RatCreature (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ratcreature) wrote2011-11-14 12:12 am
ratcreature) wrote2011-11-14 12:12 am
A Dangerous Method
So, I watched A Dangerous Method earlier this evening, and the bottom line is that it's not particularly awesome, but I don't regret having spent €7 to see it, even though I couldn't find a non-dubbed showing in my city.
I think my main problem was that I didn't find either Jung, Spielrein or Freud very likable here, and I strongly prefer narratives with protagonists I like (one of the reasons why I prefer fanfic, genre fiction and YA over, say, much of contemporary literature).
Also I'm more or less completely ignorant of whatever Jung's theories were, and mostly of Freud's, so I don't actually know anything of the topic this movie fictionalizes. Which on one hand was probably a good thing, because I could not be outraged over any lack of resemblance to reality (not that I necessarily expect it from RPF), OTOH this movie didn't really explain Freud and Jung's disagreements very well. From what I gathered from the movie Jung thought psychoanalysis shouldn't be only about sex, but be about other stuff too, in particular wacky paranormal nonsense, like telepathy and precognitive abilities, which he believed in, but which Freud did not want to have in their new discipline because it would end any hope of recognition and acceptance which wasn't great to begin with because all proponents in Vienna were Jewish. Whereas the protestant Jung who also was bankrolled by a rich wife could afford to be as eccentric as he wanted to be in his theories. Meanwhile Jung felt slighted that his idol rejected all this paranormal stuff, but interpreted that as Freud being overly controlling or authoritarian or something.
At least with this general lack of exposition wrt their theories it does not stand out much that the only thing we hear of Spielrein's psychological theses is that for her the sex drive is connected to a death drive bent on the destruction of the ego, and that after initial rejection Freud somehow incorporated that later on or something like that, while claiming his idea is not really hers.
The movie also wasn't very good at explaining what either Jung or Freud thought was wrong with with Sabina Spielrein that she ended up in a mental institution to begin with. I mean, on a meta level it seems the movie more or less implies that her main problem was her circumstances, and once she used the mental illness route to get out from under her father's thumb she eventually got really better as soon as she had the opportunity to study at an university and live independently. But clearly all three of them actually think that her therapy with Jung helped fix something, but it remains very vague as to what or how.
Anyway, on the positive side was that once Jung did decide to cheat on his wife his back-and-forth angsting over that wasn't too over the top. Though in part this is probably a matter of lowered expectations on my part, in that I had feared more mainpain focus. And I liked that neither Spielrein nor Jung seemed too bothered that they enjoy spanking scenes with some bondage. Scenes which btw were quite nice, IMO. And I liked many of the scenes with the two of them, they had chemistry and did seem quite intensely caught up in each other.
I also liked the scenes with Jung and Otto Gross. Of whom I had never heard, but he seems to have been some early free-love druggie who was also a psychoanalyst, and in the movie (no clue about reality) nudges Jung to give into his sexual desires.
I think my main problem was that I didn't find either Jung, Spielrein or Freud very likable here, and I strongly prefer narratives with protagonists I like (one of the reasons why I prefer fanfic, genre fiction and YA over, say, much of contemporary literature).
Also I'm more or less completely ignorant of whatever Jung's theories were, and mostly of Freud's, so I don't actually know anything of the topic this movie fictionalizes. Which on one hand was probably a good thing, because I could not be outraged over any lack of resemblance to reality (not that I necessarily expect it from RPF), OTOH this movie didn't really explain Freud and Jung's disagreements very well. From what I gathered from the movie Jung thought psychoanalysis shouldn't be only about sex, but be about other stuff too, in particular wacky paranormal nonsense, like telepathy and precognitive abilities, which he believed in, but which Freud did not want to have in their new discipline because it would end any hope of recognition and acceptance which wasn't great to begin with because all proponents in Vienna were Jewish. Whereas the protestant Jung who also was bankrolled by a rich wife could afford to be as eccentric as he wanted to be in his theories. Meanwhile Jung felt slighted that his idol rejected all this paranormal stuff, but interpreted that as Freud being overly controlling or authoritarian or something.
At least with this general lack of exposition wrt their theories it does not stand out much that the only thing we hear of Spielrein's psychological theses is that for her the sex drive is connected to a death drive bent on the destruction of the ego, and that after initial rejection Freud somehow incorporated that later on or something like that, while claiming his idea is not really hers.
The movie also wasn't very good at explaining what either Jung or Freud thought was wrong with with Sabina Spielrein that she ended up in a mental institution to begin with. I mean, on a meta level it seems the movie more or less implies that her main problem was her circumstances, and once she used the mental illness route to get out from under her father's thumb she eventually got really better as soon as she had the opportunity to study at an university and live independently. But clearly all three of them actually think that her therapy with Jung helped fix something, but it remains very vague as to what or how.
Anyway, on the positive side was that once Jung did decide to cheat on his wife his back-and-forth angsting over that wasn't too over the top. Though in part this is probably a matter of lowered expectations on my part, in that I had feared more mainpain focus. And I liked that neither Spielrein nor Jung seemed too bothered that they enjoy spanking scenes with some bondage. Scenes which btw were quite nice, IMO. And I liked many of the scenes with the two of them, they had chemistry and did seem quite intensely caught up in each other.
I also liked the scenes with Jung and Otto Gross. Of whom I had never heard, but he seems to have been some early free-love druggie who was also a psychoanalyst, and in the movie (no clue about reality) nudges Jung to give into his sexual desires.
no subject
The only thing I know about Freud is that his theories are very much a product of their time (turn of the century Vienna) and have therefore lost some their value. And of course the whole Ego - It - Superego thing.
no subject
She and Jung talk about her masochism in therapy, but as I understood she kept that secret initially. She's institutionalized by her father presumably because of the screaming fits, i.e. "hysteria" in the understanding of the time, I guess. At least she was screaming incoherently and flailing a lot when she first arrived. It did seem somewhat implied that the characters thought that talking about being turned on when her father beat her as a child somehow cured the hysteria or something like that as proof of their "new method", but like I said it wasn't all that clear to me how they all conceptualized what was going on here. As a viewer you mostly think she had screaming fits to get away from her family and then felt better once she could do her own thing. However to me it did not seem as if they were pathologizing the sexual desires all that much or singling out the spanking preference from the fact that it's an extramarital affair.