Freud’s follies
Carin Gorrell
YOUNG DR. FREUD
Writer/Director/Producer: David Grubin
With biographer Peter Gay, psychoanalysis Martin Bergmann, Ph.D., and Elisabeth Young-Breuhl, Ph.D., and Freud’s granddaughter Sophie Freud
Sigmund Freud is probably best known for his disturbing theories on sexuality–the Oedipus complex and penis envy, to name two–which might be what prompts you to tune in to “Young Dr. Freud,” the latest documentary on the founder of psychoanalysis. What will keep you watching, however, is learning just where Freud discovered his philosophies.
“His ideas really come out of his own life,” says the documentary’s filmmaker, David Grubin. In other words, Freud’s cigars were more than just cigars, especially since he smoked 20 a day. He also felt passion for his mother, resentment toward his father and fear that he might one day sexually abuse his daughter. And it was primarily through analyzing his own shocking thoughts and dreams that Freud concocted his radical explanations and treatments.
“There’s a lot of controversy around Freud,” Grubin says in describing why he was drawn to documenting the founding of theories that most modern psychologists consider obsolete. “The film doesn’t try to present him as a god, or as a demon. It tries to see him as a human being with contradictions, one who indeed was a genius but who had limitations like everybody else.”
In this, Grubin succeeds, using readings, reenactments, photographs and interviews to recreate Freud’s steps flora birth to die publication of his seminal book, The Interpretation of Dreams, in 1900. Scheduled to air November 27 on PBS, his film may seem a bit long-winded at times–it clocks in at a full two hours–but remains an interesting and insightful look at the early life of psychology’s most famous celebrity.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Sussex Publishers, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
