In 1902, elegant Vienna is the city of the new century, the center of discoveries in everything from the writing of music to the workings of the human mind. But now a brutal homicide has stunned its citizens and appears to have bridged the gap between science and the supernatural. Two very different sleuths from opposite ends of the spectrum will need to combine their talents to solve the boggling crime: Detective Oskar Rheinhardt, who is on the cutting edge of modern police work, and his friend Dr. Max Liebermann, a follower of Sigmund Freud and a pioneer on new frontiers of psychology. As a team they must use both hard evidence and intuitive analysis to solve a medium’s mysterious murder–one that couldn’t have been committed by anyone alive.__________________________________________________________THE MORTALIS DOSSIER- PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS: THE CURIOUS CASE OF PROFESSOR SIGMUND F. AND DETECTIVE FICTIONSummertime–the Austrian Alps: A middle-aged doctor, wishingto forget medicine, turns off the beaten track and begins a strenuousclimb. When he reaches the summit, he sits and contemplates the distantprospect. Suddenly he hears a voice.“Are you a doctor?”He is not alone. At first, he can’t believe that he’s being addressed.He turns and sees a sulky-looking eighteen-year-old. He recognizesher (she served him his meal the previous evening). “Yes,” he replies.“I’m a doctor. How did you know that?”She tells him that her nerves are bad, that she needs help.S ometimes she feels like she can’t breathe, and there’s a hammering inher head. And sometimes something very disturbing happens. She seesthings–including a face that fills her with horror. . . .Well, do you want to know what happens next? I’d be surprised ifyou didn’t.We have here all the ingredients of an engaging thriller: an isolatedsetting, a strange meeting, and a disconcerting confession.So where does this particular opening scene come from? A littleknownwork by one of the queens of crime fiction? A lost reel of anearly Hitchcock film, perhaps? Neither. It is in fact a faithful summaryof the first few pages of Katharina by Sigmund Freud, also known ascase study number four in his Studies on Hysteria, co-authored with JosefBreuer and published in 1895.It is generally agreed that the detective thriller is a nineteenthcenturyinvention, perfected by the holy trinity of Collins, Poe, and(most importantly) Conan Doyle; however, the genre would havebeen quite different had it not been for the oblique influence of psychoanalysis.The psychological thriller often pays close attention topersonal history–childhood experiences, relationships, and significantlife events–in fact, the very same things that any self-respectingtherapist would want to know about. These days it’s almost impossibleto think of the term “thriller” without mentally inserting the prefix“psychological.”So how did this happen? How did Freud’s work come to influencethe development of an entire literary genre? The answer is quite simple.He had some help–and that help came from the American filmindustry.Now it has to be said that Freud didn’t like America. After visitingAmerica, he wrote: “I am very glad I am away from it, and even morethat I don’t have to live there.” He believed that American food hadgiven him a gastrointestinal illness, and that his short stay in Americahad caused his handwriting to deteriorate. His anti-American sentimentsfinally culminated with his famous remark that he consideredAmerica to be “a gigantic mistake.”Be that as it may, although Freud didn’t like America, Americaliked Freud. In fact, America loved him. And nowhere in America wasFreud more loved than in Hollywood.The special relationship between the film industry and psychoanalysisbegan in the 1 Read Less