MBTI Type: INTJ

Abberline seems to ‘know things’ without knowing them, so his friend Peter Godley considers him to be a clairvoyant. He often has specific visions of crimes that soon come to pass, and when he visits the crime scenes, he will notice any deviations from his ‘seeing.’ He makes a lot of intuitive leaps about the facts of the situation he gathers, assuming the murderer is not a butcher or a veterinarian (others’ suggestions) but instead is a ‘well-educated man,’ and following his hunches to Scotland Yard and the ‘secret police’ performing a cover-up. He knows from grapes left under the bodies that the Ripper lured them with ‘food and drink’ before he killed them, and follows hunches and random clues to a secret order, thus exposing the murderer. Abberline is often defiant of authority and unafraid to challenge them, going so far as to accuse the police commissioner of corruption and threaten him with physical assault. Though he has fallen for Mary Kelly, he realizes he cannot ever see her again without endangering her life and exposing her survival, so he chooses to remain in London ‘where I can watch the people watching me.’ Where the rest of his companions gag and hurl at seeing dead bodies, Abberline simply gathers the clues. He also asks for a proper examination of the corpses by a medical doctor, rather than the local constable coroner, because he thinks the man is incompetent and has tainted the evidence. Abberline’s ‘relaxation’ through an opium addiction (a reckless over-use of his inferior Se) eventually leads to his overdose and death.

Enneagram: 5w4

Abberline is a loner who has very little respect for the establishment of which he is a part, and who trusts his own logic more than anyone else’s. He asks many questions without always being aware of the social implications or inappropriateness of them, but also demands justice on a satisfactory level, for the Ripper to pay for his crimes. He is cautious and skeptical, warns Mary against taking too many risks, and urges her to leave London as soon as she can, knowing she is in danger. But he also circumvents his position as a policeman by falling for her, kissing her in a public place, and then using his position to chase away the constable that scolded them for it. He both trusts and is somewhat skeptical of his own intuition – he says his friend calls them “my intuitions,” but he prefers visions – yet wants to prevent them from coming to pass. Rather than processing fully the death of his wife and unborn child in childbirth, Abberline withdraws from society and forms an opium addiction; he would rather ‘chase the dragon’ than connect to anyone else, until Mary comes along.

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