La fiction détective chez Conan Doyle : une création anaclitique ?

Objectives

This research focuses on the work of Arthur Conan Doyle and his famous detective Sherlock Holmes, considered a true secular myth. His worldwide fame is exceptional. The detective plays with the boundary between reality and fiction to establish himself deeply and durably in individual and collective psychic surreality. Paradoxically, the Scottish physician Arthur Conan Doyle had very little literary regard for his famous hero, and much preferred his other novels: “My lowest works cast into the shadows that of which I am most proud.” In 1893, he murdered his creation in issue 36 of The Strand Magazine, where he published “The Final Problem.” Doyle received countless letters from outraged readers insulting him and demanding the rebirth of the hero.

Method

As part of a clinical psychopathological reflection on Doyle's creative work, this paradox is explored here through an analysis of the links between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

Result

The strategic role of the inseparable chronicler-narrator John Watson in this detective fiction is seen both as a mirror of Doyle's creative anaclitism and as a constant support for Sherlock Holmes’ deployment of his observational skills and the mastery of his indexical logic. The consulting detective's iconoclastic method is seen as characteristic of anaclitic creativity.

Discussion

This picture of an intersubjective framework between the detective and Watson's “presence-support,” conducive to crisis resolution, does not leave the psychoanalytically-oriented clinician unmoved.

Conclusion

In literature, the “body of work” is not always where the author consciously wishes it to be! Doyle's unwitting self-writing is a source of inspiration for the clinician.