(This blog was originally posted on January
4, 2016)
Warning: this blog may
contain spoiler information about Sherlock: The Abominable Bride. Please do not
read any further if you have not yet watched and plan to see this episode.
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| Image courtesy of Microsoft |
I had an epiphany on Sunday evening.
I’m sure many an English-Literature
scholar has already analyzed the dysfunctional, symbiotic relationship between
private investigator extraordinaire Sherlock Holmes and his arch-nemesis,
Professor James Moriarty. While watching the recent episode of Sherlock:
The Abdominable Bride, it
suddenly became very clear to me exactly who—or what—Moriarty truly was: the little voice of negative self-talk, of
self-doubt, the incarnate version of Sherlock Holmes as his own worst enemy.
Professor Moriarty is that little voice in
the back of the great detective’s head that nourishes self-doubt and
self-recrimination. He is the niggling voice in that never shuts up, constantly
reminding Holmes: “You’re not good enough/smart enough/strong enough, and you
never will be, to defeat me.” Since the detective is already in a highly
suggestible state courtesy of his affinity for the Seven-Percent Solution
(cocaine), he is also vulnerable to the drug-induced paranoia that that feeds
his innate insecurity and questions about self-worth and identity. In short,
the great intellect and sleuthing genius that characterizes Sherlock Holmes also
make him the perfect foil for Moriarty, the only criminal whom Holmes has not
definitively bested or defeated.
Two scenes in Sherlock:
The Abdominable Bride particularly illustrated the men’s symbiotic
relationship for me. In the first, Holmes hallucinates that Moriarty is
visiting him at the detective’s flat on Baker Street. Their conversation, if it
can be called that, is more like a verbal duel. Ultimately they each draw their
pistols and face off. Moriarty challenges Holmes: “We don’t need toys to kill
each other. Where’s the intimacy in that? What do you want?” When Sherlock says
he wants to know “The truth”—presumably about the nature of their constant
stand-off and how Moriarty, whom Sherlock saw die several months previously, is
somehow always at the center of Holmes’s cases and in his life. The criminal merely
smirks and says, “It’s not real. None of it. It’s all in your mind.”
In the second scene, Holmes and Moriarty
are shown fighting in the rain on a slippery cliff at Reichenbach Falls. Once
again, the criminal seems to be having the upper hand in the verbal and
physical battle, even telling Sherlock: “Congratulations, you’ll be the first
man in history to be buried in his own mind palace.” When Holmes insists that
Moriarty is (should be dead), his nemesis merely replies: “Not in your mind.
I’ll never be dead there. You once called your brain a hard drive. Well, say
hello to the virus. This is how we end, you and I: Always here, always
together.”
At one point during the fight Holmes tells
Moriarty, “You have a magnificent brain, Moriarty. I concede it may even be the
equal of my own.” But just as Holmes acknowledges that he may have met his
match, Moriarty reminds the detective: "I am your weakness. I keep you down.
Every time you stumble, every time you fall. When you are weak… I. Am. There.
Don’t try to fight it. Shall we go over together? It’s always together. In the
end it’s always you and me.” That statement—and what happened next—was a
turning point in their conflict. It was also a great metaphor for Holmes
(finally) realizing that he might need and even welcome some kind of (therapeutic)
intervention to finally terminate the pathological relationship with his
nemesis (himself).
As if by magic, Holmes’s best friend and
colleague, Dr. John Watson, appears on the cliff to protect and help save the
detective’s life. Rather than use the pistol in his hand to shoot Moriarty,
Watson gives Holmes permission to simply push his nemesis over the cliff. In
order to truly work through the conflict in his subconscious mind and quiet
that negative voice (Moriarty) forever, Sherlock Holmes had to make the first
move. The time had finally come that the detective found Moriarty “a shade
annoying” and was ready to make room for a new challenge outside of his own mind (palace).
© 2016
