A Dangerous Method

[Christophe]

Hello.

I've watched the Cronenberg movie "A Dangerous Method! lately

I found it well-done, it doesnt fail to transport the spirit of the times; the dialogues are believable, the extra effort shows itself in the details, I actually jouissanced while watching the whole thing. Phew...

Anybody seen it yet?

[Edward theurj Berge]

I mentioned the film in this post, re-posted below. There was also more discussion of the movie related to the linked thread in subsequent posts.

"I saw the movie A Dangerous Method yesterday. There is much to explore about it and I may start a thread later, but I want to bring up a couple of its points here. Freud keeps bringing up to Jung the significance of his Jewish heritage distinct from his Aryan milieu. This is also a point in Bendle's article with Rosenzweig and Levinas, that having survived the holocaust makes concrete the devastating reality of what comes from an Aryan totalitarian paradigm and hence their response to it. One of the ways this plays out is Freud's insistence that psychoanalytic interpretation stick to the concrete, like sexuality, whereas Jung keeps searching for 'mystical' unities, rather endemic in the German idealists.

"Another interesting relevance in the movie is the idea of the death wish, which apparently Freud got from Fraulein Spielrein, once a rather disturbed but 'cured' patient of Jung. Like what you note above she talked of the dissolution of self during the sexual orgasm, and that this wish for union was indeed a wish for the death of the ego. But again, she seemed to side with Freud on this one, that this was not some sort of metaphysical or religious union with a totalizing All but rather a more concrete notion of putting aside one's individuality in service of a broader, social self. This is something we see playing out with Bendle and the religious polydox in general.

"The quotes I culled from the article above make clear though that this pluralism of the other is not an other in distinction from the self, as if they were opposites in a formal logic. It comes from "another category of understanding, a ‘mode of intelligibility’...beyond/ before the formal relations of logic." This is not to say that it is sans some kind of unity experience, for there is the mix of the death and sex instinct per above that leads to a more just social polity. It is just sans the ontotheological kind of unity that totalizes and subsumes difference. Just as there is a form of unity in OOO's strange mereology that also resists this totalitarianism. And just as there is a sort of paradoxical holding of unity and diversity, self and other, sameness and difference in the likes of differance, it is of a different kind than that of the Hegelian dialectic. And yes, it too is a kind of absolute (or perhaps ontology), but again a bird of a different feather fully amenable to rational critique."

I mentioned the film in this post, re-posted below. There was also more discussion of the movie related to the linked thread in subsequent posts.

"I saw the movie A Dangerous Method yesterday. There is much to explore about it and I may start a thread later, but I want to bring up a couple of its points here. Freud keeps bringing up to Jung the significance of his Jewish heritage distinct from his Aryan milieu. This is also a point in Bendle's article with Rosenzweig and Levinas, that having survived the holocaust makes concrete the devastating reality of what comes from an Aryan totalitarian paradigm and hence their response to it. One of the ways this plays out is Freud's insistence that psychoanalytic interpretation stick to the concrete, like sexuality, whereas Jung keeps searching for 'mystical' unities, rather endemic in the German idealists.

"Another interesting relevance in the movie is the idea of the death wish, which apparently Freud got from Fraulein Spielrein, once a rather disturbed but 'cured' patient of Jung. Like what you note above she talked of the dissolution of self during the sexual orgasm, and that this wish for union was indeed a wish for the death of the ego. But again, she seemed to side with Freud on this one, that this was not some sort of metaphysical or religious union with a totalizing All but rather a more concrete notion of putting aside one's individuality in service of a broader, social self. This is something we see playing out with Bendle and the religious polydox in general.

"The quotes I culled from the article above make clear though that this pluralism of the other is not an other in distinction from the self, as if they were opposites in a formal logic. It comes from "another category of understanding, a ‘mode of intelligibility’...beyond/ before the formal relations of logic." This is not to say that it is sans some kind of unity experience, for there is the mix of the death and sex instinct per above that leads to a more just social polity. It is just sans the ontotheological kind of unity that totalizes and subsumes difference. Just as there is a form of unity in OOO's strange mereology that also resists this totalitarianism. And just as there is a sort of paradoxical holding of unity and diversity, self and other, sameness and difference in the likes of differance, it is of a different kind than that of the Hegelian dialectic. And yes, it too is a kind of absolute (or perhaps ontology), but again a bird of a different feather fully amenable to rational critique."

[Christophe]

Sorry didn't know you covered the movie before.

Interesting ideas. I might add some of my own.

The Jewish vs. Aryan stuck out to me also. I heard rumours that Jung even saw Hitler at some point to cure him from his psychosis-like mind state. The Red Book speaks about Jung's own demons he wrestled with.

A great scene is when Jung and Freud discuss details of the theory (like dreams about penises) at the dinner table with Freud's Family. Freud says something like 'its okay, my familiy is used to inappropriate topics' and then the camera shows his three daughters in full costume listening to the conversation with reservation and interest. bang! ahahahaha

Most interesting to me is the connection between perversion which we dicussed in another thread (link), intense psychic suffering, the breaking of the law of the father, and innovation in theory and practice. Jung, unable to accept the more post-metaphysical facets of Freud's theory, can find no proper solution to his dilemma other than breaking the therapeutic law of sexual abstinence with his client. He gives way to his sadistic impulses with a willing and submissive Madame Spielrein ('I want you to punish me'). Is this pre- or post-Freud? Madame S. seems to think the former when she later decides to study with Master Freud. The intense pain of Jung becomes palpable in the final scenes of the movie when Mistress Spielrein decides to see him again. Pretty good for a 'hysteric' Ex-patient. Chapeau.

Then what's the solution? Never repress anything? I don't think that's possible, or even desirable (sic). Modern times always include a repression, so maybe it's more about making repression finite, like in 'Let's have another breakdown'.

Or, as the gentleman in the video says in another scene:

'Never go past an oasis without drinking from it'