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Five Jungian Analysts at the Movies, or Thank God I’m Not a Jungian
Following the screening of A Dangerous Method at the Starz Denver Film Festival, five Jungian analysts took the stage for a question-and-answer session. Apparently there were scheduling conflicts that prevented Freudian folks from participating. Seriously.
Each of the five gave a three-minute analysis of the movie. None of them stayed within the three minutes allotted and none of them expressed much enthusiasm for the movie. Consistent criticisms revolved around the casting, claiming the actors playing Freud and Jung should have switched roles; Keira was over the top; mental illness is never done well in movies.
Generally speaking, they displayed a lack of understanding of dramatization and compression in favor of pure psychoanalytic technicalities. It is, after all, only a 100-minute movie, one that works as a provocative and entertaining digest of a significant period in psychoanalytic history. It also sounded like their version of the movie would be boring, albeit faithful to their take on reality.
Not a single one of them mentioned John Kerr’s 1993 book (A Most Dangerous Method), which makes some of their insight suspect. They have a view and an understanding of Jung and Freud. Some of the material presented in the book – and the movie – conflicts with that.
As Jung himself quipped at one point in his career, "Thank God I am not a Jungian."
There were two interesting takeaways from their discussion.
- Emma, Jung's wife, was far too demure in the movie; in reality she was a strong, smart woman.
- Jung's visions of blood running through Europe had him thinking he was going mad, but then world war broke out in 1914 and he realized he was tapping into a collective experience, not a psychosis. A title card at the end of the movie indicates he had a nervous breakdown.
Both of those takeaways, however, warrant further research before confirming their validity.
In short, the analysis of the Jungian analysts was biased and shortsighted and their diagnosis was misguided.
• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.
A Dangerous Method
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