Method in the madness

摘要

Psychoanalysis, as practised by Carl Jung and his mentor, Sigmund Freud, in Zurich and Vienna in the early 1900s came to be known as "a dangerous method". It is a good title for this absorbing film, written by Christopher Hampton and based on John Kerr's1994 book about Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein, which explores the role Spielrein (Keira Knightley) played in the two men's lives. An 18-year-old Russian patient of Jung (Michael Fassbender), who cured her psychotic hysteria in 1904, Spielrein later became an analyst and an inspiration both to Jung and to Freud (Viggo Morten-sen).