You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Vienna Blood is a British/Austrian crime series set in fin de siècle Vienna that features the collaboration between a young psychoanalyst, Max Liebermann (Matthew Beard) and Detective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt (Juergen Maurer) of the Vienna Security Service. This series was recently aired by PBS in 2022 and is in its second season. Based upon the Max Liebermann mysteries of clinical psychologist Frank Tallis, Vienna Blood is made up of six episodes per season, in which each crime and its solution are covered in two episodes.
Filmed in Vienna, this captivating period piece has a particular perspective of interest to analysts, since it engages our two heroes in as much “psychoanalytic” as “criminal” investigations.
Vienna Blood has some unique features appealing to psychoanalysts, which include an in-depth exploration of Vienna at the turn of the 20th century with a particular emphasis on the artistic and scientific atmosphere pervading this period, serving as a facilitator for the emergence of psychoanalysis itself. Film portrayals of our discipline seldom cover life in Freud's Vienna. Similarly, Vienna Blood offers a portrayal of Freud himself that is far different and more “accurate” than other depictions of him in a number of films in which psychoanalysts are featured (Gabbard, 1997 & 2001). This contrast will be presented and examined as to what it means for psychoanalysis. Very germane to this series is Gabbard's exploration of
how analysts are portrayed functionally, whether in our regular work or in assisting the police in film.
The emergence of psychoanalysis was greatly assisted by the historical period in which it arose. As Eric Kandel (2012) points out in his excellent book, The Age of Insight, the early 20th century in Vienna was a time when arch conservative viewpoints, artistic and scientific alike (the Age of Reason), were cast aside in favor of what Kandel calls “Vienna Modernism.” Both in literature and in the arts, much more emphasis was placed on o