The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

"Sigmund Freud: Who am I that your friends should wish us to meet? Sherlock Holmes: Beyond the fact that you are a brilliant Jewish physician who was born in Hungary and studied for a while in Paris, and that certain radical theories of yours have alienated the respectable medical community so that you have severed your connections with various hospitals and branches of the medical fraternity, beyond this I can deduce little. You're married, with a child of... five. You enjoy Shakespeare and possess a sense of honor."

"Sherlock Holmes: I never guess: it is an appalling habit, destructive to the logical faculty. A private study is an ideal place for observing facets of a man's character. That the study belongs to you exclusively is evident from the dust: not even the maid is permitted here, else she would scarcely have ventured to let matters come to this pass. Sigmund Freud: Go on. Sherlock Holmes: Very well. Now, when a man collects books on a subject, they're usually grouped together, but notice, your King James Bible, your Book of Mormon, and Koran are separate, across the room in fact, from your Hebrew Bible and Talmud, which sit on your desk. Now these books have a special importance for you not connected with a general study of religion, obviously. The nine-branched candelabra on your desk confirms my suspicion that you are of the Jewish faith; it is called a menorah, is it not? Sigmund Freud: Yah. Sherlock Holmes: That you studied medicine in Paris is to be inferred from the great number of medical texts in that language. Where else should a German use French textbooks but in France, and who but a brilliant German could understand the complexities of medicine in a foreign tongue? That you're fond of Shakespeare is to be deduced from this book, which is lying face downwards. The fact that you have not adjusted the volume suggests to my mind that you no doubt intended referring to it again in the near future. (Hm, not my favorite play.) The absence of dust on the cover would tend to confirm this hypothesis. That you're a physician is evident when I observe you maintain a consulting room. Your separation from various societies is indicated by these blank spaces surrounding your diploma, clearly used at one time to display additional certificates. Now, what can it be that forces a man to remove these testimonials to his success? Why, only that he has ceased to affiliate himself with these various societies and hospitals and so forth, and why do this, having once troubled to join them all? It is possible that he became disenchanted with one or two of them, but NOT likely that his disillusionment extended to all. Rather, I postulate it is THEY who became disenchanted with YOU, doctor, and asked you to resign, from all of them. Why, I've no idea. But some position you have taken, evidently a medical one, has discredited you in their eyes. I take the liberty of inferring a theory of some sort, too radical or shocking to gain ready acceptance in current medical thinking. Your wedding ring tells me of your marriage, your Balkanized accent hints Hungary or Moravia, the toy soldier on the floor here ought, I think, to belong to a... small boy of five? Have I omitted anything of importance? Sigmund Freud: My sense of honour. Sherlock Holmes: Oh, it is implied by the fact that you have removed the plaques from the societies to which you no longer belong. In the privacy of your study, only you would know the difference."