Freud (miniseries)

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Freud
Freud (miniseries).jpg
Directed by Moira Armstrong
Written by Carey Harrison
Produced by John Purdie
Starring David Suchet
Helen Bourne
Michael Pennington
Music by Ilona Sekacz
Release date
  • 14 September 1984 (1984-09-14)
Running time
360 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Freud, also known as Freud: the Life of a Dream, (1984) is a BBC television serial based on the life and times of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. David Suchet stars as Freud. The 6-part production is 360 minutes in duration.

Contents

Episodes

Each episode begins with Freud and his family in London, where they had fled from Vienna in 1938 following the Nazi Anschluss, leading up to Freud's death a little over a year later in 1939. The rest of each episode is told mainly in flashbacks to key moments in Freud's life and career.

  1. "In the Name of the Gods": Ailing Sigmund Freud, his wife Martha, and daughter Anna settle into a new home in London after being forced to flee Austria. Flashbacks recall Freud's early professional life, ambitions to do important work, and engagement to Martha, whose sister Minna is also engaged. Freud experiments with cocaine as a cure for morphine addiction and other uses, prompted especially by his relationship with Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow.
  2. "The Hypnotist": Freud goes to Paris to study with Jean-Marin Charcot, who has been experimenting with hypnosis to treat patients with "hysterical" neuroses. Returning to Vienna, his advocacy of Charcot's techniques is largely rejected, especially by his superior, Theodor Meynert. With the aid of Josef Breuer he begins to use hypnosis to treat patients, in particular the (fictional) Baroness von Lieben. His work leads him to begin investigating the role of dreams and repression of memories.
  3. "The Secret of Dreams": Through his practice, self-examination, and friendships with Wilhelm Fliess and Breuer, Freud develops his concepts of the unconscious and the role of desire, beginning to posit sexuality as a source of psychic conflict and to develop his "seduction theory."
  4. "Madonna": When Freud's concept of child sexuality and the seduction theory are rejected by his colleagues, including Breuer, he finds himself isolated. As Martha tends to the home and their growing family, Freud engages more with Martha's sister Minna, whose own fiancé had died. At first rejecting his brother Alexander's suggestion that he travel to Italy and Rome, mainly because of the Catholic Church's history of Jewish persecution, Freud relents. Traveling with Alexander and later with Minna, his observations of the many images of the Madonna and child and memories of incidents from his own childhood lead him to propose the concept of the Oedipus complex and abandon the seduction theory.
  5. "Messiah": Isolated in Viennese society, Freud draws the attention of other young psychoanalysts, who come to form an inner circle studying and arguing about the unconscious and the role of psychoanalysis. When Freud is contacted by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, Freud enthusiastically welcomes him and suggests that Jung will take over leadership of the group, especially since a gentile would be more acceptable to European society than one of the other Jewish members. Freud's own fame leads to an invitation to appear at Clark University in the United States. During the voyage and after, divisions between Freud and Jung deepen. In talks with Minna and others, Freud begins to suggest that psychoanalysis is better regarded as a philosophy than as a science as such.
  6. "The World as Dream": The episode alternates between flashbacks to earlier scenes and the dying Freud in London, now increasingly in pain from cancer and from the prosthetic jaw he wears due to an earlier operation. Scenes recount moments with von Fleischel-Marxow, Fliess, Breuer, Meynert, Martha and Minna, and others leading to the final split with Jung and the last moments in Vienna before leaving. At the end, Freud's doctor fulfills a promise to administer a dose of morphine that will end his pain and his life.

Cast (in alphabetical order)

Related Research Articles

Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedia article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's students Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and Analytical Psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sigmund Freud</span> Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis (1856–1939)

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson</span> American author (born 1941)

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is an American author. Masson is best known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In his The Assault on Truth (1984), Masson argues that Freud may have abandoned his seduction theory because he feared that granting the truth of his female patients' claims would hinder the acceptance of his psychoanalytic methods. Masson is a veganism advocate and has written about animal rights.

Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work. The psychoanalytic theory came to full prominence in the last third of the twentieth century as part of the flow of critical discourse regarding psychological treatments after the 1960s, long after Freud's death in 1939. Freud had ceased his analysis of the brain and his physiological studies and shifted his focus to the study of the psyche, and on treatment using free association and the phenomena of transference. His study emphasized the recognition of childhood events that could influence the mental functioning of adults. His examination of the genetic and then the developmental aspects gave the psychoanalytic theory its characteristics. Starting with his publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, his theories began to gain prominence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Eckstein</span> Austrian author

Emma Eckstein (1865–1924) was an Austrian author. She was "one of Sigmund Freud's most important patients and, for a short period of time around 1897, became a psychoanalyst herself". She has been described as "the first woman analyst", who became "both colleague and patient" for Freud. As analyst, while "working mainly in the area of sexual and social hygiene, she also explored how 'daydreams, those "parasitic plants", invaded the life of young girls'."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow</span> Austrian physiologist and physician

Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow, also Ernst Fleischl von Marxow, son of Karl Fleischl Edlem von Marxow and his wife Ida was an Austrian physiologist and physician who became known for his important investigations on the electrical activity of nerves and the brain. He was also a creative inventor of new devices which were widely adopted in clinical medicine and physiological research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilhelm Fliess</span>

Wilhelm Fliess was a German otolaryngologist who practised in Berlin. He developed the pseudoscientific theory of human biorhythms and a possible nasogenital connection that have not been accepted by modern scientists. He is today best remembered for his close friendship and theoretical collaboration with Sigmund Freud, a controversial chapter in the history of psychoanalysis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theodor Meynert</span>

Theodor Hermann Meynert was a German-Austrian psychiatrist, neuropathologist and anatomist born in Dresden. Meynert believed that disturbances in brain development could be a predisposition for psychiatric illness and that certain psychoses are reversible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freud's seduction theory</span> Abandoned 1890s psychological hypothesis

Freud's seduction theory was a hypothesis posited in the mid-1890s by Sigmund Freud that he believed provided the solution to the problem of the origins of hysteria and obsessional neurosis. According to the theory, a repressed memory of an early childhood sexual abuse or molestation experience was the essential precondition for hysterical or obsessional symptoms, with the addition of an active sexual experience up to the age of eight for the latter.

<i>Freud: The Secret Passion</i> 1962 film directed by John Huston

Freud: The Secret Passion, or simply Freud, is a 1962 American biographical drama film directed by John Huston and produced by Wolfgang Reinhardt. Based on the life of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, it stars Montgomery Clift as Freud and Susannah York as his patient Cecily Koertner. Other cast members include Larry Parks, Susan Kohner, Eileen Herlie, Eric Portman and David McCallum. The screenplay was by Charles Kaufman and Reinhardt, with some elements from a script by Jean-Paul Sartre, who withdrew his name from the film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bertha Pappenheim</span> Austrian-Jewish feminist

Bertha Pappenheim was an Austrian-Jewish feminist, a social pioneer, and the founder of the Jewish Women's Association. Under the pseudonym Anna O., she was also one of Josef Breuer's best-documented patients because of Sigmund Freud's writing on Breuer's case.

Peter Joffre Swales was a Welsh "guerilla historian of psychoanalysis and former assistant to the Rolling Stones". He called himself "the punk historian of psychoanalysis", and he is well known for his essays on Sigmund Freud. A 1998 article in The New York Times Magazine noted his "remarkable detective work over the last 25 years, revealing the true identities of several early patients of Freud's who had been known only by their pseudonyms." He is one of three men whose machinations are described in the 1984 book In the Freud Archives, which originated as two articles in The New Yorker magazine that provoked Masson to file an unsuccessful $10 million libel suit against the magazine and its writer Janet Malcolm.

Metapsychology is that aspect of any psychological theory which refers to the structure of the theory itself rather than to the entity it describes. The psychology is about the psyche; the metapsychology is about the psychology. The term is used mostly in discourse about psychoanalysis, the psychology developed by Sigmund Freud, which was at its time regarded as a branch of science, or, more recently, as a hermeneutics of understanding. Interest on the possible scientific status of psychoanalysis has been renewed in the emerging discipline of neuropsychoanalysis, whose major exemplar is Mark Solms. The hermeneutic vision of psychoanalysis is the focus of influential works by Donna Orange.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Bernays</span> Wife of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud

Martha Bernays was the wife of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freud family</span> Family of Sigmund Freud

The family of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, lived in Austria and Germany until the 1930s before emigrating to England, Canada, and the United States. Several of Freud's descendants and relatives have become well known in different fields.

<i>Why Freud Was Wrong</i> 1995 book by Richard Webster

Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis is a book by Richard Webster, in which the author provides a critique of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, and attempts to develop his own theory of human nature. Webster argues that Freud became a kind of Messiah and that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience and a disguised continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Webster endorses Gilbert Ryle's arguments against mentalist philosophies in The Concept of Mind (1949), and criticizes many other authors for their treatment of Freud and psychoanalysis.

<i>Freud, Biologist of the Mind</i> 1979 book by Frank Sulloway

Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend is a 1979 biography of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, by the psychologist Frank Sulloway.

<i>The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud</i> 1953–1957 book by Ernest Jones

The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud is a biography of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, by the psychoanalyst Ernest Jones. The most famous and influential biography of Freud, the work was originally published in three volumes by Hogarth Press; a one-volume edition abridged by literary critics Lionel Trilling and Steven Marcus followed in 1961. When first published, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud was acclaimed, and sales exceeded expectations. Although the biography has retained its status as a classic, Jones has been criticized for presenting an overly favorable image of Freud. Jones has also been criticized for being biased in his treatment of rival psychoanalysts such as Otto Rank and Sándor Ferenczi.

Jacob Koloman Freud (1815–1896) was the father of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.

<i>Freud</i> (TV series) German crime drama television series, first broadcast in 2020

Freud is an Austrian-German crime television series re-imagining the life of a young Sigmund Freud. The series produced 8 episodes which were first aired on ORF 15 March 2020 then released on Netflix on 23 March 2020.