Preys and Predators Part 1 Chapter 20

 

20.          Medicine and Psychology

 

Doctor Watson was seated on the chair at the unit. He had seen Holmes leave after receiving a note from one of his boys. The doctor was to follow but was told to stay there.

“Our hare may be abounded.” Watson was told.

“Hare?” The doctor was not amused. It was a rarity when Holmes ever mentioned hunting unless it was the foe of the two-legged preys; technically the hare was two-legged, but the hare was still considered among the animals grouping. So were the chickens and ducks, but they cannot speak the language understood by mankind. The vocal expression of mankind in pain was equally understood, but no one cares when it is an animal, but over the ages, the doctors have perfected it by the calls of it. One day, physicians would have charts to denote the level of pain like music scores.

Doctor Watson saw the housemate of his left with his full attire but not the walking cane. Perhaps he was not in need of it as it was daylight. It was nighttime when you felt safer with a walking stick. Bartitsu was the art of self-defence learned by the other for his own protection. It was a combination of the elements of boxing, jujitsu, cane-fighting, and French kickboxing. 

“He would not stand one round with John.” John L. Sulivan was the world champion in bare knuckles and gloved. The doctor smiled, although boxing was not his sport, but like many, he cheered or jeered them from the sidelines.

The doctor then focused his mind on the unit. The stacks of prints and notes are stacked to Holmes’s side while the walking boundary area looked clear; there were still the single prints there. He declined to pick them up and gave his thoughts to the visit at Newgate Prison.

It was an honor to be in the company of the esteemed professor then.

“A most remarkable place. It differs so much from ours in my home country.” The professor had commented. “The Saint Giles Prison is more recent than yours. We treat the inmates with reasonable care. The doctors were there to treat the infirm, and like myself, we also treat the mental state of the inmates.”

(Extract from https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=2024&context=jclc).

“In all fairness, Belgium has a differing view on the incarceration of offenders.” Doctor Watson had replied to defend the system deployed there. He has his share of sympathy for the reform there, but the prisons were undermanned and overcrowded. Hard labour was a common punishment. Many Victorians believed that having to work very hard would prevent criminals from committing crime in the future. The crank and the treadmill: Prisons often made prisoners do pointless tasks such as turning a crank up to 10,000 times a day. Or walk for hours on giant circular tread mills. (Extract from https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zck3n9q#zp6xxbk )

“We lived in different realms, if I may say.” The professor smiled. “Let us visit some of the inmates here.”

“You may leave your cloak with the guards while inside.” Doctor Watson suggested to the Professor.

“No, it is okay. I do feel chilly without my cloak.” The Professor declined the suggestion. The visitation yielded little results, for the sharing was more confrontational than what it was supposed to be. The duo soon took leave of the prison and boarded the coach to return to their abodes.

“Are you implying that criminals are mad, Professor?”

“Not mad, but mentally challenged.” The professor explained. “Criminal behaviour is attributed to maladjustment and dysfunctional personality. Some criminologists were not averse to the principle of confinement and often favoured increased penalties like how we interned the mentally challenged.”

“It was designed to protect them from... hurt and also...”

“A stigma of processing. We kill to avoid being killed.” The professor held his view.

“Yet they kill for whatever reasons they may hold." Doctor Watson defended the incarceration of violent offenders.

“Yes, that may be their... intentions, but what drove it. I have founded the psychoanalyst to form theories and concepts surrounding the existence of mental illness and its interconnected nature with human behaviour. Throughout my research, I can conclude that behaviour can be explained through the analysis of one's experiences and trauma, giving accountability to the motivation of a person's actions.”

“The interpretation of his findings concluded a person can adapt his/her behaviour from childhood experiences to become a part of the hidden consciousness state. I studied unobservable behaviour—parts of the personality that are not visibly noticeable within one's nature and, on a basic level, cannot be explained.”

“I am still compiling my findings till now. It is unconclusive, for the depth of the mind is vast. We may be using only a small fraction of our brain... perhaps less than ten percent.” (Extract from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalytic_criminology).

“And how will you... surmise on the recent murders?”

“I can say it is the work of some men with the desire to preserve the organs for their trophies or research. Do you recall the works of Mary Shelley of Frankenstein?”

“A wild imagination of a lady.” Doctor Watson remarked.

“A lady she is, but her writing of the horrifying events was of pioneering view from her gender.” Professor Freud smiled. “You spoke out of ego that the female gender may not or should not be doing such tasks. I can assure you that one day in the future, we may regret that attitude.”

“A slip of my tongue there.” Doctor Watson apologized.

“A slip of the mind will be more appropriate.” The professor narrowed down the workings there. “Mary Shelley’s works are novels that express the tragedy of conflicts within an individual consciousness. Frankenstein is riven by the competing forces of his social conscience (his Super-Ego), his conscious desires (his Ego), and his unconscious wishes (his Id). It will not be difficult to demonstrate the competition between Frankenstein and the Monster as dramatic representations of the ego-id conflict, but first it is necessary to produce a reason or an origin for the essential divisions that break Frankenstein apart.”

“The simplest explanation seems to be straightforward: Oedipal rivalry coupled with sexual fear and guilt. My understanding of the book plot was along with my readings of it.”

“Victor Frankenstein is a bright young man, but his feelings were on the contrary. His father repeatedly urges marriage upon him—something which Victor fears for he loved his mother and detests the rivalry there, hence my oedipal effect. She was still very much a young lady, and it was seen when she gave birth to his other brothers, Ernest and William. And later, for some reason, the family adopted Elizabeth. She was an attraction to him but took great pains to avoid and then put off marriage to her—a marriage which his mother wished for on her death bed.”

“Frankenstein’s psychological conflicts, or his mental association was with sex and death.”

“Hmmm….” Doctor Watson nodded. It was his way of sharing that he was agreeable, but who could argue otherwise with the master of the subject then?

“Subconsciously, the object of his unconscious sexual desire, which is his mother, was removed when he viewed Elizabeth differently. Moreover, his mother’s death from scarlet fever was contracted from Elizabeth herself. She died and killed his object of desire. She represents the threat of sexuality, which Frankenstein fears; at another, she is an object of forbidden desire; incest was the word; and at a third, she is the'murderer’ of his mother. At times, we blamed some other family member for causing the death of another out of anger.”

“From there, Frankenstein therefore has subconscious reasons for every one of the murders that follow: the death of William’s case; a sibling rivalry whom he felt had abandoned him in the family.”

“Soon Frankenstein leaves home, knowing that neglect of his friends and family is wrong and that his father would disapprove. It is not difficult to see the Monster as an image of Frankenstein’s secret sexuality: ‘it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its' limbs'—especially when the description of the Monster itself is suggestively close to what might be the implement of Frankenstein’s sexuality, complete with its appurtenances and products.”

“Intriguing….” Doctor Watson was looking for words to express his thoughts.

“Do not patronize me, Doctor. I am saying from my findings. The Monster created by Victor is... an image; no, it was a phallic image, a representation of Frankenstein’s conscious sexual guilt and fear, and an embodiment of his Id—the unconscious irrational impulses, the amoral libido-fuelled forces that can act either for good (creation) or evil (destruction and death).”

“Immediately after the monster was created, Frankenstein falls into a guilt-induced dream that wonderfully combines all his sexual anxieties—conscious and unconscious. The dream is so disturbing that Frankenstein awakes—and is described in almost the same terms as the Monster—'a' cold dew covered my forehead... and every limb became' convulsed'—whereupon the Monster appears to him—'He' held up the curtain of the bed... and his eyes were fixed on me,’ which is another stunning image of the Monster as Frankenstein’s sexual guilt. One notes that it is then Frankenstein who runs away from the monster—that is, releases it to perform his unconscious wishes. Frankenstein himself falls ill and is nursed back to health, back to social normality by his ‘conscience’, his Super-Ego figure, Clerval.”

“Who’s Clerval?”

“Victor’s boyhood friend, who nurses Victor back to health in Ingolstadt. After working unhappily for his father, Henry begins to follow in Victor’s footsteps as a scientist. His cheerfulness counters Victor’s moroseness.” The professor stared at Doctor Watson. “There were no other feelings besides the brotherhood sharing. Victor did not view Clerval as a threat.”

“The id-Monster is now at liberty as an amoral force, but with explicitly sexual impulses. Since he is ugly, a notion that Victor attributed to his appearance and, assumably, unable to be loved by a woman, it is a mate he requires of Frankenstein.”

“He demanded a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself. He also knows that if this ‘passion’ is not gratified, it will turn from a desire for ‘the interchange of... sympathies’ into a wanton destructiveness. That is, the unconscious libidinous impulses of Frankenstein’s he represents will, if not properly gratified, turn from positive creative ones into something negative and destructive.” (Extract from https://mantex.co.uk/frankenstein-a-study-6/

“I have reached my house. Good night, Doctor Watson.’ The professor alighted from the coach, and slipped on the cloak. The doctor was left alone to his thoughts.

“I believe that there is another Frankenstein in the city. One that is equally deadly.” The professor had his last words towards Doctor Watson. The good doctor was making no progress on his findings at all.

The professor merely told what the mindset of a criminal or monster criminal is, but how does that relate to the murders? It was like a game of dice; you knew the numbers there, but the outcome was never foreseen unless you were a cheat.