Deadly Communion: Sex And Death In Old Vienna
Frank Tallis
As the century turned in 1900, the Viennese were obsessed with sex and death. Sex and death were everywhere. There were vast numbers of prostitutes on the streets and syphilis was rife. Art exhibitions were becoming more and more pornographic and writers were producing works for the stage, so obscene, that they were promptly banned. Meanwhile, composers like Mahler couldn't stop writing funeral marches, a huge cemetery (bigger than 'Old Vienna' itself) had been built on the outskirts of the city, and there were so many dead people, plans were made to transport them via a system of underground pipes. Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, picked up on these two big cultural obsessions. Indeed, he said that all human behaviour could be explained by two primary forces – Eros and Thanatos - the sex drive and the death instinct. Sex and death also met in the burgeoning field of sexology, where for the first time, a Viennese Professor called Krafft-Ebing described sexually motivated serial killers (or 'lust murderers').
I've always been fascinated by how the cultural milieu influences the expression of psychopathology. Our illnesses often reflect the preoccupations of the age (which is why, for example, today, the over valuation of 'thinness' has resulted in so many cases of anorexia nervosa). Subsequently, I began to consider what kind of monster Freud's Vienna might have produced. Needless to say, it had to be one who embodied the principal Viennese obsessions, and to do this properly, I had to invent a new psychiatric condition – thantophilia - sexual attraction not merely to the dead (as in necrophilia) but to Death itself. As monsters go, I was quite satisfied with the result, and even more satisfied that I was able to provide a detailed explanation of how he came to be, using the psychology of the day. My serial killer also employs a rather novel method with which to despatch his victims. I didn't think it up myself, but was told about it while tramping over Hampstead Heath with a consultant pathologist friend. 'If you had to kill someone,' I asked, 'How would you do it?' Being an expert on such matters, I thought he'd come up with something good. 'Suffocation,' he replied. 'That's not very interesting,' I muttered (crime writers can be very ungrateful). 'Oh well,' he persevered, 'There is another method I might employ. Quick, clean, and doesn't leave a mess.' 'Oh,' I said, 'What's that then?' When he'd finished there was only one word in my head: Eureka!
Deadly Communion is published by Random House
