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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 ...

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, prosper...

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. Ev...

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, co...

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 ...

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.  ...

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 le...

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 ma...