Here's something you wouldn't want to miss: the 3rd European Psychoanalytic Film Festival, in London from the 3rd to the 6th November. Registration fee a snip at £270. Honorary President is Bernardo Bertolucci, a walking advert for the benefits of the Freudian method. He started analysis in 1969, and is still going strong:
He’s on his fourth analyst. “Unfortunately, they die. I go with quite ageing shrinks,” he says. “The first two died. And there was another who I changed . . . maybe because (he goes quiet) I don’t know. I needed to start to do it with a woman. I had been so obsessed with the father, the father, the father.”
Well, it can happen.
So...how's it going?
“I take pills for anxiety, panic attacks, depression. Depression is the worst,” he says.
Although Woody Allen will forever be Exhibit A for the miracle cure which is Freudian analysis...
Posted by: J.Cassian | October 29, 2005 at 05:51 PM
It's to prevent precisely this kind of nonsense that my own governing body demands a full explanatory report should I ever need to take a client beyond 12 sessions.
One can be too hard on Freud, however - he left very little else to be said about the consulting room situation. And he wouldn't be the first arrogant genius whose movement was perpetuated by second-rate charlatans via snobbery and obscurantism.
Posted by: James Hamilton | November 01, 2005 at 11:59 AM