James Hillman, 85

James Hillman, Therapist in Men’s Movement, Dies at 85
by Benedict Carey, The New York Times, October 27, 2011

New York premiere of "A Dangerous Method"

A Dangerous Method (UK/Canada/Germany; 2011)
Directed by David Cronenberg
Screenplay by Christopher Hampton
99 minutes

David Cronenberg, a filmmaker with a peerless grasp on the mysteries of the mind and the body, turns his attention to a seminal chapter in the founding of psychoanalysis. Adapted from Christopher Hampton’s play A Talking Cure, A Dangerous Method charts the relationship between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and his protégé turned dissenter Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), as it was shaped by the case of Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a young Russian Jewish patient of Jung’s. Cronenberg brilliantly dramatizes not just the rivalry and rupture between two pioneers who defined a field but also the birth of their groundbreaking theories of the unconscious and the forces of Eros and Thanatos. Featuring an electrifying trio of lead actors, who turn near-mythic figures into flesh and blood, this is a film of tremendous vigor and ambition, a historical drama that brings ideas to life. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

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Forget trying to get tickets for the New York Film Festival's two presentations of A Dangerous Method this evening at 6pm and 8:30pm. They're long gone. It was hard enough getting into yesterday's press screening, but I made it! As a longtime Jung fan--his work has deeply influenced my own development and counseling practice--I took great interest in David Cronenberg's romantic dramatization of a curious transitional moment in the great healer's career and life.

Based on a play by Christopher Hampton and diligent research into correspondence and the period, A Dangerous Method stars Michael Fassbender (Carl Jung), Viggo Mortensen (Sigmund Freud) and Keira Knightley (Sabina Spielrein) along with powerful supporting turns by Vincent Cassel (Otto Gross) and Sarah Gadon (Emma Jung). A Dangerous Method was filmed in Cologne and near the Alps at Lake Constance on the Rhine.

The opening scene barrels towards you, thrusting captive, mentally-ill Sabina Spielrein into your face. She bellows and struggles as a carriage hurtles her towards a hospital where she will meet Jung and become his patient. Keira Knightley's physical transformation in this and many subsequent scenes is wrenching. Under Cronenberg's direction, she works and strains that familiar jutting visage and angular frame and those vulnerable, melancholy eyes to great effect. Watching scenes like this, I thought the actress might be overdoing it. But--as Cronenberg explained in a post-screening Q&A--Spielrein's documented physical behavior was far more tortured and alarming.

In Jung's office, the camera shifts us from Spielrein's perspective (looking up at the doctor) to his (looking down on the patient), giving the audience a visceral sense of the indeed dangerous imbalance of power. Things will get stranger and more dangerous as the brilliant young analyst and his also secretly brilliant patient--the masochistic daughter of a brutal father--commence treatment and, over time, mentorship and an unethical, clandestine affair.

As her disturbing secrets spill under Jung's careful, insightful questioning, the doom-eager Spielrein concludes "There's no hope for me. I'm filthy and corrupt. I must never be let out of here."

Of course, we will learn that she is no such thing as, under Jung's care and propelled by love of him, she unfolds her own true insightful self, eventually becoming an analyst, too. But in these early scenes, Cronenberg contrasts her trauma and turmoil with the world of orderly, if static, domesticity that is the wealthy Jung household--every clean, gleaming detail of decor in place and just so.

A sub-theme contrasting the Swiss-German Jung--whose wife Emma provides the high level of living while dutifully tamping down her sensuality and her own intellectual brilliance--and the Russian Jewish Spielrein becomes even more pronounced as Sigmund Freud first takes Jung under his wing and then rejects him. Freud, aware of his outsider status as a Jew in Vienna and fiercely protective of his theories and adherents, challenges every new sign that Jung is moving towards ideas and behaviors that could bring the fledgling science of psychoanalysis crashing down around their heads.

In truth, Jung is unraveling and doing so in ways that will bring deep pain to himself and others. The ultimate transformation in this, the flowering of Jungian theory and practice, lies way in the future beyond Jung's suffering and beyond the scope of this film. Cronenberg leads us across a treacherous footbridge then stops just short of land.

The casting of the German-born Irish actor Fassbender, an irrepressibly charming hottie, and Cassel, whose uneven features suit his Trickster-ish role, are master strokes, but the entire cast is very fine.

Be sure to see A Dangerous Method when it opens in US theaters in late November.

A presentation of The 49th New York Film Festival
Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center
Broadway and 65th Street, Manhattan

Subway: #1 local train to 66th Street/Lincoln Center Station
Bus: The M5, M7, M10, M11, M66 and M104 bus lines all stop within one block of Lincoln Center.

ARAS and the enduring image

Across Cultures, Image Is Everything

by Andy Battaglia, The Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2010

The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism Turns the Human Subconscious Into a Picture Book

When you're ready to move beyond Oprah...

The gorgeous, always imaginative Rubin Museum of Art is well into a series of seven Wednesday evening conversations called Tibetan Book of the Dead Book Club in association with its special exhibitions, Bardo: Tibetan Art of the Afterlife and Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures. Each Wednesday, curator Ramon Prats explores the TBD from different perspectives with an expert representing a particular discipline. They inquire: Does the TBD have relevance, wisdom and practical application for us today?

This week, I attended Prats's talk with Jungian psychoanalyst Morgan Stebbins on "The Analysis of Dreams," a topic of perennial relevance. According to Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, dreams will always be relevant as long as humans exist, as long as humans remain unenlightened. Enlightened beings do not dream. They no longer have to, for to dream is to open onto an altered level of awareness in which we come face to face with avoided, unknown or normally inaccessible issues.

Stebbins discussed how Tibetan ideas and traditions around this heightened state of awareness parallels the theories and practices of Carl Gustav Jung. Jung's psychoanalytic approach, he said, represents a journey into the "totality of one's being--the Buddha nature" where one can gain information on unconscious patterns of behavior, insight into so-called symptoms that are actually "symbolic attempts to get to somewhere new." Dreams herald a shift towards liberation.

And the TBD considers this liberation through hearing, as Prats mentioned, in his intriguing introductory remarks. Why hearing, I wondered? One sentence from a TBD passage read later suggested the reason: "So, recognize what I show you without distraction." We are simply too distracted by illusion to get with reality. Like children in school, we have to be brought to attention and made to hear. The Bardo afterlife process, Tibetan Buddhists believe, first brings the soul to that required place of attention and learning before it can move on in its journey. But dreams offer powerful opportunities for growth within our lifetime.

And what of the images of deities of wrath, featured in so much Tibetan art? And what of our own terrifying nightmares?

"Psychologically speaking, nightmares are great news," says Stebbins. "Wake up! Look at this! It has a lot of energy. You have a lot of energy you're not using. Change is scary."

Upcoming TBD Book Club sessions will feature Rabbi Neil Gillman on "The Death of Death" (July 28), Brooklyn Museum curator Edward Bleiberg on "The Egyptian Book of the Dead" (August 11), medium Jesse Bravo on "Channeling the Dead" (August 18) and Roshi Enkyo O'Hara on "How to Die" (August 25)--all at 7pm. Click here for full information and tickets, and promptness--in both ticket purchasing and showing up to get a good seat--is strongly advised.

Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues), Manhattan

Directions

Jung's Book of Shadows

Exhibition Review: 'The Red Book of C. G. Jung - Creation of a New Cosmology'
by Edward Rothstein, The New York Times, December 11, 2009