Authors: Frank Tallis
Tags: #Suspense, #Crime, #Fiction, #General, #Psychological, #Mystery & Detective, #Mystery Fiction, #Historical, #Serial Murderers, #Psychological Fiction, #Police, #Secret societies, #Austria, #Psychoanalysts, #Police - Austria - Vienna, #Vienna (Austria), #Vienna
Vienna Blood (52 page)
With satanic joy on his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate.
All of the above begs the question: Why were there so many secret societies and cults in Vienna around 1900? Vienna was the most civilized city in Europe, enjoying a cultural renaissance and producing unprecedented advances in the arts, science, and philosophy. The alarming answer might be a simple piece of legislation: article 18 of the postrevolutionary “Law on Associations” of 1867.
In a sense, the city was dramatizing the principles of Freudian repression. Essentially, psychoanalysis tells us that if you push something down (for example, a memory), it'll pop up somewhere else (perhaps as a symptom). Article 18 of the “Law on Associations” was all about pushing things down.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was undoubtedly repressive with respect to the formation of societies and associations. A license to convene was required and this was granted only by a specially appointed commissioner. These licenses were not easily obtained and were often given with strings attached. The Freemasons, for example, could meet in Vienna under the auspices of a friendly society—but they were forbidden to work their rituals. The “Law on Associations” was extremely counterproductive, driving subversives underground and “infecting” the body politic in the process. One could argue— perhaps controversially—that the social illness that eventually emerged was National Socialism, and so virulent was this illness, it took a world war to treat it.
In these troubled times, there is still much to learn from events in Vienna in 1900 and the principles of psychoanalysis. Freedom of speech is sacred and should never be compromised. When we consign demons to the unconscious, they do not go away, they simply become more powerful.
Frank Tallis
London 2007
Sources
Gamwell, Lynn and Richard Wells, eds.
Sigmund Freud and Art: His Personal Collection of Antiquities.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989.
Graf, Max. “Reminiscences of Professor Sigmund Freud.”
The Psychoanalytic Quarterly
11, 1942.
Hamann, Brigitte.
Hitler's Vienna: a Dictator's Apprenticeship.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Jones, Ernest.
The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud.
Penguin Books Ltd., UK, 1964.
Personal communication to the author concerning the practice of Freemasonry in Habsburg, Vienna, from Dr. Otto Fritsch of the Grand Lodge of Austria, 2004.
FRANK TALLIS is a practical clinical psychologist and an expert in obsessional states. He is the author of
A Death in Vienna
and
Vienna Blood,
as well as seven nonfiction books on psychology. He is the recipient of a writers’ award from the Arts Council of Great Britain and the New London Writers Award from the London Arts Board.
A Death in Vienna
was short-listed for the 2005 Crime Writers’ Association Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award. Tallis lives in London.
Vienna Blood
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Frank Tallis
Dossier copyright © 2007 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group.
A division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
MORTALIS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in the United Kingdom by Century Books in 2006.
Published in paperback in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books,
an imprint of The Random House Group, Ltd., in 2007.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49854-0
v3.0
Table of Contents
Chapter - 1
Chapter - 2
Chapter - 3
Chapter - 4
Chapter - 5
Chapter - 6
Chapter - 7
Chapter - 8
Chapter - 9
Chapter - 10
Chapter - 11
Chapter - 12
Chapter - 13
Chapter - 14
Chapter - 15
Chapter - 16
Chapter - 17
Chapter - 18
Chapter - 19
Chapter - 20
Chapter - 21
Chapter - 22
Chapter - 23
Chapter - 24
Chapter - 25
Chapter - 26
Chapter - 27
Chapter - 28
Chapter - 29
Chapter - 30
Chapter - 31
Chapter - 32
Chapter - 33
Chapter - 34
Chapter - 35
Chapter - 36
Chapter - 37
Chapter - 38
Chapter - 39
Chapter - 40
Chapter - 41
Chapter - 42
Chapter - 43
Chapter - 44
Chapter - 45
Chapter - 46
Chapter - 47
Chapter - 48
Chapter - 49
Chapter - 50
Chapter - 51
Chapter - 52
Chapter - 53
Chapter - 54
Chapter - 55
Chapter - 56
Chapter - 57
Chapter - 58
Chapter - 59
Chapter - 60
Chapter - 61
Chapter - 62
Chapter - 63
Chapter - 64
Chapter - 65
Chapter - 66
Chapter - 67
Chapter - 68
Chapter - 69
Chapter - 70
Chapter - 71
Chapter - 72
Chapter - 73
Chapter - 74
Chapter - 75
Chapter - 76
Chapter - 77
Chapter - 78
Chapter - 79
Chapter - 80
Chapter - 81
Chapter - 82
Chapter - 83
Chapter - 84
Chapter - 85
Chapter - 86
Chapter - 87
Chapter - 88