A Dangerous Method

A Dangerous Method is a 2011 historical film directed by David Cronenberg and starring Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, and Vincent Cassel. The screenplay was adapted by writer Christopher Hampton from his 2002 stage play The Talking Cure, which was based on the 1993 nonfiction book by John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method The story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein.

Sabina Spielrein arrives at the Burghlzli, the preeminent psychiatric hospital in Zurich, with a typical case of hysteria and begins a new course of treatment with the young Swiss doctor, Carl Jung. He is using word association and dream interpretation as part of his approach to Freuds radical new science of psychoanalysis, and finds that Spielreins condition was triggered by the humiliation and sexual arousal she felt as a child due to her shorttempered fathers habit of spanking her naked. These conflicting feelings were compounded by her instinctive knowledge imparted by an angels voice that speaks in German that she had done nothing to deserve such a punishment and in fact that she may have been a standin for her mother in her fathers abuse since her mother was unfaithful. Also, her affluent Russian Jewish family afforded her an exceptional education in preparation for university study, although not on the subject of sex, and she was a virgin.Her intelligence and energy were immediately recognized and encouraged by Jung and Eugen Bleuler, the head of the hospital, and since she plans to study medicine they allow her to assist them in their experiments, including measuring the physical reactions of subjects during word association, to provide empirical data as a scientific basis for psychoanalysis and ameliorate the more sensational aspects of Freuds theories, which contend that all mental illness is rooted in childhood sexual experience, be it real or fantasy. She soon learns that much of this new science is founded on the doctors observations of themselves, each other, and their families, not just their patients. The doctors correspond at length before they meet, and begin sharing their dreams and analysing each other, and Freud adopts Jung as his heir and agent. ........

Source: Wikipedia