There used to be a God-forsaken piece of land kept away from people of the civilised world. It was too harsh and too hostile to human habitation. The climate was intense, and the terrain was unyielding. So it became a haven for people who wanted peace and to be left again.
With trust in God and faith in their physical and mental strength, they labour, innovate and improve. When chocolate gained popularity around Europe, the Swiss became creative in churning milk in steam-powered mixers to rebrand the drink of the Mayan Gods to the civilised world.
Unlike their neighbours, who were actively hunting each other, the Swiss were not powerful enough to resist. So, they claim neutrality. Promoting peace and non-partisanship, they showed their mantle during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 when the 80,000 over-defeated French soldiers and refugees were nursed to health. They remained neutral in the First and Second World Wars.
Left to their own devices, they focused their effort on precise machinery. They became master clockmakers and marvellous engineers building funicular trains and hydroelectric dams.
The injured and refugees of the 1870 war Seen in Bourbaki Panorama
When the challenge against the orthodoxy of the Church by believers who wanted to understand their religion in their mother tongue became vogue, the Swiss became the nice guy supporting the underdogs. The Swiss took the image of going with the oppressed and clamoured themselves as working for Reformation.
Their selling of impartially went overdrive with the introduction of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations (UN). The idea of having the main office of FIFA is to highlight that this soccer body is fair and unbiased. We all know how it went.
The Reformation Wall
The ICRC paints an altruistic image of itself. It sells itself as a purveyor of humanitarian aid to victims of natural disasters, wars and other tragedies. Again, you know that hidden hands control their budget and activities. It is common knowledge that financiers from the West siphoned off money to the Bolshevik revolutionaries to establish a communist regime under the pretext of sensing humanitarian aid.
UN also has lost its lustre. Perhaps it was a facade for the powerful nations to appear to be just to appease the not-so-economically vibrant ones of the world. The UN is often threatened with non-payment by its mighty members, especially the veto-wielding superpowers. Someone aptly referred to the UN as a toothless tiger, a talking shop in the daytime, and a pub at night. It has become a social platform for self-aggrandisement and to stay in the limelight.
Nevertheless, Switzerland shines to the world by exhibiting its natural beauty, the comfort of Swiss hospitality and its clockwork precision of public amenities and engineering. They remember to remind the world of their neutrality in dealing with world conflicts.
The coveted FIFA World Cup, despite its tainted governing body.
The endowment of clean water and a powerful supply of Alps glaciers provided energy and milk.
Rights for non-human beings too?
Nature's playground - Geneva
Isolation, introversion and introspection have their advantages. Seen in CERN, Geneva.
A problem then, a problem now! It is ironic that Freud at one time advocated cocaine for alcoholism.
United Nations - still relevant?
Matterhorn (14,692 ft)
Chur Alstadt, Switzerland
Serene countryside
After losing their mojo, they chose neutrality.
Even a non-believer becomes a believer.
The question is of what - one bearded man who keeps
a tab of your follies and brownies OR an undefined
force that maintains the balance of the orbit, gravity
and the secrets behind figure 108.
P.S. A line from the film 'The Third Man' comes to mind about Switzerland. Orson Welles’ character Harry Lime says, “In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
This is a classic piece that would probably appeal mostly to readers and students of psychology. As it is neither filled with action-packed scenes nor with cliffhanging sequences, it may excite only a niche portion of viewers. In essence, it tells the interaction between Freud and his student, Karl Jung, their correspondences and Jung's search for the meaning of life. Central to the story is Jung's Russian patient, a Sabina Spielrein, who he treats for hysteria and eventually becomes his mistress.
Jung is a diligent Swiss psychiatrist who immerses himself in work, paying scant attention to other things in his life, including his pregnant wife. He receives a troubled Russian young lady (Sabina, Keira Knightley) as a patient. Jung treats her with his 'talking cure', a new technique learnt from Freud's writings. Through his psychoanalysis, he deduces that her tics and appalling behaviour can be related to her father's abuse of her. Even though she abhorred her father's actions, deep inside she seemed to derive pleasure but feel guilty of it at the same time! He nurses her to health, and she pursues her lifelong ambition of being a doctor.
Jung receives a referral from Freud of a wayward psychoanalyst, Dr Otto Gross. He is a disturbed son of a wealthy aristocrat, a physician not by interest but familial pressure and has unorthodox views on patient-doctor relationship. He abuses drugs and has no qualms redefining doctor-patient relationship, submitting to the pleasures of the flesh without having an iota of guilt. His views are so compelling that Jung starts questioning his own code of ethics.
By then, Sabina is well and is helping in Jung's work. She explicitly pours her feelings and Jung, in the turmoil of an empty familial relationship and positive transference, surrenders to the demands of the flesh. He starts an affair with Sabina.
Freud's legendary first meeting in Vienna goes on for 13hours. Even though initially they saw many common grounds, over the years they diverged. Jung found Freud overbearing. He believed the world of medicine is as it is. We, the human species are here, period. We have issues, and we have to deal with the present problem. Sexual issues played a central theme in many of Freud's explanation to our maladies, which Jung could not accept wholesale. Jung wanted to use supernatural forces and mysticism in treatment, but Freud vehemently disagreed.
Jung's torrid affair soon became common knowledge. It also became a reason for him to part ways with Freud. Eventually, he ended his liaison with Sabina and both went separate ways.
Perhaps what the movie is trying to show to us, which may deviate from actually happened in real life, is the interplay of Freud's mind dynamics in interaction in our daily lives. For instance in Jung's relationship, we see Jung as the ego trying to become the compromiser between Sabina (the id, the temptress) and his wife (the superego, the icon of perfection). In his professional conduct, he has to balance between Freud (the superego, the emblem of perfect doctor) against Otto (the id, the one who succumbs to primordial needs without a care to societal norms).
Our daily life is a constant battle - trying to reach the ideal situation and at the same time seeking to enjoy our time on Earth, enjoying ourselves as we only live once. Or is life on Earth is just a testing ground sent by our Maker to determine where we would spend our time in Eternity? How cruel!
