You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Ann Jones is right about so much, it seems petty to quibble over one point. But quibble I will-not because it is one of the first very points she makes-but because it is the precise reason I selected her book: Jones writes that murder stories and murder books are only
with exception not serious attempts at understanding the phenomenon of murder.
It is not an accident that I have been reading true-life murder stories for as long as I have been reading psychoanalysis. It did not take me long to realize that books about murder, when well done, had simply the best psychological analyses of character and character formation around-and, of course, were infinitely more readable, enjoyable, and entertaining than the dry language of psycho-analyzese. The fact that I was reading about impulses translated into fatal behavior, rather than the rarified abstractness of a neurotic psyche merely turning on itself was never much of a distinction for me. Murder is murder in the unconscious, whether it is physical or psychological, and whether it is turned against the self or another.
I always knew intuitively that murder committed by a woman was different than the same act committed by a man. But the rarity of that event, and the even more infrequent writing on female murderesses, left my impression as only an idea. So, it is a particularly welcome event that Ann Jones has combined both of my rather obsessive interests in this volume. And, finally, for just one last reason that Jones's book should be required reading for any serious student of the human psyche, she remembers that the implementation of drives-not the urge to kill, but the decision to act on that urge-and our social response to that act, is made within a broader social context. Her book, as does any good true-life murder story, views historical and social forces as variables interacting with the psychological drives and conflicts.
This book is a series of stories about womens' homicides. Each selection was a prominent c