Staged suicides, murders and cover-ups
This is what one of the more - not the most, though - honest Freudian researchers, Paul Roazen, had said about psychoanalytical, that is Freud-related or caused, suicides.
It ought ... to be seriously troubling how many psychoanalysts have ended up as suicides .... The list of those [Wiennese] analysts who have committed suicide is awesome (sic!?); among those who killed themselves [during Freud's lifetime] are ... Max Kahane (1923), ..., Karl Schrötter (1920s?), Herbert Silberer, (1923), ... and Victor Tausk (1919). Given the frequency of medical cover-ups about suicides, it is reasonable to assume that there are even more such deaths among analysts than we already know about. *
One can only agree. Without a doubt, many "natural" deaths, so classified by doctors, were suicides, and this included staged suicides. How many of those were staged is not known, but judging by available statistics, around 15% of all suicides are murders staged as suicides. Most certainly, Freud, as a doctor, would be aware of how death certificates are issued, and that most of the time, suicide won't be investigated.
And, as a clever criminal, he would have used the staging option in his murderous practise. This applies not only to his murdered followers but also to his patients and family members.
* Roazen, Paul. The Rise and Fall of Bruno Bettelheim. Psychohistory Review: Studies of Motivation in History and Culture 20, no. 3 (spring 1992): 221-50.
Moses and Monotheism
As Freud himself explained in Moses and Monotheism, murder is easy, but getting away with murder is harder. Pretending to be talking about text, Freud recounts his murderous philosophy writing;
The distortion of a text is not unlike a murder. The difficulty lies not in the execution of the deed but in the doing away with the traces. One could wish to give the word"distortion" the double meaning to which it has a right, although it is no longer used in this sense. It should mean not only "to change the appearance of," but also "to wrench apart," "to put in another place."
That is why ... we may count on finding the suppressed and abnegated material hidden away somewhere, though in an altered shape and form out of its original connection. Only it is not always easy to recognize. * (1)
For anyone who knows anything about Freud's way of disguising his message, it will immediately be obvious that what Freud is talking about is not a distortion of a text but a way of hiding a murder.
Distortion of the appearance of a murder or staging of a murder as a suicide
Let's uncover the real message hidden in the quote. This is what Freud had to say about the distortion of the appearance of a murder.
The difficulty lies not in the execution of the deed but in the doing away with the traces. ... the word"distortion" ... should mean not only "to change the appearance of," but also ..."to put in another place".
That is why ... we may count on finding the suppressed and abnegated material (related to murder) hidden away somewhere, though in an altered shape and form out of its original connection. Only it is not always easy to recognize.
This is basically, Freud's version of the definition of a staged suicide.
They cannot catch me
So how did he do it to avoid being found out in that many murder cases over the years? The first case was his nephew, John Freud, whom Freud killed, as he intimated, with a knife. How he disposed of the body is not known. Freud used a variety of killing methods, which is one of the reasons he was never caught. Freud was so brazen about being to clever to be caught that he bragged about it to his lover in Berlin Fliess claiming he was many years ahead of the police.
Pathogenic agent
A few cases involved the poisoning of his victims with a pathogenic agent. This was how Freud, as he revealed it, got rid of Nathan Weiss, as well as poisoning, with the same or similar pathogen, Josef Paneth, Ignaz Schönberg, and Theodor Meynert. Schönberg’s death – who was treated by Freud – was hastened by Freud’s negligence.
Medicinal drugs and cocaine
As a doctor, Freud had access to drugs, as well as cocaine, poisoning his patients. Freud described a case of a woman and his use of the wrong drug, as he intimated, resulting in her death. Another patient died of a drug he prescribed. As he confessed, he also injected his father with a deadly drug to hasten his death. Using injections of cocaine, Freud turned Fleischl into an addict, thus hastening his death. Protected by his cover as a doctor, Freud was never prosecuted for those deaths.
Streetwalker killings
Freud and his murderous partner in crime, Wilhelm Fliess, were two assassins, travelling around the Austrian empire, Italy, and possibly also England, and killing streetwalkers. The exact details of their modus operandi aren’t known. They were avoiding capture by leaving the place of the crime.
Apparent staged suicides
People in Freud's vicinity were dying like flies.
The following deaths were classified as suicides, to name just a few.
* Freud's patient, Pauline: fell out of the window of Freud's apartment.
* Freud's eldest half-brother, Emanuel's: fell out of a train.
* Dr Kahane had his wrists cut.
* Dr Tausk was shot, mutilated, and hanged on a cross-window.
* Silberer hanged on a cross-window.
Those cases can be classified as staged suicide, a method commonly used by a killer to cover up a murder. Staging is not new; it has been used over centuries by clever killers to avoid capture and punishment. Staging occurs when the offender arranges the crime scene so that it appears differently from what happened. Different methods of staging have been used:
* Adding or removing things (weapons) to/from the crime scene. (Tausk)
* Writing a suicide note to be left with the victim. (Tausk)
* Making murder look like a suicide or accident. (Pauline, Emanuel, Kahane, Tausk, Silberer)
* Moving the body to another location. (Tausk, Silberer)
* Rearranging the body position. (Tausk, Silberer)
* Arson
Methods of killing
* Shooting (Weininger, Tausk)
* Strangulation by hanging (Tausk, Silberer)
* Shooting and strangulation (Tausk)
* Shooting, strangulation by hanging and mutilation (Tausk)
In staged suicides, the simulated injury will be found in the parts of the body commonly used in genuine suicides,
* the temple (Tausk),
* the chin,
* the heart (Weininger)
* wrists (Kahane)
Staging is commonly done by males. The victims are as a rule found by their family members (Silberer, possibly others).
(1) Freud, Sigmund, Moses and Monotheism; (1939, p. 70).
(2) Ferguson, Claire & Petherick, Wayne. Getting away with murder: an examination of detected homicides staged as suicides. Homicide Studies, 20(1), 2016, pp. 3-24.