The authors describe the content and the circumstances surrounding the production of Secrets of a Soul, 'the first film to deal explicitly with the psychoanalytic conception of the mind, the mind, the causation of neurosis, and the psychoanalytic method of treatment'. The film, which was directed by G. W. Pabst, concerned a patient with compulsions and a knife phobia. Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs served as technical consultants. After Abraham's death, Sachs played a larger role, spending much time in the studio and giving advice throughout the shooting of the film. Freud was sceptical about the undertaking, doubting that 'satisfactory plastic representation of our abstractions is at all possible'. The film was successful in Europe and in the United States.