God's great plan?

Freud's Last Session (2023)

Director: Mathew Brown

The day was September 3rd, 1939. Sigmund Freud was homebound in his house in London. He had fled Vienna to London and was nursing the constant nagging pain caused by his oral cancer and an ill-fitting oral prosthesis. Neville Chamberlain had declared war on Germany after Hitler failed to withdraw from Poland. Londoners stayed glued to their radios, bemoaning that the war had started again and were waiting for their leaders' latest instructions and progress.

Anxiety was high, and people were wondering how the next few days would be. Against this background, Sigmund Freud was spending the last few months of his life. He was in constant pain, needing morphine, but lucid enough to remember the life he had and to debate his favourite topic, the existence of God. 

It is said that on that fateful, it is believed that he had a visitor by a Professor from Oxford University. The visitor's identity was not found, but the screenwriter decided to place CS Lewis as the guest. 

Lewis grew up a Christian until his mother died when he was a young child. His depressed father lost all trust in Christianity and sent Lewis and his brother to a boarding school. CS Lewis was an atheist by the time he became a young adult. A short stint in WWI drew him to Christianity again, and he became an unapologetic Christian. In Oxford, he teamed up with JRR Tolkien through fiction work, and through their group Inlking, they emphasised the value of fantasy and narrative fiction. Lewis is famous for 'Narnia' and Tolkien for 'Lord of The Rings'.

Freud was born into an Orthodox family. In his childhood, he used to follow his nanny to Church. His father was not too happy about this, and he sacked his nanny for 'converting' Sigmund to Christianity. By adulthood, Sigmund Freud was a full-fledged atheist who thought that organised religion was a fraud. 

The fictional meeting of these two great minds is the crux of this film, which was initially a stage show. It was a sort of Freud's last psychoanalysis session. Both men open their hearts, talking about their childhood, their relationships with their fathers, and intense debate about the existence of God.  

Along the way, Anna's (Freud's daughter) pathological attachment to her father is discussed. Her sexuality takes centre stage, too. She was thought to be a lesbian. The question of God condemning his people for wrongdoings and criminalisation of pleasure, whether masturbation, casual sex or same-sex union, comes up. And where is God's place when Man is cruel towards each other?

After a long afternoon of discourse, both gentlemen take leave. Anna arrives home to introduce her partner, Dorothy, to her father. Anna goes to become the founder of child psychology. Freud died by assisted suicide, with the help of his doctor, a few weeks later.

Freud's meeting with the Oxford Don on September 3rd 1939, was Freud's last session. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Achieving the Unachievable?

When Nietzsche Wept (2009)

In real life, Frederick Nietzsche and Josef Breuer technically would have never met, even though their paths may have crossed in Vienna. For the uninitiated, Nietzsche is a famous 19th-century German philosopher and Dr Breuer is a neurologist who was Sigmund Freud's mentor who together treated the first patient of psychotherapy, Anna O. (Bertha Pappenheim). Rather fictitiously, the story, which is taken off a novel by Irvin D. Yalom, created an imaginary meeting of four famous Viennese individuals - Nietzsche, Breuer, Freud and Lou Salome, Nietzsche's love of his life.

Salome approaches Breuer to request for him to treat Nietzsche who was at risk of committing suicide after she rejected his hand in marriage. She wanted Dr Breuer to treat him for a migraine but at the same time try some of his 'talk therapy' on him to cure him of despair.

However, things become complicated. Breuer, even though appearing very composed, contented, prosperous and well rooted in family life and society, has serious deep-seated psychological issues. It ended up as Nietzsche psychoanalysing and treating Breuer of his predicaments in life. Breuer lost his mother, Bertha at a very young age and never got over his loss. He started developing feelings for his patient, Anna O, whose first name was also Bertha. In a somewhat twisted way, Nietzsche interprets Breuer's dreams to impress upon him their meanings. I say twisted because Freud is the one who popularised interpretation of dreams. Freud, in this movie, is a young apprentice to Breuer. Breuer also has what appears like a mid-life crisis and existential issues. Engaged in a repeated events in life and married, he yearns to be free from the clutches and quagmire of predictable, mundane life. Nietzsche uses his philosophical theories to knock some sense into him. Many of Nietzsche's ideas like Zarathustra are also mentioned here.

Breuer, in turn, helps him to overcome his resentment with his old friend, the musician, Robert Wagner.

The most interesting part of the movie is the dialogue. The exchange of beautiful quotes and sayings between a near-insane Nietzsche who is worried about humanity and the psychologically confused Breuer is legendary.

The other compelling thing about the story how the two men clamour over things that they do not have and not appreciate what they already have. Breuer feels trapped in an unhappy marriage whilst Nietzsche is dying to be tied down to marriage and not savour his freedom. Is it not the irony of life? We always yearn for what we do not have!

“It is easier, far easier, to obey another than to command oneself.”

“Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.”

"Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair."

“Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.”

"Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.” 

― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/162267-when-nietzsche-wept-a-novel-of-obsession

Life is a battle field?

A Dangerous Method 2011

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!

Can we be masters of our minds?

BBC Four: Genius of the Modern World (Part 3; Sigmund Freud)

The way I look at it, nothing much was happening till about the Industrial Revolution. Human beings were just vessels to live, work and make the number to ensure that the powerful remained in power. Science and technology not only shook the status quo, it also revolutionise people's thinking. Three individuals who contributed to the revolution of the mind are covered in this set of documentaries - Marx attacked social and economic order, Nietzsche on Christian morality and Sigmund Freud questioned the essence of our mind and existence.

Growing in the cosmopolitan Vienna in the Habsburg Empire, he was exposed to law, philosophy and finally pursued the Natural Sciences. Initially fascinated with Charles Darwin's work, he gave it up for a medical research and later for medical practice.

There was a time when Freud, joining the bandwagon of practitioners who thought that cocaine was the panacea of all ailments, consumed and prescribed it in abundance for the most trivial of reasons like indigestion, insomnia and even alcoholism!

Freud was quite a romantic at heart as seen in many of his actions. Between him and the love of his life, Martha Bernays, they had exchanged 1600 over letters.

In 1885 Paris, hysteria was a common occurrence and was a convenient catchall diagnosis. After working with a renowned neurologist there, Jean-Martin Charcot, Freud continued his research on hysteria in Vienna with a physician Joseph Breuer.

Working with a patient, Anna O, through hypnosis, he postulated of her melancholic past and unpleasant sexual experiences as the cause of her partial paralysis. Since hypnosis was not exploring many of the causes of neuroses, he ventured into talk therapy which evolved to what is now known as psychotherapy.

His explanations to sufferers of hysteria were not taken kindly by them as it involved unproven sexual connexions. He was accused to be fixated with sex when sexual abuse in childhood was suggested as the reason for neuroses. It was dismissed as a scientific fairy tale. He and his fellow-kind were frowned upon as condescending bourgeoisie trying to clamp down their ideologies and exert their superiority over the high browed women. Freud himself later thought that his theory could be flawed as his family members too fell ill with this ailment. The idea of his father abusing his siblings proved just too much.

Freud then explored into the subconscious mind. He thought dreams were the window to this part of the body. His 1899 book 'Interpretation of Dreams' explains this and more. Even in our day to day lives, our unfulfilled desires are accidentally uttered by us in our speech via what was later termed as 'Freudian slip'.

Freud has the honour of making every modern person a psychologist wannabe through his introduction of the terms oedipus complex and penis envy in our vocabulary. He had this idea after watching Sophocles' play about Oedipus Rex slaying of his father, subsequent marrying to his mother and gorging of his own eyes after realising his folly. He proposed the sufferers of neuroses have repressed sexual energy.
Through his case study Dora, a patient with hysteria, he thought she lost her voice after being aroused by her father's friend. He understood the process of transference of energy to the therapist when she became defensive when told about the dynamics of her ailment.

Freud started the Wednesday Psychological Society where psychologists got together and the result of it was three essays on the theory of sexuality. He expanded the concept of sexuality which was beyond just having sex and the discovery of sexual orientation. For a short while, Carl Jung was his messenger to broadcast his new ideas. Jung, a gentile, was just the best catch to spread his new science which was at danger of being labelled 'Jewish Science' but unfortunately Jung left the group unable to stomach Freud's over-dominating demure.

Freud started questioning his own theories after his sons, having returned from the Great War, developed a type of neuroses, termed then as shell-shock (PTSD). Sexuality could not solely explain its occurrence. He thought, beyond the pleasure principle, there must be a death drive. He introduced the 3 elements that controlled our actions - id, ego and superego.
It is said his works were used by his nephew, Edward Bernays in the USA, to use psychological elements in business to entice the animalistic desires of people to buy and indulge in things that they do not need.

1938 was a bad year. Hitler's men moved to Vienna. Freud had a brush with the Gestapo and decided to migrate to England. By then his overindulgence in cigar smoking (20 sticks per day), which he refers to as his single greatest habit, had caused serious repercussions. His mandibular carcinoma had recurred. He could hardly open his mouth but still smoked his cigar by opening his mouth with a clothes' peg. He ended his life by arranging for a lethal dose of morphine.

Sigmund Freud's theories have been ridiculed and disapproved over the years. Nevertheless, he is revered for telling the world that it is normal to be abnormal. Even though his theories have been accused of being tall tales, MRI studies shows that most of our thinking is at sub-conscious level. His ideas have excited advertisers to promise sweet nothings to potential customers. The lure of youth, beauty, sexual prowess and prestige are placed in advertisements. We make sense of who we are. We talk openly about our emotions and its complexities. We place a lot of importance to childhood experiences We are told to face up our past to live a better life. We are told to look inwards to critique ourselves but sometimes we wonder whether this gave rise to our narcissistic culture of self-absorption and self-obsession.

No matter how much we interrogate ourselves, there will still be a part of our mind that stays in the dark. It may manifest when we least expect.

Freudian slip in Ramayana?

They say people will cherry pick and pluck what they want to see and hear. Read in Wendy Doniger’s book ‘The Hindus, An Alternate History’ about the vestigial mention of the three components of the mind in Ramayana!

Sigmund Freud proposed the three levels our minds are controlled; id which satisfies us with primal satiety needs of hunger, libido, sleep and resorting to violence, the ego which acts as the rein to control id but sometimes fail to control and superego as the master controller which conforms an individual to the norms of society.

Surprise, surprise. The author found the same comparison through the presence of the Ravana, King of Lanka King and his brothers. Kumbhakarna, the younger brother got a boon from the God (by mistake, mispronunciation) of ability to spend most of the time sleeping. And that is what he did - eating and sleeping (personification of id). Ravana, the learner of many arts and knowledge obtained the boon of power so powerful undefeated by any ogre, beast or angel. This is an epitome of my or the ego, which tries to seek pleasure and avoid pain. The youngest of them, Vibhishana, is the level headed one who is more grounded, like Superego, always have held on situations. He apparently tried to dissuade the egoistic Ravana against kidnapping Sita and waging war but instead was banished from Lanka. Vibhisana then became a  turncoat and fought for the side of righteousness, Rama!

Freudian slip ~ any action, such as a slip of the tongue, that may reveal an unconscious thought.

Freudian work in Kollywood?

Marupiravi (Reincarnation, மறுபிறவி, Tamil; 1973)
Cases studies in psychology are fertile stories for the silver screens. What is more credible than when there is plausible and scientific (or pseudoscientific, if you are from the Church of Scientology) explanation for all of human's follies and deficiencies. Many of Hitchcockian thrillers are of this nature.
This Tamil film boasts of being the first in the genre of 'erotic psychological thriller'. Unfortunately, it fell flat in its endeavour on the thriller part but ended up as a sort social drama with a social message to make public aware that there exist a branch of medicine which could solve marital problems and not to dwell in unproven mumbo jumbo like witchcraft and magic.

Dr Abraham Thomas Kovoor (1898-1978)

All psychologists must look like this?

The story was produced by Dr Abraham Thomas Kovoor from his case files and even makes a cameo appearance as the introducer and as a psychiatrist in the movie.  Dr Kuvoor is a Professor from Kerala who spent his post retirement age in newly indépendant Ceylon, teaching botany. He practised hypnotherapy and applied psychology. He was an active member in a movement of realists. He had a bone to pick with God-men of India, especially Satya Sri Satya Baba. He repeatedly confronted him on his ability to materialise vibhuti from thin air. Unfortunately, Sai Baba had dodged his direct confrontations. A reward for Rs 100,000 by him in 1963 to anybody who could perform an unexplainable supernatural act is still unclaimed.
This story is a remake of a Malayalam version and in keeping its audience happy, the director had decided to put a family feel to it. Hence, the crux of the subject matter of the story only happens to the third quarter of the movie.
A lecturer, Elango, (Muthuraman) is smitten by his student (Manjula) as he starts teaching Tamil Literature in a new college. The students starts heckling their relationship. They decide to tie the knot with the approval of her father, a single parent Asokan. After many love duets and running around the parks and beaches, 4 years pass and the father and relatives long for a heir.
Then start the work of religious men and prayers to appease the stars and spirits.
Only later do the couple make it clear that consummation was never possible as the Elango just freezes out after being aroused. Things becomes more complicated when he is caught in bed with his maid!
Slowly the couple make it to Dr Kuvoor's clinic. Only then it is discovered that the lecturer grew up morbidly attached to his mother. He lost his father at an extremely young age. Even though his mother had passed away, he still chose a girl remarkably similar in features to his mother to be eternally close to his mother! Unfortunately when it came to conjugal activities, his unconscious mind just could live up to having sexual relations with that figure!
With the help of the psychologist, the couple managed to have a successful married life.

“He who does not allow his miracles to be investigated is a crook; he who does not have the courage to investigate a miracle is gullible; and he who is prepared to believe without verification is a fool.” A. T. Kovoor

I want my MTV!

The Century of the Self (2002)
Produced and Written by Adam Curtis
#03 - There is Policeman Inside all our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed

The teachings of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud and Edward Bernase that underneath every individual lies an irrational self is soon to be challenged. They profess that the inner being is not all that bad and need not be repressed or controlled. Human were described as not mere vessels but need to express themselves. This propelled a revolution which ended producing isolated, vulnerable and greedy individuals who were more easily manipulable than before. This was liked by the powers that be and fed it for their own liking!In the 50s, a renegade group of psychotherapists (including Wilhelm Reitch, a former disciple of Freud) encouraged people to release their hidden anger and other repressed feelings. Repressed feelings by the society made it dangerous. Reitch's approach met opposition from Anna Freud (a virgin) when he suggested that lack of orgasm led to depression and release of libido led to freedom. This conflict killed Reitch's career. Treated as a pariah in the psychotherapy community, he retreated to Northern America to venture more venture which bordered on ludicrous experiments like capturing libidal energy from the atmosphere which could ward off UFO attacks! He was imprisoned when he tried to treat a cancer patient with his orgon energy!
In response the deep involvement of psychoanalysts in advertisement, came groups (including thinker Herbert Marcuse) who tried to attack 'Corporate America' whom they complained of trying to change the population to brainless one dimensional consumers of the products of mass production. They accused of keeping its citizens contented and docile while the Government went on to attack Vietnam.
Suddenly, the youths embarked on a mission to overthrow the Government which they say 'Put the Policeman in the Head'.

Numerous failed demonstrations and mortality on the side of the students proved that the State was too strong against the demonstrators/ leftists.
They decided to change strategy. Instead of changing the external force (i.e. Government), they advocated changing themselves -making them strong against the set of rules set by the society. With the change of autonomous individuals, it was hoped the society would finally change.
Like mushrooms after a rain, sprang Esalen Institutes which taught self revelation and releasing of inner demons. They tried to solve racial disharmony in the society but failed. In a convent however, they managed to persuade nuns to disrobe the tunics for regular clothes. More than half of the nunnery had their nuns giving up their divine call and some even became lesbians after releasing themselves from the shackles of conformity of the community.

A trend began to develop in the Western world where people had individual likes and needs. To them only the individuals matter, not the society. The market forces again try to bring them under their spell.
Stanford Research Institute with the help of economists and psychologists, tried to discover man inner values and to measure their desires! They discovered a pattern of choices and values which transcended social class. They called it lifestyle choices. Again, the big companies managed to discover the need of the specific type of people and targeted their advertisements to this end.

Politicians like Reagan and Thatcher joined in the bandwagon and started preaching self expressiveness and non meddling by the Government. With the new discovery of lifestyle, economy started booming again and everybody was happy.

Ferocious animals, you and I!

The Century of Self (2002)
#1. Happiness machines

"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." —Adam Curtis'

Yet another documentary, in fact, it is his famous one, from the disillusioned Oxford academia who traded his robe and mortarboard for a place behind the camera. This time around, he tackled something quite unique and it is quite mind-boggling, actually.
It shows how the mind of the general public was and is still being manipulated by people in power for their own vested interest.

Irrational suppressed minds

The story starts in the late third of the 20th century in Vienna with Sigmund Freud. He postulated that human beings all have suppressed aggressive and sexual feelings. Civilization in essence, put a lid for them to demonstrate this primitive feelings and law and order prevailed. And that people in power were using this to control people in the name of mass democracy. His profession, of analyzing repressed memory and dreams was not accepted by Viennese high society then.
Over in New York, Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays was instrumental in using this same theory, not for therapy but to manipulate the masses to enrich American businessmen later.

Edward Bernays

In 1914, America joined the Great War. Bernays was employed by Woodrow Wilson as a publicist to spread the nation's intention to join the war of spreading democracy. After the War, he joined in the Paris Treaty. Bernays was impressed with the masses' admiration of the American president. He thought that if people could be manipulated during the course of the war, they could also be moulded in peacetime.
If in war, it was called propaganda, in peacetime Bernays called it 'public relations'. Bernays' public relations office received many clients. Philip Morris was one such client. At a time when smoking amongst women was a taboo, Bernays was approached to increase sales.

Torch of freedom?

With the help of psychoanalysis, he discovered that a cigarette was a phallic symbol, denoting power. So during an Easter Day parade, he paid a few ladies (non-smokers) to light up and join the parade, holding the lit cigarettes. He also summoned newspaper to print the whole fracas in their papers. The tagline was that they were holding the 'Torch of Freedom'. It went down very well with the women folks. After that was America stood for - freedom, liberty and Statue of Liberty. Suddenly women started smoking giving a false sense of freedom and control (of what?).

Torch of freedom?

Hence bred the generation of people who started buying things not because they need it but because they desire it. They think they need it and feel happy about having it. Consumerism had started.
To market the mass-produced things that started during WW1, this technique was taken to a different level. Products placements are done in movies and magazines. Paid celebrities and even psychologists (with biased studies) were used to endorse products. People without means were coaxed to venture into the stock markets, loans courtesy of the banks that Bernays represented!
It was a time when Bernays could do no wrong. Even the uninteresting President Coolidge had his image boosted with his help.
While in Europe, times were bad after WW1. Freud was bankrupt. Bernays marketed his books in the US which created lots of controversies but he capitalized on it and laughed all the way to the bank.
Freud, by this time, was quite disillusioned and pessimistic about mankind. He thought that the unconscious aggressive feeling was more dangerous than he thought. He described Man as a sadistic and ferocious animal that cannot be tamed from he saw in the Russian Revolution.
In the US, Walter Lippmann suggested that democracy was wrong for the unconsciously irrational people. He suggested a new elite to head the unbewildered herd! Bernays took this to stimulate the inner desires and manage them and increase his business. They had created contented individualistic docile happiness machines while the leaders do what they want to do.
On 29.10.1929, markets collapsed. Consumers stopped buying, Bernays fell from grace and violent street fights were the order of the day in the US and Europe.
Freud, stricken with cancer of the jaw, writing from the Alps, wrote that civilization is an expression to control the animal instincts of man. He cannot be allowed to express too freely as it very dangerous and they always need to control!
In fact, Adolf Hitler had this same vision. Democracy, he thought, unleashed dangerous individualism. He let the Nation plan for the people. It bound people together and forged the minds of people for the nation. Like a pack of wolves, they were aggressive to outsiders. This same irrational forces that drew people to products drew people towards Hitler.

Adam Curtis

Back in the USA, after the 1930's collapse, FD Roosevelt used the power of the nation to control the free market to strengthen democracy. In his New Deal policy, he appointed bureaucrats to plan mega projects to stimulate the economy. Roosevelt, unlike Bernays and the corporates, believe that people were rational! He appointed statisticians to obtain approval ratings on his policy. The corporates retaliated by challenging his policies. They lured the public with more emotional attachments. The 1939 World Fair showcased a futuristic view of America with lures of more new products!
1938 came and Annexation of Austria (Anschluss) again showed the irrational behaviour of man and brutal treatment of the enemy of the state.
A displaced Freud, in London, succumbed to his malignancy before witnessing the savages forces of Man at work in the death camps.
The first part of the documentary ends with the gruesome reel of dead bodies of mostly preteens thrown down a slide leading to a mass grave!