An Encounter with Viggo Mortenson's Freud Viggo Mortensen interview with Lisa Appignanesi at the Freud Museum, London and special screening of A Dangerous Method (David Cronenburg, US, 2011), 1 February 2012

A small ensemble of people has gathered on the staircase and into the hall of Sigmund Freud's last home, 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead. The gallery feature with the wide bay window on the staircase provides an excellent stage for us to meet the latest film incarnation of Sigmund Freud. I, for one, am intrigued: what kind of Freud will we meet?

This audience had the potential to be very discerning, after all, as Richards's has noted; ‘Differentiated conceptions of what Freud and psychoanalysis are - or should be about - command powerful feelings amongst their adherents’ (1989: 31). We had come to the Freud Museum on this occasion to attend a special screening of David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method (based on the Christopher Hampton play The Talking Cure which, in turn, is based on John Kerr's book A Most Dangerous Method: The story of Freud, Jung and Sabina Spielrein.). The film explores the troubled relationship between Freud and Jung, and significantly, the relationship between Jung and Sabina Spielrein. A guest appearance by Viggo Mortenson, who plays Freud, made this a special occasion.

The Viggo Mortensen we met seemed both charming and erudite. As the assembled crowd settled to hear the interview between Mortenson and Lisa Appignanesi, the hush was abruptly shattered when an audience member dropped a glass onto the highly polished