28. The Interpretation of Murder

28. The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld  (8/3/2011 - 8/10/2011)

This is totally strange book that I picked up on a whim from the clearance section of my local bookstore; the plot involves using Freudian psychology to solve a murder mystery, and it's very unusual.  Set in the turn of the century, the book imagines what Freud's first and only visit to America might have been like to make him deem Americans as savage and underdeveloped.  So there is no claim of factual evidence to support that happenings of the book; Jed Rubenfeld is apparently just fascinated by Freud.  And also by Hamlet, judging by how the main character, a psychologist named Stratham Younger, waxes poetic about the deeper meaning of Hamlet roughly 100 times in the course of the book. 

Despite its weird set up, it's actually not a bad book -- if you a) know a little about psychology (all I know is what my GenEd Psych class taught me and that was just about enough) and b) can get through all of the psychological politics that take place.  The murder mystery part itself is pretty straightforward -- several young women are attacked and brutalized, one is murdered and the other suffers amnesia, which is how the psychologists (who just happen to be staying in the same hotel) get involved.  It's a good mystery, full of twists and turns and adventures into odd spots in early 1900s New York. 

But the psychology stuff gets old pretty quick -- Jung, Freud's disciple, is cold and aloof, which distresses the others but to the reader is merely unlikeable, and there is some sort of cloak-and-dagger trio working in the background to keep Freud from making a series of speeches at a well-known university -- which is explained by the end but really isn't satisfying in that it doesn't seem really necessary for the plot.  There is also some questioning among the psychologists as to who they should be allied with in the psychology world, which is a little confusing and I suspect that one would need a detailed grasp of psychological history to fully understand. 

I did overall enjoy the book and if you like psychology and murder mysteries, you would probably really enjoy it as well.  But I do have to point this out: since many of Freud's theories are largely debunked within the psychology community, the book takes on a whole different layer of amusement. After all, since his ideas about the human psyche are what ultimately solves the mystery, I must wonder: if someone else's psychology was applied, would there have been a mystery in the first place?