A Dangerous Method


 A film about Jung and Freud.  By David Cronenberg.  Had to see that.  Sadly it's a biopic instead of some Cronenbergian fantasia, but it features a great characterization of Carl Jung by Michael Fassbender.  It's also interesting historically about anti-semitism, class and the birth of psychoanalysis.  Keira Knightley plays the most intriguing part as Sabina Spielrein,  a 'hysteric' who is Jung's first patient to be treated with Freud's 'talking cure' (psychoanalysis).    Critics have complained that Knightley has insufficient depth to play this part, but I found her convincing.


The film is based on a screenplay adapted from a play by Christopher Hampton, which seems to have been a somewhat perfunctory look at the early days of psychoanalysis.  One couldn't ask for juicier material - two pioneers of psychology, one of whom is involved with a patient who later becomes a substantial contributor to the field herself - but the film, like the play, fails the material.  Sabina Spielrein's story alone - childhood beatings, institutionalization, medical school, original thinking appropriated by Freud and Jung and finally death at the hands of the Nazis - has the making of a mini-series.


Still, it's not a bad film as an introduction to a watershed moment in psychological history and a great jumping off point for further research.