20 May 2008

Ghosts and dreams.

The last two customers were easier to chat to on their chosen subjects than the earlier ones. A young girl who dragged her father in to buy her a book she had located earlier in the day on dreams, then a shy chap who has been in many times, mostly to buy books about planes and war, today bought one about ghosts. Finally I found out where he lives and works and has his being - RAF Kinloss. I was quite surprised. He told me that the officer's mess is reputedly haunted although it was built in 1990. Not haunted by a departed officer, but by a little girl.

I have been reading a crime novel in which Freud and Jung figure: "The Interpretation of Murder" by Jed Rubenfeld. it's very good. Set in New York in 1909 when Freud made his one trip to America, it gives an interesting view of life at the time when the vast engineering feat that constructed the Manhattan Bridge was under way and the horse was giving way to the petrol engine. Freud was a success but returned with a life-long dislike of the country. He said: " Yes America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake.' No one seems quite sure why he took against it.

The story weaves fact with fiction very neatly and credibly, using actual contemporary murders on which to hang the plot, and colouring it all with the new psychotherapeutic methods and the strange bevahiour of Jung. It even incorporates the moment when Jung claimed to cause a startlingly loud gunshot-like report in the middle of an argument with Freud by 'telekinetic exteriorisation.' He told Freud it would happen again - and it did.

Now this sort of history mystery (history mystory) I am much happier with than coats of arms and campaigns.

No comments: