud's explanation and justification for his murderous deeds revealed in The New Introductory Lectures, of 1933, six years before his death:

It really seems as though it is necessary for us to destroy some other thing or person in order not to destroy ourselves.*

Allegedly, Freud contemplated killing himself on a couple of occasions, but, unfortunately for his victims, he decided against it instead choosing to destroy (kill) other persons.
There's a sick logic to it. You can kill yourself once, but you can kill others, at will, many times in the process becoming one of the most prolific murderers that ever walked the face of the earth!

The paranoid Freud was also killing for other reasons, too, murdering those whom he perceived - right or wrong - a danger to his life and/or his pseudo-science.
 And he was killing the members of his family, in the first place his two fathers, his "stepfather", Jacob, and his, as he believed, the biological one, Emanuel.
 Freud also enjoyed killing, on his own or in tandem with the other assassin, his homosexual lover from Berlin, Dr Wilhelm Fliess. Unsurprisingly, Freud's writings and letters are filled with references to murders and (staged) suicides.

* SE 12, p. 105.