Better behave yourself or we'll send you back to Dr. Jamf! When Jamf conditioned him, he threw away the stimulus. Looks like Dr. Jamf's been by to see your little thing today, hasn't he?
Dr. Laszlo Jamf is a character in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow. Though dead before the novel begins, Dr. Jamf is still a major presence.
Character[]
Dr. Jamf was skilled in both chemistry and psychology. He was involved in many rather shady business dealings. Dr. Jamf is shown to be rather immoral, experimenting on the infant Slothrop.
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History[]
During the 1920s, Laszlo Jamf worked at the Grössli Chemical Corporation and worked alongside one Hugo Stinnes (a weapons-smuggler and financier at least partially responsible for the German stock market crash of the 1920s). These dealings also involved the Slothrop Paper Company. Due to these dealings, an uncle in the family essentialy sold the infant Tyrone Slothrop to Laszlo.[1] Dr. Jamf experimented on the infant Slothrop in an attempt to mirror the "Infant Albert" experiments with erections. After the experiments, Dr. Jamf deconditioned the infant Slothrop.[2] Due to the deal between Dr. Jamf and the Slothrops, Tyrone Slothrop went to Harvard University.[1]
In the 1930s, Dr. Jamf developed several different chemicals for the "Grössli Chemical Corporation" - later known as Psychochemie AG. These include "Imipolex G", a plasic chemical used in the Schwarzgerät 11/00000 rocket[3] and Kryptosam, a chemical which converts seminal fluid into melanin which is used by Pirate Prentice to ejaculate a message.[4]
Jamf died at some point before V-Day, presumably in the 1940s, and was buried in Switzerland. During his work for Argentine refugees in Switzerland, Tyrone Slothrop visits the grave of Dr. Jamf.[3]