Written and published by Nihilitus
Date of publication: March 11, 2023.
“Freud: The Secret Passion” is a biographical film produced in 1962 and narrates the psychoanalytical contribution of Sigmund Freud (played in the film by Montgomery Clift) to the study of the unconscious. The film directed by John Huston, and partially written by Jean-Paul Sastre (later, due to disagreements with the director, he would ask not to be included in the credits of the production) begins with a deep reflection on the three great blows that the human ego suffered in the modern era.
Movie:
Freud: The Secret Passion
Director:
John Huston
Studio/Year of release:
Universal/1962
The first shock came when he learned that the earth was not the center of the universe, but a tiny part of it where other intelligent worlds probably exist. The second, when he understood that he was not a species in itself, separate from the others, but a product of evolution in which he shared the same biological matrix as the rest of the animals. Finally, the last blow came when he learned that his consciousness was not the one making the most important decisions in his life, the role of the unconscious appeared as something mystical, but real and more important than he thought.
The following video has been published for educational purposes. Copyrights by Universal, 1962
One of the details that the film continually highlights is the denial of incipient modern science to inductive methods based on the experience and life story of the sick. Observation, verification and confirmation of theory were predominant. Everything was based on the Newtonian method of measuring, observing and creating laws that are universal, i.e. that could be applied to everyone. However, as we know today, the human mind is a difficult universe to understand, especially with invasive methods such as lobotomy, which led patients to certain death.
Freud, faced with this panorama, had a more critical view. As indeed the film reflects, Freud tried to create his own methodology to understand hysteria and other mental illnesses, with induction techniques associating the remains and vestiges of the past life of his patients, which would later heal as traumas, with their somatic manifestations. Freud would come to build this method thanks to the influence of hypnosis. This apparent almost magical method would be explained by Charcot (Fernand Ledoux in the film), noting that although the symptoms of a disease could be cured as well as created through hypnosis, its effectiveness was limited and temporary. What Charcot tried to make clear was that the origin of many illnesses came from the mind of the patient, and not from their peculiar physiological manifestations. Freud, attracted by this perspective, decided to delve deeper into it, challenging even the nascent scientific direction that his colleagues defended.
The following video has been published for educational purposes. Copyrights by Universal, 1962
What Freud discovered is that the human mind is not only a thinking machine, but a complex system that not only operates with present information flows. Practically what Freud discovers is that past experiences, the intensity and influence they have on our lives, define the patterns of personality. Hysteria, as Freud’s contribution, is explained by this argument. A bad experience (usually associated with a threat to the integrity of the patient) can become diluted as a memory with the passage of time. But at a deeper level, what Freud finds, is that this memory will not only remain in force, but will determine our decisions to the point of leading people to perform acts that are outside their expectations. The conflict, according to Freud, can not only manifest itself in the disconnection of the patient with the ordinary world, but often acquires a specific somatic manifestation (blindness, paralysis, among others).
The origin of this dissociation, Freud tells us in the film, is in the unconscious. A complicated system of networks that operates in complete obscurity (due to the ignorance of its origin), but which nevertheless is so influential that it practically determines our conscious life.
Some of these ideas are exposed in the film and also reflect the first stage of Freud’s life. The rest focuses on Freud’s contributions to the field of dreams and his renowned theory of the Oedipus complex, the always confrontational relationship with his colleagues, among others. A profound film, impeccably directed, which was precisely praised for representing in a simple, digestible and attractive way a very complex and controversial subject. Not for nothing did it receive several Oscar nominations.
Nihilitus 