Some Clinical Reflections

I have seen the film A Dangerous Method three times and each time my interest in the characters and their relationships, my respect for the actors, the filmmaker and the script-writer deepened. There is perhaps more to the film than meets the eye.

I have been asked to offer here some of my clinical reflections about the film on aspects of the analytic frame, the boundaries of analytic treatment and the analytic relationship. This is an area that has absorbed me for some years particularly as it concerns Jungian analysts practising in different parts of the world today; thinking about the significance of the role and relevance of transference within the analytic relationship remains as hot a topic for dispute and debate as it was for Freud and Jung 100 years ago.

It is my intention to frame my paper1 around Cronenberg's film as it has been presented to us and to use its evocation as my base camp from which to explore the analytic relationships as they are lived out within the film, and the unconscious processes of transference and countertransference. I have decided not to enter into the arena of historical accuracy about what is established fact, or what is the director's narrative smoothing (Spence 1987) for dramatic effects. Issues of ‘truth’ are the territory of Jung scholars and I will for the most part not address them. However, I do think that this film is a thought-provoking portrayal of the genius, the creativity and the often lonely struggles of the founding fathers and mothers of our profession to research through experience the unconscious and its power to both hinder and foster development. It has given me the opportunity to review what we have learned about the analytic relationship during the past century, to observe what remains intact and what has changed.

My first significant thought about the film was that had Jung been a current member of my own Society - the Society of Analytical Psychology in London - then, chances are he would most cer