THE SHOEMAKER: Anatomy of a Psychotic

by Flora Rheta Schreiber ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 23, 1983

The first inside--that is, internal--look at a psychotic killer""--as pieced together, with enervating detail and a lot of fiction-style reconstruction, by the author of Sybil. After shoemaker Joseph Kallinger was convicted, in the late 1970s, of burglary, rape, and murder (in creepy partnership with his teenage son), author Schreiber spent hours talking with him, drawing out his dreams, fantasies, memories--some of which have been filled out by interviews with family members (as well as psychiatrists, police, etc.). And the result is a chronological narrative of Kallinger's life, mixing analytic commentary with a novelization style (dialogue, pulpy prose) that sometimes undermines credibility. Illegitimate and turned over to the Catholic Children's Bureau, baby Joe was adopted at three (in 1939) by a 40-ish immigrant shoemaker-and-wife (Austrian, Hungarian); already confused, Joe suffered his major trauma at six--a hernia operation which the prudish, sadistic Kallingers explained as a de-sexualizing genital operation. (""His adoptive parents by symbolic castration destroyed his capacity to grow up normally."") This assault was compounded by the Kallingers' general tyranny (""He was treated not as a child, but as a shoemaker's robot""), by the molestation, at teenage-boys' knifepoint, of eight-year-old Joe. And so, full of rage, Joe reached puberty with obsessive castration anxiety, with sex and knives inextricably linked, with delusions, hallucinations, and uncontrollable, sadistic impulses: ""severe paranoid schizophrenia,"" in short. Nonetheless, he married (twice), fathered several children, made his shoemaker's living--while nursing delusions, setting a few fires, and abusing his kids; arrested in '73, he was put on probation, diagnosed as not psychotic. Then, infecting sons Mike and Joey with his madness (orders from God to butcher mankind via genital mutilation), he committed a never-investigated murder, joined Mike in killing Joey via drowning (""Joe had the ecstasy of a murdering orgasm, a divine fire, radiant and pure""). . . and went on to the series of molestations that ended with murder and arrest. Schreiber's basic analysis, supported by the late Silvano Arieti and other doctors, is certainly persuasive. (Three different trials rejected the insanity plea; mad prison behavior later got Kallinger into a mental hospital.) But so much of the detailing here depends on the madman's own testimony that full credibility is never achieved; and, without the puzzle/treatment angles of Sybil, this is a depressing, much less involving psycho-popularization--more for the ghoulishly inclined (the relentless minutiae of each sordid Kallinger sortie) than for those fascinated by the intricacies of abnormal psychology.

Pub Date: June 23, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION