I have always thought that there was a striking resemblance between Freud's earliest case-histories, which he published as Studies in Hysteria, and the Sherlock Holmes stories. In the Studies, as in Sherlock Holmes, we are presented with the man of wisdom to whom people bring their problems; who listens in silence; then asks a number of carefully considered questions; and who finally solves the mystery and restores things to the order they were in before tragedy struck - or at least unearths the culprit. There is even an episode in the Studies about the great doctor on holiday in a mountain resort. But a man like Freud and Holmes can, of course, never take a holiday: here, too, a mystery is brought to him to solve; naturally, he obliges.

LRB 5 June 1980 | PDF Download