Abstract
The theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung can provide an insight into the reasons why film and television continue to use Jack the Ripper as a subject and why audiences continue to watch them. The reasons for the appeal to audiences lie not only in the content of the story but also the psychological appeal of the audience. At a superficial level it would appear that a film dealing with the Whitechapel murders, which depicts the brutal murder and mutilation of five women who worked in the sex industry, does not have an obvious appeal to viewers. I contend that the appeal can be found in the collective experience of the viewers and their personal relation to the characters.
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Notes
- 1.
Brian Augustyn and Michael Mignola, Gotham By Gaslight (New York: DC Comics, 2006).
- 2.
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (London: Penguin, 2003), 75.
- 3.
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 60.
- 4.
Sigmund Freud, Mass Psychology and Other Writings (London: Penguin, 2004), 52.
- 5.
Freud, Mass Psychology and Other Writings, 26.
- 6.
Freud, Mass Psychology and Other Writings, 26.
- 7.
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (London: Penguin, 2003).
- 8.
Freud, The Uncanny, 139.
- 9.
Freud, The Uncanny, 139.
- 10.
Freud, The Uncanny, 149.
- 11.
Freud, The Uncanny, 142.
- 12.
E.W. Hornung Raffles The Amateur Cracksman (Londan: Penguin, 2003), 39.
- 13.
Sigmund Freud, Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the I (London: Penguin, 2004), 26.
- 14.
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 10.
- 15.
Sigmund Freud, Timely Reflections on War and Death (London: Penguin, 2005), 191.
- 16.
Jane Caputi, The Age of Sex Crime (London: The Women’s Press, 1987), 90.
- 17.
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 99.
- 18.
Sigmund Freud, On Murder, Mourning and Melancholy (London: Penguin, 2005), 23.
- 19.
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (London: Penguin, 2003), 55.
- 20.
Sigmund Freud, On the Introduction of Narcissism (London: Penguin, 2003), 11.
- 21.
Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (London: Penguin, 2003), 70.
- 22.
C. G. Jung, ‘Approaching the Unconscious’, in Man and His Symbols, ed. C. G. Jung (London: Picador, 1975).
- 23.
C. G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Sussex: Routledge, 2010), 4.
- 24.
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 20.
- 25.
Propp, 20.
- 26.
C. G. Jung, ‘Conscious, Unconscious and Individuation’, in The Essential Jung, Anthony Storr (ed.). (London: Fontana Press, 1998), 216.
- 27.
C. G. Jung, ‘Archetypes’, in The Essential Jung, Anthony Storr (ed.). (London: Fontana Press, 1998), 88.
- 28.
C. G. Jung, The Collected Works of C G Jung Volume 10 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 93.
- 29.
Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 255.
- 30.
Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 264.
- 31.
Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 256.
- 32.
Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 124.
- 33.
Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 264, 82.
- 34.
Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 186.
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Smith, C. (2016). Psychoanalysis and the Whitechapel Murders on Film. In: Jack the Ripper in Film and Culture. Crime Files. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59999-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59999-5_3
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