What happens when history collides at the intersection of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung?

Potentially, some pretty interesting fireworks. So that’s why I’m especially looking forward to the new David Cronenberg (A History of Violence) flick, A Dangerous Method.

The movie centers around the relationship between Jung and Freud after the young Dr. Jung (Michael Fassbender) takes on a new Russian patient, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). But Jung and his more experienced teacher, Dr. Freud (Viggo Mortensen), both fall under the spell of Sabina, driving a wedge between the two men.

Based upon a true story, Spielrein was admitted in August 1904 to the Burghölzli mental hospital near Zürich, where Carl Gustav Jung worked at that time, according to Wikipedia. “While there, [Sabina] established a deep emotional relationship with Jung who later was her medical dissertation advisor. The historian and psychoanalyst Peter Loewenberg argues that this was a sexual relationship, in breach of professional ethics…”

Click through to learn more and view the trailer.

Biographers and historians heatedly disagree about the exact nature of Jung’s relationship with Sabina. But such fuzziness only makes the dramatization of this relationship triangle all that much more compelling.

It looks like it’s going to be an excellent movie and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Dr. John Grohol is the founder & CEO of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 28 Oct 2011
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.