Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Series, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Mystery, Psychopathy, Psychopathology
Usually I find a movie made from a book to be
disappointing. The book seems so much
richer – it is filled with inner thoughts, but perhaps most importantly, I have
seen – envisioned – the environs so clearly and accurately that the
representation that is on the screen is disappointing, sometimes jarringly
so. One exception to this was the Harry
Potter series of movies. Somehow, they
seem to have gotten the visuals right enough – they weren’t the same as mine,
but they were somehow proper.
I liked reading Sherlock Holmes books when I was a kid. I didn’t love them – I liked them. Detective novels, mysteries, have never been
my genre. But Sherlock I admired. He could observe things and make deductions
from his observations. I think I saw him
as very smart and, growing up in a family that admired smarts, I admired him
and wanted to emulate him, but feared that I could not. He was too reserved to be the kind of person
that a wild thinker – an impulsive individual – like me - could ever grow into
being. I also found the stories somewhat
formulaic and lost interest in his ability to deduce things from simple
observation. It felt like a nice party
trick, and I think I was frankly too young to understand the backstory that was
also being told that knit together the individual elements of the manifold
cases that were presented, so I did not become a fan.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered the series
Sherlock, starring Benedict
Cumberbatch as Sherlock and Martin Freeman as Dr.
John Watson. Admittedly, the visuals
from my 10-year-old brain have faded quite a bit in the ensuing decades, but I
still vividly recall the sea of red headed men waiting to apply for a job in
one story. What is refreshing about this
series is that it creates a novel palette – not only does it update the London
Environs, its characters are contemporary with contemporary concerns, and this,
I think, humanizes the story. This is an
instance of a movie making characters more, not less, robust – more three
dimensional, at least for me. Even
though I had not been a fan, I recognized something of the characters in their
contemporary versions. I vaguely
recalled that Dr. Watson had been a military doctor, and, while it never
occurred to my ten-year-old self that two gentlemen roommates might be
considered gay – that might have been a private thought of an older reader;
here it is a theme the series publicly repeatedly plays with.
But what was most gratifying is that these two men are not
stodgy at all in the ways that I had imagined them from the book – yes, they
are middle aged, living in London and solving crimes with no apparent compensation
(which could have been a sign to an older reader that this is partly a fantasy),
but the two of them are more like impulsive little boys recklessly careening
about town, Sherlock showing off his brilliance and, in the process, alienating
everyone within earshot, and John being well intentioned and smart, but very
much put off balance by this creative ball of energy – Sherlock – that only he
and their landlady seem to be able to tolerate much less embrace, and he finds
himself consistently apologizing for Sherlock and trying, as best he is able,
to manage him.
The series is four seasons long with three or so episodes
per season. The reason to blog about it
has less to do with the visceral pleasure of the series, which is considerable
(this is good television), and more to do with what I think the central
question that the series asks. I think
this series wrestles with the question of what evil is. And I think it is wrestling with a particular
type of evil – cruelty. “What is the
basis of cruelty?” ultimately becomes the question that is addressed in the
final season – and I have to say that the final episode contains so much
cruelty that the reluctant wife, who enjoyed the series as a whole – wished she
had not seen it, even though we were both enthralled and couldn’t wait for
it. She said, “There is no redeeming
artistic value for being that cruel,” by which she meant being that cruel to
the viewer.
I will try to avoid spoilers while talking about the
underlying dynamics. I don’t know that I
will be successful. I will also
acknowledge that the elder reluctant stepdaughter let me in on some of the back
and forth between the writers and the public – the fanbase – and some of the
concerns about whether the writers respected their audience. I think this question is relevant. Less relevant is the information that this
was Cumberbatch’s break out role and Freeman, who was forever endearing in Love
Actually, is still physically endearing and uses the same physical humor but
adapts it to playing a very different role.
There are three other central characters in the series: Mycroft
Holmes (played by Mark
Gatiss who is also a co-creator), Sherlock’s older brother; Jim
Moriarty (Andrew Scott), Sherlock’s arch enemy; and a
mystery character, another Holmes sibling, in the final season. Each of these characters are critical to
fleshing out the concept of cruelty.
Each of the characters is also a member of a very exclusive stratum:
they are members of the upper classes (or live as if they belong to that class
– without having to earn a living) and are each much more intelligent – and
manipulative – than the people around them.
One implicit question that the show then asks is whether the
brand of cruelty that is depicted and explored here is garden variety evil or
whether it is a special class of evil; for instance, a type of cruelty that is
only available to those with the high class intellect, cold hearts, and
substantial means to play out this type of cruelty. Indeed, is this a type of cruelty that only
the Brits, the most brutal of all colonial societies, could mete out? And, indeed, is it the type of cruelty that
only high class Brits – those who are raised by nannies, or wish they had been
– could mete out?
Sherlock describes himself as a “high functioning
psychopath”. Technically, psychopathy is
characterized by a lack of empathy – an emotional connection with a victim would
interfere with the desire to harm the victim – though in fact there is, I
think, in lived psychopathy of the cruel sort a great deal of empathy – the
psychopath, especially the sadistic psychopath, enjoys the feeling of mastery
over the terror that he evokes in the other.
There is a sense of not being at the mercy of forces that are outside of
one’s control but instead being the master of the experience of terror that
others are having.
While we are diagnosing the characters, Sherlock could also
be considered to be Aspergerish – or, using more contemporary language – being
on the spectrum. He has the cold logical
quality of Spock,
but also Spock’s emotional transparency – his feelings are every bit as on
display as his brilliance, even though he himself – perhaps through denial or
simple thick headedness – does not seem to be nearly as aware of this as those
around him, including the audience. This
is, I think, part of what makes watching him feel so compelling instead of repulsive
– we want to reach out; as Mrs. Wilson, the landlady/housekeeper who has a
history of being married to a drug lord, does and as Watson constantly has to. We want to take Sherlock under our wing and
soothe the disturbance which he radiates but seems oblivious to.
His older brother is cut of the same cloth, but instead of
careening without regard to the ways in which his actions affect others, as
Sherlock does, Mycroft is cautious.
Arguably brighter than his brother, he is not the lone wolf his brother
is. Quite the contrary, he is a company
man. He serves the Queen and uses the
resources of the government to keep an eye on his brother – to keep him out of
trouble. Mycroft sees in Sherlock the
potential for great evil, apparently because of Sherlock’s obsessive interest
in solving cases. What Mycroft doesn’t
see is that keeping Sherlock’s past from him confuses him rather than protects
him and makes him more vulnerable rather than less so.
Moriarity, in this mix, is utterly unhinged. He is truly a psychopath without a connection
to others of any sort other than the power that he exercises over them. Insanely self-obsessed, his toxic narcissism
leads him to demonstrate how uniquely evil he is. He engages Sherlock in play, promising to
harm people if Sherlock cannot solve his puzzles fast enough. And Sherlock takes the bait. Indeed, play is a consistent theme in the
series – not just between Sherlock and Moriarity, but also between Sherlock and
John and Sherlock and Mycroft – but it does have the feeling of English
boarding school play – where cruelty is woven into something that should be an
analogue for harming others – not the thing itself.
I am reminded of a friend who went to Harvard. He said there was a consistent experience
that he observed there among the students; it was a sense of here I am, one of
the best and the brightest, I am among the best and brightest – is this all
there is? There is a kind of
disappointment that, despite our tremendous gifts, we are still human, and
still vulnerable to ordinary human experience.
By being outrageously cruel, perhaps we gain control over our
surroundings and experience ourselves as being god like – and therefore a bit
immortal.
Moriarity’s compulsion to cruelty is presented as a kind of
fun house version of Sherlock’s drive to solve crimes. Sherlock is drawn to the game – to figuring
out what is going on – by a sense of boredom.
He turns down cases that are too easy.
We get the sense that he is both tortured by his brilliance, but also
only happy when exercising it. His intelligence
is an itch that constantly needs to be scratched. Moriarity, on the other hand, seems to be
entirely interested in setting up the game.
In doing this, he is untethered and enjoys exercising his power to
terrorize as a means of keeping his boredom and disdain at the human condition (and
perhaps his own mortality) at bay.
Sherlock is exposed, when John marries, as deeply connected
not just to Watson, but to Watson’s wife.
This gives the lie – perhaps – to the psychopath label. Isn’t one a psychopath not because he cannot
empathize – we are all born with the potential to care for others (though that would be a question - if Sherlock were born on the autistic spectrum might his genetics inhibit his ability to empathize?). Might we all be generally equipped to empathize at the
get go, but learn to override that ability – to not attend to that
information rather than not having that information at least theoretically
accessible? Is Sherlock deeply defended against how deeply he cares about
others? If so, this, on some level, he must realize, is his kryptonite, so he works
to build walls against experiencing his concern for others, all the time expressing
that concern by taking on interesting cases – ones that require that he think
about the motives that drive people to be cruel and help him to provide those
who have been wronged some measure of justice – some sense that the cruel
person has paid for their cruelty.
Holmes’ interest in mysteries is, it turns out, rooted
deeply in the central mystery in his life, a mystery that has haunted him since
he was quite young. I am not going to
reveal it – it is too delicious (and cruel) to spoil it if you haven’t seen the
series all the way through, yet. I will
let you know that Mycroft plays a hand in keeping this mystery from him, but
most telling, it is Sherlock’s own mind that has deceived him across the course
of his life. He is not just emotional disconnected
from others, he is deeply disconnected from himself.
So, it makes sense that Sherlock is forever searching for
clues – making sense of every everyday mystery that surrounds him, as if he is
reassuring himself that he will not be deceived again. He blames his deception on his senses and his
reason, and he tunes them to a fever pitch in order that they (he blames his
senses, I think) will never disappoint him again. His ability to piece together clues reassures
him not just that his senses can’t deceive him, but that he can’t deceive
himself (and, in this, it turns out he is gravely mistaken).
In this internal battle, Sherlock is a lot like Freud. Freud imagined that we have veridical
memories of all that has taken place in our lives. It probably didn’t hurt that Freud had a
prodigious memory – he spoke English so fluently that he enjoyed Shakespeare
without translation (Shakespeare is an author that I, as a native speaker,
struggle with). But there were many
mysteries in Freud’s early life – indeed in all of our lives – that he, and we,
using his techniques and ideas, tried and try to ferret out.
But back to Sherlock.
The essential problem is that memory is, as Elizabeth Loftus has
famously (and sometimes infamously) reported to us, transformable. We do not recollect so much as reconstruct.
Freud, according to Mark
Solms, suggests that memory’s primary task is to predict. We gather information not so much to know
what has happened as to figure out what will happen. So, Sherlock stuffs his mind with facts which
he uses to solve crimes – and famously avoids those facts that aren’t relevant
to crime solving (in an example from the original, which shows up in the series, Holmes does not
know that the earth revolves around the sun because it couldn't help him solve a crime). Sherlock therefore imagines the
mind as being limited. It has only so
much RAM and he doesn’t want to clog it up with useless information. This, by the way, also suggests that memories
can be jettisoned forever, Sherlock believes he can not know (while Freud believes we cannot not know).
Apparently Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a physician
himself, modelled Sherlock on one of his medical school professors who would
diagnose his patients not from an interview, but from a careful physical exam
as they walked into the examining room, making all kinds of uncanny deductions
about their habits, aptitudes and failings based on their physical
presentation. I remember once that
someone at the Menninger
Hospital commented that David Rapaport, a psychologist and psychoanalyst
who studied psychological testing there, hoped that we would one day be able to
diagnose someone “by the part in their hair.”
Sherlock’s ability to take others as objects, and to divine
their intentions – to dive deeply into their souls in search of motivation –
is, it turns out, the result of having been deceived. His affections for another was the catalyst
for the one who felt spurned to do horrible things. I am being somewhat coy here, and this is
where the backstory re-emerges. The
authors of the miniseries publicized that the elements of the backstory were
present in the earlier seasons and the fourth season should have be soluble by
the fans. The fans dutifully concocted
theories about what had happened but, as in all good mysteries, they were
apparently and generally wrong.
Unfortunately, the authors expressed disdain for their fans, and the
fans cried foul – stating that they had been had.
But isn’t that the nature of mystery? Do we ever quite nail who the perpetrator was
until things get narrowed down significantly and couldn’t it often have been
someone else and we are right more by chance than by really figuring out the
motives of the killer? Perhaps that is
because we are all capable of murder. We
do all have the motivation to kill everyone else in the room at any given
moment, but we are held back by a variety of forces. On the most primitive level, we fear
retribution or censure for doing something bad or wrong. On a more advanced level, we are ambivalent
about most anyone who is important enough for us to want to kill them – we also
love them and would miss them if they are gone.
But perhaps most importantly we have learned to manage our ambivalence –
in a whole variety of ways. We bury
ourselves in our work or convince ourselves that we are all working towards
common goals and that we need everybody on board to reach them.
I think that Sherlock is the more interesting of the
characters because he is closest to losing the ties that bind us to each
other. His interest in crime seems to be
a thinly veiled attempt to sublimate his interest in murder – he seems to over
rely on the defense of reaction formation; working in the area that is his biggest interest and the thing that he most needs to defend against. Try as he might, he ultimately can’t jettison
the memory of what happened. He
transforms it – he reconstructs it into something different – but, in his
heart, he retains the essence of the primal betrayal.
Holmes, then, becomes a very Freudian character. He has deeply buried his long-lost memory,
but it will out, showing up in ways that shape his very character and his
choice of profession. He keeps picking
away at the thing that he would pretend is gone. He does this incessantly, constantly and,
apparently unconsciously. The need for maintaining
this unconscious schism is revealed in the final episode.
There was talk of an additional season after what proved to
be the final season, but there would, in my mind, be no need for it. Holmes has been cured. He no longer needs to keep his secret and to
fondle it at the same time. If he were
to continue to use his gift to solve crimes, it would be an empty exercise, not
the one driven by the compulsive need to know.
The tragedy has been resolved, the tension is gone, and, as Freud
famously said of the result of psychoanalytic treatment when the neurosis has
been cured, Holmes has been freed to lead a life of ordinary misery.
What we might have witnessed would have been the processing
of his grief. In solving the central
mystery in his life, Holmes would have come to realize that it involved losing
not just one, but two of the most important people in his life. These losses would be caused by something out
of his control – the envy of one for the other.
To connect with more than one person presents a particular kind of
danger – the danger of the Oedipal triangle – and part of what this series
shows is that the Oedipal triangle does not just play out with our parents but
with every significant set of relationships in our lives. By virtue of being in contact with others we imperil
ourselves, but we cannot live without those important others, so we lead lives
of restraint, hoping that the intensity of our affections does not end up
causing us unintended consequences.
To access a narrative description of other posts on this site, link here. For a subject based index, link here.
