A Dangerous Method (2011)

A brief disclaimer is in order before I follow through here.  I haven't picked up much psychology reading in quite a while.  I read Sigmund Freud as an undergraduate in literary theory courses but we never read Carl Jung.  I took a couple classes in psychology as a sophomore in college.  The bulk of the psychoanalysis I've encountered in the past six years has been in the form of film theory and, never being much of a devotee to such approaches to spectatorship, my understanding is crudely general.  Essentially, if you're looking for a scholarly analysis of David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method (2011) from such a context, I am unable to provide it.  

The problem with this rather wonderful film is that it also never really provides it.  The film focuses on young psychoanalyst Jung (Michael Fassbender) and his occasional mentor Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) as the two attempt to cure the young, smart, beautiful, but psychologically damaged Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley).  While Cronenberg and screenwriter Christopher Hampton allude to the theories of Freud and Jung and the differences between their philosophical approaches to the budding discipline of psychoanalysis, differences that would eventually sever their relationship, we never feel like we are on solid ground (and this is coming from a viewer who is not completely ignorant of the basics of psychology).  

What the film gives us is this:  Spielrein is the daughter of a rich Jewish-Russian family.  She is incredibly smart and wishes to become a doctor herself.  Yet, she suffers hysterics whenever she feels intimidated and her violent episodes lead to her institutionalization under Jung's care.  Jung decides to utilize Freud's "talking cure" to get to the root of Spielrein's illness.  The two of them discover that she was beaten by her father as a child.  She experienced sexual pleasure during these sessions which, due to intense guilt, she repressed and ignored.  Now in her twenties, she is a virgin and suffers from crippling neuroses due to the repression of these feelings and emotions (she is, after all, a child of the 1800s).  Jung and Spielrein make progress and her episodes begin to mellow.  

Soon after, Jung connects with Freud, his older, father figure (yes, Freud's Oedipus Complex comes into play here) and the two discuss their approaches.  Freud, in Jung's view, reduces everything to the pleasure principle (or sex!) and his treatment ends with the acknowledgement of the ailment.  Jung believes there are other factors, aside from sex, that drive man and that it is not enough to recognize a sickness but to understand it and attempt to cure it via a deeper understanding of its causes.  This leads Jung to turn to what Freud sees as mysticism and superstition, two approaches that he feels will bring down their newborn discipline.  In order to attempt to sway Jung, Freud introduces him to another psychiatrist, Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel).  Otto is the prime example of Freud's theory, a creature driven by libido, an unrepressed id, who is more than willing to sleep with his patients.  

Jung, a married man influenced by Otto's behavior, eventually beds Spielrein out of love, attraction, and perhaps even out of treatment.  In the end, they all confirm one another's theories (Spielrein becomes a successful psychiatrist as well and the film does its best to redeem her overlooked career) of the human mind.  Jung's actions have an undeniably sexual component that he uses to make himself "sick" in order to drive himself to find a cure.  Thus, he both exemplifies Freud's theory (sex!) and his own (it's not just sex!).  Freud, who claims to see Jung as standing on his level, is condescending towards his protégée.  Freud pushes him away and, in the process, forces him to embody a variation on the Oedipus Complex.  

Re-reading this review, perhaps my initial critique overstates the case a bit.  The film provides a primer that I have been able to supplement with my own knowledge.  I wish it would go further and deeper, but I can imagine that further balancing a psychology lecture and a period drama would be even more difficult to pull off.  Yet, despite the film's minor flaws, it does provide tremendous gifts in the form of the film's performances (all three leads are stunning here, especially Knightley), Cronenberg's uncharacteristic restraint (one might even call it stylistic repression...even the spankings do not seem to match the director's usual attraction to the perverse), and the challenging questions the film poses to the willing viewer.