The secret of dreams and the case of Sigmund Freud (screenplay).
Abstract: No doubt one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the 20th century, Freud’s life and struggles speaks to our world today which is no stranger to the alternating violent and passionate forces that belie the human condition. So, it is more than surprising that Freud’s biography has not found its way to the screen…until now. This screenplay was engineered to stay as close to the written record and biographical accounts of Freud, his work and relationships, although any student of Freud will see that the author have taken liberties with the material to create the context and extrapolate possible back-story that belies the official record regarding the creation of The Interpretation of Dreams and of Freud’s life. This is not an academic piece designed to educate the reader (or the audience,) although some education may occur, but to experience Freud as a man of his time, a scientist fighting to find a voice in a world full of ignorance, bias, racism, personal torment, and the courage to pursue his dreams to triumph against all odds.INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY
Freud’s biography and the creation of psychoanalysis are so intertwined we can comfortably say they are one of the same. It is difficult to find another researcher who used more of his own self experience as the medium of scientific exploration than Freud. Much of what Freud put forth came from countless hours studying the nature of his patients’ complaints presented to him in private. That is how the label “talking cure” came into being, actually coined by Joseph Breuer from his famous Case of Anna O.
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The history of psychoanalysis is built upon people talking to each other, either one to one in session, small group meetings, and/or in a lecture hall or classroom. All this talk had literally changed the way people see the world, which has been both academically and clinically fascinating, but the truth is that people talking to each other in therapy doesn’t naturally lend itself to the visual-action medium of cinema, although there are a few notable exceptions to this.
Up to this current effort Freud’s life and with it the creation of psychoanalysis has mostly eluded filmmakers. In 1962 John Huston made a valiant effort in covering this material from a script by none other than Jean Paul Sartre. Sartre’s script, (which is an interesting story onto itself) however proved unwieldy and difficult to visualize and was later abandoned for a more concise and condensed treatment. The Huston film, with its shadowy, brooding style, and a tortured performance by Montgomery Clift as Freud, had its champions but received little public favor possibly condemning all future Freud projects in commercial film.
From the Huston film we have to travel forty years into the future to David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method (2011), to offer up an energetic screen adaptation about the early days of psychoanalysis from John Kerr’s exhaustively researched account of the Sabina Spielrein – Carl Jung – Sigmund Freud triangle. With a dashing Viggo Morgenstern as Freud, and a brave performance by Kiera Knightly as the jaw jutting patient/student-analyst Spielrein , plus a tortured Michael Fassbender as Freud’s challenging protégé Carl Jung, enabled Cronenberg (who’s no stranger to mind body conundrums) to vigorously translate the Kerr material into a striking exploration of the sophomore days of the psychoanalytic movement.
This work, The Secret of Dreams and the Case of Sigmund Freud attempts to do what Huston ad Sartre first conceived, that is, to return to the beginning, where it all started, to visualize Freud’s dramatic discovery of the psychoanalytic method, building from the period before the creation of Interpretation of Dreams, which Freud himself considered his greatest contribution.
I came to this material 20 years ago, when doing research for a book on the clinical use of the manifest or remembered dream. In my research I came upon an article by Erik Erikson’s (1954), The Dream Specimen of Psychoanalysis article. Erikson’s
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article decidedly pointed to Freud’s “Dream of Irma’s Injection” as representing the true beginning of psychoanalysis. The dream and its analysis offered the first presentation of what was come to be known as the free associational method. The dream and its analysis fills all of chapter two in Freud’s dream book, and is considered by many as the book’s true opening chapter. Once I was alerted to the “Irma dream” and its significance I began to discover a whole trove of articles and research devoted to the specimen or Irma dream and its analysis, especially pointing to the many biographical elements that were clearly omitted in Freud’s original analysis. Studying the dream and the subsequent commentary led me to Freud’s incredible back story that comprised the latent content of the dream. In 1995, around the hundred year anniversary of the Irma Dream (July 24th 1895), I proposed a book as a memorial to this landmark occasion which brought together all the research and writings on the specimen dream under one comprehensive text, although the publisher was interested the project didn’t’ come together and the idea remained untapped.
Near twenty years later, prompted by friend and colleague Inna Rozentsvit, I returned to my original research and published an article “Freud’s Irma Dream, The Origin of Psychoanalysis and a Bloody Nose” (MindConsiliums, 2014), which received a Gradiva® nomination in 2015. This article then became the driver of a mixed media presentation, using narration, live actors, music, power point and props, to give life to this subject, especially emphasizing the precariousness of Freud’s direction at the time. That presentation was the impetus and platform what was to become a more comprehensive piece covering the spectrum of Freud’s life, both before and after them publication of The Interpretation of Dreams. In other words, I thought it had the makings of a fascinating film.
I found that the nature of the material suggested a more visceral, visual presentation hence the screenplay format. Like in Citizen Kane or other films based on a larger than life central figure taking place over a lifetime, a film treatment has the flexibility to readily shift between time frames, characters, location, and even between reality and dream.
The reader is asked to read the material and to watch the film unfold in their minds, since it has not been produced as of yet. It would prove great fun to imagine who
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would play Freud and his many cohorts. I have engineered this project to stay as close to the written record and biographical accounts of Freud, his work and relationships, although any student of Freud will see that I have taken liberties with the material to create the context and extrapolate possible back-story that belies the official record. This is not an academic piece designed to educate the reader (or the audience,) although some education may occur, but to experience Freud as a man of his time, a scientist fighting to find a voice in a world full of ignorance, bias, racism, personal torment and the courage to pursue his dreams to triumph against all odds.
*****
INT. VICTORIAN BEDROOM
Dark and ominous, mid-fifties, a man with a long gray beard, in silhouette, leaning over a bedridden woman. A close up of her face, serene, at peace, whispering to herself in an unintelligible language. The man is kneeling down beside her in rapt attention.
JOSEPH BREUER
Bertha, hear the sound of my voice and the words I say.
You will awaken from sleep feeling at peace, remembering where your pain comes from, freeing yourself of your torment.
BERTHA PAPPENHIEM
(She is in her mid-twenties. Her eyes suddenly open, and she says in a strong voice, with deranged conviction)
I am pregnant with your child. (Then again with more force) I am with your child.
BREUER
(surprised, stands up by her bed)
Please Bertha, it is not true what you are saying, it is a dream. It is your illness; you will go under again to get to the bottom of this idea. Your
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mind is playing games with you; remember you must chimney sweep.
BERTHA
Don’t lie to me. (She grabs her stomach in pain) You know what you had done, you know. Do not deny this. That would be wrong.
BREUER
But…
BERTHA
(Cutting him off)
You, heartless liar. You, pig! I am not your whore to use, you had violated me… Dr. Joseph, Dr. Joseph Breuer. I gave myself to you and you made me into a degenerate.
It is a dream, please…
BREUER
BERTHA
(Sitting up in bed, possessed, pointing a finger) BREUER
(Frightened, desperate)
I cannot do this, it is too much, I must go. You are in a dream. (Assertive.) BERTHA
It will be not so easy when you wife finds out that I am carrying your child, that you made me into your whore.
BREUER
(Shouting)
Enough, enough I said!
[LEAVING, BEARTHA IN BED SITTING UP AND POINTING,
CLOSE UP ON HER CONTORTED FACE, she throws her head back and screams.] BERTHA
This is your baby, this is your child! You seduced me, Je t’accuse de moi tomber enceinte!
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BREUER
(Scared, angry, rushing to the door) I am sorry I cannot be here I cannot be your doctor. [THE DOOR CLOSES HARD BEHIND HIM.] BERTHA
(Muffled by the closed door, her voice is screaming out. Breuer stands by the closed door hearing her words, gritting his teeth, then leaves, image of closed door)
I am with your child. (desperate) Je t’accuse de moi tomber enceinte… You’re liar, you betrayed me! You loved me, this is your child I am pregnant with…
SUPERIMPOSE TITLE
The Secret of Dreams and the Case of Sigmund Freud INSERT
SUPERIMPOSE SCROLL
Much like Darwin 50 years before, Sigmund Freud re-imagined humankind linking waking consciousness to sexual instincts from early childhood embedded in the unconscious mind. The discovery of the unconscious became the cornerstone of Freud’s legacy and it was in Chapter Two of Interpretation of Dreams that the method of psycho- analysis, that is, the free association method, is first presented through the analysis of The Dream of Irma’s Injection – it is through that dream that all mysteries of the waking mind would be revealed.
INT. Black and white photographs.
The photographs show women in twisted contorted bodily positions, faces in pain.
Then another similar image appears then another, then another. SUPERIMPOSE
SEPTEMBER VIENNA 1894 IN FREUD’S STUDY
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INT. VOICEOVER – BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES PASS BY DEPICTING WOMEN IN THE THROES OF AN HYSTERICAL EPISODE
VOICE ONE (JOSEPH BREUER)
(German Accent older) These are quite remarkable Sigmund.
FREUD
(German accent not as severe, friendly open, talkative, late 30s)
Yes, the Salpêtrière Hospital recently sent me these from Charcot’s Publisher, they photographed a good many of his hysteria patients in the throes of their illness. He was a great physician and teacher.
BREUER
And not a bad showman…
FREUD
Yet, for all his bravura, he had shown the way to the Promised Land, you know his work and yours are connected, it won’t be long that the world will know the great neurologist Dr. Joseph Breuer along with great Charcot as the pioneers for the treatment of hysteria and mental illness.
BREUER
Don’t be foolish, it is you, the Honorable Dr. Sigmund Freud that the world will come to know.
INT. office, ornate, filled with artifacts, books and items. Both men are sitting adjacent to each other on brown leather chairs studying the picture book in front of them on a table. Both are smoking cigars, and have half full glasses of cognac.
FREUD
(full brown beard, slight hints of grey with suit and an informal open collar) Joseph, my fame is unlikely, although I believe I can offer this world something. (Freud pauses to take a sip from his drink) I witnessed
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Charcot remove hysterical paralysis by merely planting a suggestion; I have none of his technique and agility with people. (He is flipping through photographic book) But he did teach me how the mind is a prisoner of ideas and memory, how the mind and body are linked, and I believe dreams too play a role. It is your work with Bertha Pappenheim, our Anna O, in honor of our first chapter that will take us even further into the Promised Land, it is you Dr. Joseph Breuer, we will remember.
BREUER
(bald, frail looking, with long beard)
You are too kind my friend. (He takes a drink) I am happy to put that episode with Miss Pappenheim behind me.
INSERT
Picture of a contorted body and face, then to zoom in very close on the contorted face mouth open eyes wide with terror. The face then dissolves into the face in the painting by Edvard Munch, The Scream.
INT. ART GALLERY INSERT INSERT
Berlin DECEMBER 1894
Zoom out and Freud is standing next to Wilhelm Fleiss both are staring at a The Scream by Edvard Munch.
FREUD
(WEARING A BROWN SUIT, FULL BEARD, SOME SLIGHT GREY STREAKS AND CIGAR IN RIGHT HAND)
Munch captures the torment of our inner soul in the modern world. I wonder if his painting speaks to past horrors, or what is yet to come, not very subtle though.
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FLIESS
(SHARPLY DRESSED, THINNER THAN FREUD, HANDSOME IN A BOYISH-WAY FULL BEARD DARK HAIR NO SIGNS OF GREY, MID 30’S)
Sigmund, we are on the threshold to free all of us of this suffering. (Commenting on painting)
FREUD
We cannot cure the insult of the modern world. I think you are too romantic my friend. You know the modern world has little room for us romantics, especially Jewish ones.
THEY ARE WALKING IN THE GALLERY PASSING A FEW
PAINTINGS. They stop at another Munch painting, The Madonna.
FREUD
Sexuality, animal desire and hostility that is on the other side of the facade of the modern world; that is what we bury within ourselves, pretending to the world and ourselves.
FLIESS
(Changing the subject)
So tell me, how is your mentor Dr. Breuer; is he pleased with the book on hysteria you will publish?
THEY ARE TALKING IN FRONT OF A PAINTING (THE MADDONA, BY MUNCH)
FREUD
To be honest about things, I feel a storm is brewing between us, his disposition is not open to see how the sexual component as central, he ran from Bertha when she gave him the gold, showed her inner truth. Sadly, it is doubtful we will continue collaborating.
FLIESS (TURNING TOWARD FREUD)
That is too bad… You know you have my complete confidence in your discoveries, I will not turn away from you. (He grabs Freud’s arm.)
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FREUD
Thank you my dear friend, I know when the world will turn against me, (pause, looks down) and it will, you always remain my safe port. I will be back in Vienna tomorrow, and there is the matter of the Eckstein case that I will need your consultation, and perhaps surgical expertise.
BOTH ARE STANDING IN FRONT OF A PAINTING BY MUNCH, THE MADONNA. THE IMAGE IS FRAMED BETWEEN THE SHOULDERS OF THE TWO MEN. CLOSE UP OF FACE IN
PAINTING DISSOLVES INTO A WOMAN’S FACE (Anna
Hammerschlag) LYING ON A COUCH.
SUPERIMPOSE
Vienna June 1895 Freud’s consulting room, with family friend and patient Anna Hammerschlag. (the patient known as Irma) The last session before their summer break from the treatment. Anna is being treated for hysterical pains.
INT. OFFICE ROOM INSERT JUNE 1895
There is a woman, attractive sensual, early 30s. (ANNA H.), lying on a red ornate couch with oriental coverings and a high back. She has dark full curly hair wrapped tight in a bun. She wears a white color linen shirt with coral necklace. Her face is soft and her expression is dreamy. The room is dark.
Light sneaks in from a window at the corner of the room. Small antiquarian statues are lined up the wall on a shelf. No words stillness. The CAMERA PULLS BACK and we see a bearded figure appear sitting behind the ornate couch, covered in oriental quilts and a large pillow. Both are in frame.
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ANNA H.
(pleading, shaking her head)
I can’t go any further.
(Silence. Then the bearded man, sitting, holding a cigar, Sigmund Freud, speaks)
FREUD
It is my experience when a patient withdraws into themselves and closes the flow of words, like turning off a water spigot; that the patient is more than likely harboring unwelcome thoughts or ideas about their doctor.
ANNA H.
Yes, but not unwelcome, I want to think these things, but if I say them aloud you will think of me as a fool, or an immoral whore.
FREUD
It is of no concern your attitude toward what I may be thinking; you must remain committed to the idea of saying everything, everything that comes into mind without censorship. It is a simple rule, but difficult to accomplish.
You will judge me.
ANNA H.
FREUD
The judgment lies with in you. There is no other option but to take a risk to free yourself of your suffering.
ANNA H.
(Starting to cry)
I am reminded of a dream… my husband Rudy died so suddenly, but he is alive in the dream, but he looks much like a child, I kiss him on the lips, it feels wrong, then my teeth begin to fall out of my mouth and wake up. (crying) You never knew him… I still miss him, even though it was nearly 10 years ago. He was such a gentle spirit… then he dies and I am alone. Alone in my thoughts, alone in my heart, and alone in my bed.
(More intense crying) There is nothing more pathetic than a widower
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whose only companion is sadness and grief. (She starts to feel panic, her breathing becomes more labored. She holds her throat, gasping.) I can’t breathe, Dr. Freud.
(Freud does nothing but sit and listen. Silence.)
FREUD
Are the thoughts that are so unacceptable related to your sadness and grief? (Waits) Each part of the dream points to a forbidden wish, you see, the kiss substitutes for an unacceptable desire, or memory perhaps, which would result in a child the displacement of the wish is clearly seen, the wish for Rudy and the underlying wish for your father.
ANNA H.
(started to laugh, her mood shifted from the panic)
You can see through me like a sheet of thin ice. When I was a child I would go upon the lake by our house and my father would warn me, Anna don’t go on the ice it can break and you will drown, and god does not want to take you so quick, he told me himself!!
FREUD
Maybe your feel you are on thin ice here with me.
ANNA H.
Yes, that’s true. And if I break though, I will die in the cold water.
FREUD
Keeping things within your self places you under the ice, in the coldest water.
ANNA H.
(Starts to cry again)
My head is spinning, I feel dizzy, I may faint, help me.
FREUD
By avoiding speaking your thoughts thus your body will speak for you.
ANNA H.
Yes, you are correct, why is this so impossible.
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I can wait.
FREUD
ANNA H.
(Desperate)
I hate you. You sit there like some king, like a god, all wise, like my father, the big shot Samuel Hammerschlag; the king of what is righteous, at the head of the table, you and him are the same. I use to watch you and my father talk; that men talk… I watched you both stroking your beards, as if you were both so above it all, superior, me not worthy of your love, just a sad little, lonely girl. (pause) What do you know? I hate this, I hate you. (anger) What do you know?
So tell me what to know.
FREUD
ANNA H.
I don’t hate you. It is just the opposite. I am so exposed, so open now, this moment. I want to crawl up and die. How can I live a world where I lust after my friend’s husband, I sit at his dinner table and I want to touch myself… (silence) I am such a child, so weak. I want you in a most improper way. (Anna H. begins a panicked breathing.)
FREUD
Say without censorship, it is the only way.
ANNA H.
I have a thought, a picture in my mind, which refuses to enter daylight.
If I speak it then I die, don’t you see. You will never talk with me again, you will judge me, you will say, like my father, she is a nafka shanda, a scandalous whore, you would say. It is like jumping off a mountain into a black pit.
Please jump.
FREUD
ANNA H.
I want you close to me, wanting me, loving me, like a husband would love
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a wife. Does that seem I am asking too much? I know you don’t believe in god, I heard refer to yourself as a godless Jew. I am not like you; I cannot live in a world without a god, I am simple that way; I need something to hold onto. I lie awake at night and I think these thoughts and I want to scream, I feel sick inside nauseous dizzy, I touch myself incessantly at night, until I exhaust myself to sleep. (angry) Never thoughts of my dead husband, only you, I know you think of me as pathetic. You don’t have to deny it. I would think that if I were you, this is not a world that sees a woman for who she is, just what she does and who she belongs to. I have no one; that is true. I don’t want to talk anymore I have given too much of myself, I am not a specimen in some examining room, nor a depraved fool begging for her doctor’s attention. (anger) My stomach hurts… (Anna H. holds her abdomen)
FREUD
There is nothing of depravity about you. (firm)We all struggle with the appetites of the creature that lives within us. Along the profound fear of exposing those appetites, we are at the mercy of our thoughts and memories, if not spoken aloud that move through us like demons. Since your husband died you are a moon without a planet to orbit, an unfulfilled wish for a child, it seems that perhaps you should find a suitable man, and then marry, which would help reduce the pressure of your hunger.
ANNA H.
(silence-angry)
I am insulted by your comment. (Freud clears his throat.) You know nothing of women. You sit on your throne and smoke your cigars. You have a family and pregnant wife who adore you; I have nothing, just my dreams and pains in my stomach.
FREUD
Women, dreams and pain are three areas I am very interested in.
ANNA H.
Why don’t you care about my feelings? It is true my whole life, my
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brothers get heard, my father is heard, and Dr. Freud is heard, but not little Anna, little lost Anna. What is the point of this treatment, the “talking cure” if you are telling me what everyone else is telling me? Get married? My fate is sealed when I met you, I imagine my sickness that you treat is all the closeness I can have with you. (crying) I wonder if I took ill because of what Bertha Pappenheim told me, your famous case of Anna
O. I don’t need to tell you that she hates the book and feels it is an absolute lie. Your friend Dr. Breuer, another pompous bearded hedgehog, ran away from her when she needed him most, now he boasts of her as some sort circus performer “Anna O the cured hysteric.” Maybe I will be in your next book, another Anna. “The story of Anna H, the lonely widowed, childless hysteric…” I know many things, we move in the same circle.
FREUD
(uncomfortable, annoyed)
Veiled or not a threat is a threat. Does your jealousy speak for you?
ANNA H.
I also know what happened with Emma Eckstein.
FREUD
(uncomfortable, silent)
Poor brave girl Miss Eckstein, it was a most unfortunate circumstance, I would want to put behind me. Is it is your intent to expose me, if I do not accommodate you then you will destroy me?
ANNA H.
I would never do that, I spoke through my pain.
FREUD
Your pain and anger are true. Your acquaintances, I must say, in both cases as far as I can see benefited from their treatment, but you cannot allow relationships outside this room interfere with your treatment. You must remain steadfast in speaking everything as you are doing, you will find relief.(Freud glances at a clock, as if to get out if this conversation)
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We must stop now, I am going to vacation in Bellevue in a few weeks, and I believe I hope to see you there and at Martha’s birthday gathering. You have done very good work with me.
ANNA H.
(standing up from couch)
Your young friend Oscar Rie, that handsome pediatrician, he told me he is coming up for a visit, he will stay over, I think he has designs on me, if not every girl he encounters, he is very attractive, but something about him makes me uncomfortable, the way his eyes undress me. It is ironic I throw myself at you and you barely take notice.
FREUD
That is far from any truth.
ANNA
I know it is not your fault you found Martha first and fell in love and made a family, I love Martha too; she is such a warm, loving women, perfect for you. I just wanted you all along and you never saw me. I would have given you everything you desire.( while wiping her eyes with a white handkerchief)
FREUD
(Sits next to her on the couch. He looks directly at her, into her eyes longingly, as he grabs her hand)
I understand, and it is untrue I never saw you. You mean more to me than you realize. But I am your doctor first, and my desire is to help you.
ANNA H.
I wish I could hate you. Anna grabs Freud and holds him and cries on his shoulder.
TWO SHOT – ANNA H. AND FREUD
Anna H. on the couch and Freud sitting next to her, they are embracing. The CAMERA PULLS BACK through the window out to
EXT. CITY OVERVIEW – DAY
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FADE TO BLACK
EXT. Cityscape view, overlooking Vienna SUPERIMPOSE
Vienna 1900
FADE TO SUPERIMPOSE
Vienna School of Medicine
INT. VIENNA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE TEACHING HOSPITAL – CLASSROOM – DAY.
LIGHT SHINING INTO A WINDOW CAPTURED BY THE CIGAR AND PIPE SMOKE THAT CLOUDS THE ROOM.
All the STUDENTS are men, dressed in formal school clothing; the professor is also dressed in a formal manner. The classroom in packed. The students are smoking and the room atmosphere is clouded. A stately man in a suit, and tie, (FREUD) with a salt and pepper beard stands in front of a blackboard, he is holding a cigar, the words Id, Ego and Super ego instinct, libido are written behind him on blackboard. (in German) A student’s hand is raised.
STUDENT (WELL DRESSED)
Herr Professor, are you saying that we humans are no better than the animals we eat?
FREUD
(calm, focused)
Although I sense your question has many tributaries I will address the river itself. To be concise, yes I am saying this, and my years of work and our friend Darwin has put to rest the notion that we are not creatures of divine making, but truly part of the animal world, mammals to be precise.
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And with that we are driven through instinct to seek the satisfaction of those primal drives. It is through the countless generations of evolution with the growth of our brains the expressions of those drives have gone underground, hidden from our waking mind, and then translated back to us through symptoms and dream images.
INTERCUT – FREUD AND ANOTHER STUDENT
ANOTHER STUDENT
(stands up and emphatically announces)
Where is the scientific proof, Herr Professor, isn’t this just merely conjecture?
FREUD
Whatever I say about psychoanalysis you will undoubtedly resist, it is the very nature of psychoanalysis, that we are repulsed by the idea, that our sense of being human is built upon a cauldron of repulsive instinctual desires that exist on an unconscious level, therefore we have little possible way of demonstrating its principles and its scientific validity.
Instinctual impulses which can only be described as sexual,(emphasis)both in the narrower and wider sense of the word, play an extremely important part in the causation of nervous and mental diseases, that I am certain, on the other hand, psychoanalysis also affirms that these same forces contribute to the highest cultural, artistic and creations of the human spirit. Let us turn to the dream images and in fact all symbols and gestures are derivative of a sexual impulse. If we look at a dream of the man, who struggles with impotence, in the dream he is at the desk writing with a fountain pen, he is writing the word school, but his page remains blank, there is no ink on the page despite his efforts. In this case it is easy to see the pun and the expression of his dilemma. The wish to have ink, so to speak, and perhaps through his associations we could discover what indeed occurred at school that may have led to his current dilemma. Pen of course stands in for the impotent penis.
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THIRD STUDENT
(standing up)
Herr Professor, and what of your cigar? You are always seen holding a cigar, according to your theory, is not that suggestive of your unconscious at play?
The room of students breaks into laughter.
FREUD
(nonplussed but calmly, earnestly replies)
Well you know my dear observant student sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
More laughter. At the back of the classroom a FOURTH STUDENT leans over to his FRIEND.
FOURTH STUDENT
(whispering to each other) Sometimes a Jew is a just a Jew.
The Fourth Student and the Friend laugh. FADE TO BLACK.
SUPERIMPOSE
December 3, 1895
INT. FREUD’S HOME – BEDROOM – NIGHT
Two people in bed lying side by side mostly covered. The woman (MARTHA FREUD) speaks first.
MARTHA
(her voice has a urgent quality)
Sigi… Sigi…
FREUD
(half asleep, groggy) What? Are you alright? You have awoken me from a most glorious dream; I was traversing the mountains with Alexander, rivers, hostiles all around me…
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MARTHA
(interrupting) I believe my water is beginning to break.
NEW ANGLE
Martha is noticeably pregnant.
FREUD
(sitting up more awake)
Oh, yes let me take your pulse and get you right away to hospital. (he grabs her hand)
MARTHA
I feel we needn’t hurry. I feel that the baby is not ready to go, after 5 others you know I have become rather expert at this.
FREUD
Good. Let me help you out of bed and we will dress, I will call Josephine. Then I will get the carriage.
They are both dressing. They are calmly chatting as they are getting ready.
MARTHA
What do you think boy or girl?
FREUD
(Calm)
My instincts say girl, but I have been wrong every time. Although I know that I will love this newcomer, as well as the mother, as no other.
(He kisses her on the forehead, moving closer to her, face to face.)
If it is a boy I think I would want to call him Wilhelm, but if it is a girl I want to name her Anna.
MARTHA
Yes, Wilhelm is a good name, your dear friend would much approve. I like Anna too. Anna Freud, yes that has a nice ring to it.
INT. OFFICE – DAY SUPERIMPOSE
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Jacob Freud, Sigmund’s father; Freiberg, Moravia, about 1850 FADE IN
EXT. CITY STREET – DAY
Three YOUNG MEN (mid-twenties) on the street standing up leaning against a brick wall, in work clothes, in a European city, up to no good. They are smoking, laughing, one is reading a newspaper.
The CAMERA pulls back to reveal a Middle Aged Jewish Man, wearing a fur hat, common for Eastern European Jews. He is determinedly walking toward the men, one young man hits the other on the arm noticing the man coming toward them and remarks:
Look, a dirty Jew!
YOUNG MAN 1
(talking to the others in his group)
The Fur Hat Man forward in the direction of the three men. The Young Man 1 with a newspaper rolls it up and hits his friend on the shoulder, then hands him the newspaper,
Watch this!
YOUNG MAN 1 (CONT’D)
(bold)
(intimidating) Watch where you are walking, Jew. [The Fur Hat Man stops and freezes, it is clear that Young Man 1 physically outmatches the Aged Man. The Aged Man looks up at Young Man 1.] FUR HAT MAN(JACOB)
(contrite)
I am sorry I didn’t see you.
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(Young Man 1 remains in Fur Hat Man’s path.)
YOUNG MAN 1
(nasty)
Then maybe you should take your head out of the gutter, Jew.
Then in one motion Young Man 1 knocks the Fur Hat Man’s hat off to the ground.
The other young men by the wall are watching and laughing.
Fur Hat Man slowly leans down to pick up his hat with what little dignity remains, he brushes off the hat on his thigh.
FUR HAT MAN
(mumbles)
I know.
Fur Hat Man steps off the curb onto the street.
The other young men watch and laugh patting each other on the back for a trick well played, and the Fur Hat Man places the hat back on his head and walks across the street. The young men move on, the CAMERA then TRACKS UPWARD exposing a teaming city scape.
SUPERIMPOSE DECEMBER 1899
Freud, age 50, in his study, at his desk with a cigar He is writing with great focus and intensity, the CAMERA moves in closer and he turns the page writing the words at the top of the page.
INSERT – PAGE
Sexual obsession, incest taboo, fantasy, seduction, transference? Ida Bauer (Dora) January 1900.
BACK TO SCENE
There is a book on the desk Oedipus the King. The knock on the door startles him, and he yells:
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FREUD
(a cranky tone) What is this?! Why are you disturbing me?
(The CAMERA pulls back and revealing the red ornate couch on the other side of his desk, there are a few shelves that hold various ancient artifacts. Knock on the door again. Insistent.)
MARTHA (O.S.)
Sigi, (opening the door) I have news!
FREUD
(again, at his desk)
What is this business? I am in the middle of a thought, I told you not to ever disturb me.
(He coughs and takes a handkerchief and covers his mouth. He is holding a cigar. The CAMERA then (in one movement) rushes to the door knob and the door swings open revealing a middle aged woman’s face. It is Martha.)
MARTHA
(sarcastic)
Stop being so crabby, Herr Doctor! Your publisher is here with the proof; he says they are ready to move forward with the dream book.
(CAMERA circles back to Freud. Freud turns his head, looking toward the window.)
FREUD
(firm)
You see father we are not prisoners of our inheritance. I grieve that you cannot share this with me.
[Freud puts down the photograph and his cigar, and stares out the window. The camera then pulls back, framing Freud by the window, and a view ofPage 23
his couch.]
FADE
FADE TO BLACK
EXT. CITY VIEW – DAY
From the cityscape of Vienna view the CAMERA (one shot) TRACKS PAST a street sign plaque Berggasse, then to the outside facade with a number 19 then upward into the 2nd floor window of #19 (outside to inside)
SUPERIMPOSE
FREUD’S DREAM OF IRMA’S INJECTION (JULY 24TH 1895)INT. HALLWAY FACING TWO LARGE SIDE BY SIDE FRENCH DOORS
The doors open on their own (POV) CAMERA TRACKS in through double doors; one continuous movement.
The double doors open to a cavernous hall, a party is in progress.
ANONYMOUS POV
PEOPLE milling about, like at an intersection at a crosswalk, people are moving in an out of frame. The CAMERA then settles on Anna H. She is standing amongst the gathering/party as if she is lost in thought. Freud approaches her and takes her hand.
CLOSE ON FREUD
He is whispering in her ear.
Come with me.
FREUD
(gently whispers)
BACK TO SCENE
He takes off to a corner of the room where there is a couch. There is large window behind them. The light is soft on Anna H. He sits her down on a plush couch, she looks melancholy and distant.)
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You had not taken my solution, I see. If you still get pains, it’s really only your fault.
ANNA H.
If you only knew what pains I’ve got now in my throat, stomach and abdomen – it’s choking me.
(Freud appears concerned.)
FREUD
Perhaps there is some organic problem.
He takes her hand and brings her to the window where there is more light. She opens her mouth and he looks down into her throat. She, at first, closes her mouth, places her hand over, to block Freud, and then turn her head away. Freud strokes her hair.
FREUD (CONT’D)
Please let me see, it will be alright. There is no need to do that.
(Anna H. then opened her mouth properly. Freud peers into her mouth.)
POV FREUD
On the right side of her mouth is a big white patch; at another place. In her throat, in another area – extensive whitish gray scabs upon some remarkable curly structures which were modeled on the turbinate bones of the nose; it almost has a sexualized quality.
BACK TO SCENE
Freud then looks away into the room of people.
FREUD (CONT’D)
Stay here.
He then leaves and quickly returns with OTTO who walks with a limp. Otto is clearly older than Freud, with a shaved face, indented with wrinkles. Then both men are examining Anna peering into her mouth. The CAMERA PULLS BACKS to discover a third man, then a fourth man,
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LEOPOLD is in the scene.
Otto what is your opinion? [Otto looks on.
FREUD (CONT’D)
Leopold is pushing at her mid-section on her left through her dress. He looks up at Freud.]
Yes, Leopold?
FREUD (CONT’D)
LEOPOLD
She has a dull area low down on the left. I noticed that a portion of the skin on the left shoulder was infiltrated.
FREUD
Yes, I saw that too.
OLD MANN WITHOUT BEARD
There’s no doubt it’s an infection, but no matter, dysentery will supervene and the toxin will be eliminated.
FREUD
We were directly aware, too, of the origin of the infection. Not long before, when she was feeling unwell, my friend Otto had given her an injection of a preparation of…
(He pulls out a paper from his breast pocket. Reading: …) propyl, propyls … propionic acid … trimethylamin…
INSERT – THE PIECE OF PAPER
Heavy type of the medicinal words BACK TO SCENE
Freud looks to the group that has converged around his patient, with a dismissive hand gesture.
FREUD (CONT’D)
One doesn’t give such injections so rashly, probably, too, the syringe was not clean.
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FADE TO BLACK.
SUPERIMPOSE
JULY 24 1895, MORNING OF THE DREAM OF IRMA’S INJECTION INT. FREUD’S HOME – BEDROOM – DAY.
A couple in bed it is Freud with Martha. Freud is asleep, snoring. Martha is awake, reaches over to Freud under the covers, which awakens Freud. His eyes open in surprise.
MARTHA
(playful, under the covers)
Good morning, Herr Doctor. I feel my appetites are talking to me this morning.
FREUD
(a bit groggy )
It is good to have a healthy appetite. (Freud still half asleep)
MARTHA
Perhaps we can have a meal together, I am serving one of your favorites.
FREUD TURNS OVER AND IS FACE TO FACE WITH MARTHA.
She pulls his hand over to her breast.
Freud leans over and kisses her on the lips, soft and intimate. Their eyes meet. Then leans down to kiss her breast.
FREUD
I should enjoy this moment, since our meal we are sharing won’t result in another mouth to feed.
MARTHA
The one advantage of pregnancy you can’t get pregnant twice.
(Freud moves down from her breast and kisses her pregnant abdomen, pulling away the covers.)
FREUD
If it comes from you, I must adore it.
(They kiss and Freud moves gently on top of her.)
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DISSOLVE
INT. FREUD’S HOME – BEDROOM – LATER THAT MORNING
Both are lying in bed they have just finished making love. Freud grabs his cigar from the side table. Martha gets out of bed and opens the window.
MARTHA
You smell like an old shoe, with those cigars. (She waves her hand to signify the bad odor)
FREUD
(sitting up in bed)
I thought by now you would be use to me and my disgusting habits.
MARTHA
At least the air of Bellevue can offset that horrible stench.
FREUD
It is a testament to your endless patience.
MARTHA
I do so love it here, and so do the children, it so good to get away from that routine in the city of patients and meetings.
FREUD
You must know that the work I am doing could have a monumental impact, I am so close.
MARTHA
I don’t doubt you, nor will I ever. It’s just you just don’t understand woman, that’s all, we are sensual, different than men, we need comfort, we are sensitive by nature, not full of the need for conquest and achievement. Oh by the way, I am looking forward to my birthday gathering on Sunday, I have invited the Hammerschlags, and of course your young friends Otto and Ludwig. I hope I am well enough to attend; this pregnancy has robbed me of my strength. I wonder if the water at Bellevue is contaminated perhaps that is what making me sick.
Freud sits up from the side of the bed.
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What was the word you used? What word?
FREUD
MARTHA FREUD
The something about the water…
MARTHA
I thought that the water could be contaminated; I have had stomach distress beyond the usual pregnancy discomforts.
FREUD
That reminds me of a dream. It was about my patient Anna… We were at a gathering, maybe anticipating your birthday.
CLOSE IN ON FREUD, HIS EYES
His eyes have a burning realization, he seems dissociated. BACK TO SCENE WITH MARTHA
MARTHA
Sigi, are you feeling OK? I was worried for you this whole spring, with that poor Emma.
FREUD
Something has occurred to me in this moment, something I had been searching for; I think I have found it.
DREAM SEQUENCE REPEATED – INT. /EXT. – TIMELESS ABSTRACTIONS
A rapid collage (10-15 seconds). There are other elements in the dream memory: blood, syringes, men with beards, Breuer, Eckstein, Anna, naked, conflict, I did nothing wrong, trimethylamine, abstractions. condensed.
END DREAM-MEMORY SEQUENCE.
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Martha is talking in the background about children, house matters, cleaning up the bed sheets, etc., but Freud doesn’t hear her words, he is in his mind.
MARTHA
(worry in her voice, louder to get through) Sigmund, are you OK?
FREUD
I am more than OK, much like you I have found myself in a state of pregnancy, and I believe the delivery is soon.
MARTHA
(smiling)
I hope you have a name for your baby… (relief in her voice) I will see you downstairs after I wash up.
Freud sitting at the side of his bed, pondering, he picks up his cigar from the night stand. He then places his hand over his heart as if he experienced a pain. Then arises from the bed and moves out of frame, for a second the camera lingers on the unmade bed.
INT. FREUD’S OFFICE – THE SAME DAY
He then is at the desk, writing.
FREUD (V.O.)
The dream is merely a doorway, a disguise to hide a wish. The wish is to expose the process of allowing the mind to disassemble each image through association. Each image is a composite; one image substitutes for another; each can be revealed until the true meaning is exposed, and the nature of all dreams is thus obvious. It is a wish. It has been in front of me the whole time; all I had to do was to look. All dreams are wishes that are often forbidden to the waking mind.
FADE TO BLACK
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SUPERIMPOSE:
Paris 1885 Jean Martin Charcot Salpêtrière
Teaching Hospital
INT. TEACHING THEATER – DAT
The CAMERA FLOATS into a large teaching theater, there is a mass of eager faces, STUDENTS, hungry to see and hear the master demonstrating the treatment of a case of hysterical convulsive, spasms and paralysis. The PATIENT, a woman, is screaming, thrashing, whaling and screeching and being held down by ATTENDANTS. In front of the group stood a stately sturdy man (CHARCOT), impeccably dressed, with an air of royalty and carnival barker mixed together. He is the greatest neurologist of Europe, completely unmoved by the histrionics of the Patient.
CHARCOT
(pointing)
In medieval times, this woman would have been seen as a witch and her fate would be at one with the burning embers beneath her feet. But, we live in an enlightened age of today, gentlemen. Enlightened from the whips of tyranny from religious dogma and fear; an age of reason and intelligence. These words I speak, at an earlier time would leave me to the same fate as this sad soul. (again pointing to his patient)
But I stand before you today as men of science and science is our new exacting master.
[The Patient howls like a dog baying at the moon, she drools and curses as if she is at an exorcism, her body twistsThe audience of well-dressed men, stare captive to the trance that has befallen them, as this woman will certainly fall into while under the great doctors spell.
Charcot turns to his Patient. The room is silent in anticipation. As if the very presence of Charcot only can affect a submissive response. The
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woman is now frozen in a bizarre posture.] CHARCOT (CONT’D)
We are viewing the arc-de-cercle.
We can hear the muscles twist and crack.] CHARCOT (CONT’D)
Please observe and learn. Her disease is holding on with cruel intention, twisting her as a rag until she can break, or have a cardiac arrest and die. (Silence, except the Patient heaving.)
Please note that hysterics if not anything cannot defend themselves from suggestion, as much as they desire to deflect, they must submit, it is the nature of the how they acquired their illness in the first. I believe the hysteric is predisposed to this condition, but I suspect a psychology at play, since I am able to remove the symptom without physical intervention, merely through my suggestion.
(to Female Patient)
You are to hear my voice no other, just the sound of my voice. It is my voice alone that commands you, compels you, you are with me alone, no other.
(Patient freezes into her bridge.)
Miss Emily, you are at my command, you will hear the sound of my voice and the words I say no other. I will count and you will breathe with my count and you fall into a deep sleep. Say yeas if you hear me.
PATIENT
Yes.
(She coughs. Her face tics.)
CHARCOT
It is the sound of my voice and the words I say that instruct you, that compel you. You are to see a rope and I am the man on the other side of that rope and I will throw down the rope and you will hold on and I will
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pull you up and with that your paralysis and pain will dissipate.
DREAM SEQUENCE – DOWN A WELL
The Patient is down a well, covered in shit, and broken. A rope enters the scene, and the woman holds the rope. Charcot is seen straining as he is lifting her from the well.
END DREAM SEQUENCE.
CHARCOT (CONT’D)
I am pulling you from the well, you see the light at the top, you are clean with freedom, you hear my voice and the sound of my words and you know that is to be true. You are no longer in pain or frozen in agony, just a free woman, free from the thing that holds you. Now please sleep.
[The Patient’s body goes limp on the table and she curls into a fetal position and sleeps.The Attendants pull back, she is silent and at peace in sleep, slight clapping.]
You see my fellow explorers’ we see the rigidity dissipate upon suggestion, indicating a non-organic element to her symptom presentation. The mind is in the body, the proof is here.
[Charcot opens his arms as if a ringmaster at a circus.]The CAMERA PULLS BACK from Charcot, and there in the third row is a man with a beard taking incessant notes, it is Freud. He writes on his note pad.
INSERT – FREUD’S NOTE PAD
Mind/Body together… we are prisoners of our ideas. FADE TO BLACK.
SUPERIMPOSE
Summer July 23rd. THE NIGHT BEFORE THE IRMA DREAM INT.
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SUMMER HOUSE – DINING ROOM
Small dinner party, the dinner is over and a few men, DR. LUDWIG ROSENBERG, DR. OSKAR RIE, and DR. IGNAZ ROSANES,
(older in age) all medical doctors. They light cigars and retreat to the porch. The CAMERA REVIEWS the moment.
FREUD
Martha, we will be holding a congress on the porch, thank you for a wonderful; meal my dear, can you bring us the brandy?
(Martha and a few other WOMEN and CHILDREN are clearing the table.) MARTHA
I think there is a bottle on the side table, I will bring you glasses, I want to make sure your congress will go well.
(half joking) I know you want to impress our young friends the esteemed Dr. Rie and Dr. Rosenberg.
DR. OSKAR RIE
(young good looking, talkative, smartass)
It is me that is humbled and honored by the Freud’s renowned hospitality. I had been recently to Berlin and had purchased a pineapple liqueur, the store owner extolled it virtues and said it was of a rare vintage and perfect for after dinner dessert. I brought a bottle with me to give to you.
MARTHA
Leave it with and I will bring it to the porch.
FREUD
(looking annoyed)
Certainly Oskar, you needn’t bring any such thing; I must break you of the habit of bringing gifts, your company is our gift. Let us go onto the porch and take in this cloudless view tonight.
(Four men get up from the table and walk onto the porch there is a bottle of brandy on the side table the men, sit all holding cigars and lighting. The CAMERA MOVES from the brandy to the cigars. Martha then comes out
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with a tray of glasses and the pineapple liqueur. Dr. Oskar Rie takes the bottle and opens it and pours the murky fluid into each glass, Freud waves him off.)
FREUD (CONT’D)
Fruit and liqueur does not sit well with me, the smell alone tells me. (The other men are not as resistant to the liqueur.
Dr. Oskar Rie pours it into the other’s glasses. They drink and immediately make faces as if having sipped gasoline.
There is silence, and then burst out laughing.)
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES
The store keeper was correct it is a rare vintage that I would suggest that it remains rare and nicely stored away in the drainpipe.
Martha enters the room.] MARTHA
I hope you doctors are enjoying the view at Bellevue.
FREUD
(raising his glass)
First I must say we are looking forward to Martha’s birthday in a few days, but there is never enough appreciation I could offer for all Martha does for me and the children.
(Martha looks embarrassed.)
MARTHA
Stop, Sigi (waving her hand).
I will leave you men alone to cure the world’s ills.
DR. LUDWIG ROSENBERG
I think that is your husband’s job. [They laugh.
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The three other men with Freud raise their glasses and say “here here,” then drink.
Martha leaves the room.
The men sit and talk. The tone shifts to a more earnest quality.] DR. LUDWIG ROSENBERG (CONT’D)
I was waiting to hear how Studies in Hysteria is progressing, that book left me speechless.
DR. OSKAR RIE
I hope you did not become hysterically mute upon reading. I know the power of suggestion is strong. When I was in medical school I acquired every symptom that I studied. (It was an obtuse comment)
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES
Yes, I too, suffered from medical student hysteria. [The men had another laugh.
Freud is sitting quiet studying the other men. Rosenberg turns to Freud.] DR. LUDWIG ROSENBERG
What was the response to the book so far? [Freud looks up at the stars above.] FREUD
You see the solar system above us, you notice how there are a remarkable number of stars and that hardly a single one gets noticed.
That would sum up the response to my hysteria book.
DR. LUDWIG ROSENBERG
I am sorry; it is a great work, equal to Charcot.
FREUD
Thank you, but it was merely a first step, Ludwig, whether people understand or not is irrelevant to me. Even though the book was published in May, my theories have longed surpassed the content. In many ways I could have just as well not published it, I am not surprised by the reaction, remember a Jew, even a non-practicing one in Vienna, is still a Jew. When I look back, I think the book was more for my old friend Dr. Breuer. I
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wanted him to be acknowledged because it was he that brought me here, but like Moses he could not enter the Promised Land.
DR. LUDWIG ROSENBERG
The Promised Land?
FREUD
The unconscious mind, the sexual truth of our nature, he was too timid in these matters, although he was very close.
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES
Yes, I know Dr. Breuer, that case of his caused quite a stir, you called her Anna O. Herr Professor, Breuer is from another time, the work you are doing is far ahead of anyone who is practicing today.
FREUD
Thank you, you are always someone I could look too when I am out on a large limb. By the way, I want to thank you with Miss Eckstein, you may have saved my career and my research, I still haven’t fully freed myself of that situation, my dreams which I am ardently reviewing, often reference that terrible time, it was unfortunate what occurred to that poor girl, you came in like a sage, and brought us out of the darkness.
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES
You are kind, I was glad to be of help. How is Emma doing?
FREUD
Better, not fully recovered, but better. She has a great sense of commitment to the process, even though she bears the scars of my errors. I believe I think she wants to work with hysterics herself, using the talking cure method. Life can be quite ironic and unpredictable, as much as I believe in scientific forces, nature remains mysterious.
DR. OSKAR RIE
I have word from another of your patients; I am staying with Anna Hammerschlag and her family not far from here.
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FREUD
(again irritated with Rie’s impudence)
Yes, Anna is a marvelous woman, tragic that her husband died so quickly, just a year after their marriage, Rudolf Licthiem. I never met him, but I understand he was a good man. Anna’s father Samuel was a great benefactor to me, even when he had nothing in his pockets, he helped me, he is perhaps the most generous man I have known.
DR. OSKAR RIE
Yes, the Hammerschlags mean the world to me too. I think I should mention, I had been speaking to Anna, she asked me to examine her. I think I should tell you that that her symptoms have resurfaced, primarily abdominal cramping, spasms, and slight paralysis, in her left arm. She seemed a bit distressed; I sensed that the she maintained some doubt about the treatment, although she did not go into any detail.
FREUD
(now very annoyed)
In hysteria, there is not a clear path in the dissolution of symptoms there is always a battle against the doctor and the wish to hold on to the underlying idea that drives the illness. If the doctor is victorious over the symptom, then the battle can resume on another front, because the true enemy is not defeated. (Freud leaning forward to Rie with a stern expression) You should be cautious not to amplify her doubt, which is aligned with her illness. The work requires the doctor’s constant steadfastness to break through the resistance the unconscious mind puts in our path.
(Freud is now angry.)
DR. LUDWIG ROSENBERG
I am sure my friend meant no disrespect toward your method; it is unknown to us in the world of medicine we practice.
FREUD
That is true, the most ignorance I have yet to encounter in the treatment of neurosis has come from the medical establishment, I expect a hundred
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years from now they will still doubt its value. (Silence the men drink their brandy.)
Dear gentlemen I must retire. I have some correspondence I must get to before I am completely exhausted.
The men rise and shake hands leaving Freud on the porch with his cigar, and the stars above.
INT. FREUD’S HOUSE – NIGHT
The CAMERA MOVES from one room to another, passing over the sleeping family members, Martha, the five children, searching the Freud house and then settles on Freud’s study, there Freud is at a desk writing fervently, it is 12:17 in the morning.
INT. FREUD’S OFFICE AT DESK
The camera pans down over Freud’s shoulder. He is startled a woman’s hand appears on his shoulder from behind. The woman is not his wife, but Martha’s younger sister, Minna.
FREUD
Minna it is you. (he takes her hand) Be careful, it is dangerous to be here now.
MINNA
There is so little time we have, I will risk this moment even if is stolen.
FREUD
I know. (She kisses him on the top of his head and leaves)
INSERT – PAGE HE IS WRITING ON
In cursive writing we follow along with… VOICE OVER
FREUD (V.O.)
Dear old Friend Joseph,
I am awash with doubt, some of which is of a personal nature that I cannot speak of, but also have encountered the most stinging condemnation of our
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work by a young naïve physician; you might know him – Oskar Rie. He has little clue as to the nature of hysteria, as most pediatricians. I wonder if his words that sting or my vulnerability that is a fault. No matter, I will write you a full case history of this beautiful charming young woman who presents with a moderate case of hysteria, typical pervasive masturbatory activity, based on forbidden ideas, and after much fruitful work, I was able to neutralize her symptoms via abreaction, only to find them returning with some strength during this vacation period. There is also a compounding factor in this case, although she is a close family friend, she has formed a deep and overriding sexualized attachment to me, not unlike your Anna O, which as you know can be awkward. It is of great irony that this patient happens to be named Anna too.
I know you seem less interested in going down the path of remembering your Anna; I know the toll it took on you and your wife. It also seemed to have created distance both from the project as well as me personally, which I don’t understand, but I am saddened. I had heard, which I didn’t believe, that you abandoned treating hysterics, which would be a great loss to our new field. Yet, I understand what you went through.
But, you were the first to charge this parapet, and we have learned so much in the last few years, especially not to be moved or bullied by these matters, which will eventually burn out like wood in an old stove when no additional kindling is provided. Add no wood and the love-fire subsides along with the neurosis. I will describe this in the case of my dear Anna H, you of course know her…
He reaches into his desk and takes out a vial of a white substance (cocaine) and then a syringe; he fills the syringe and injects himself with the liquid substance.
CLOSE ON GLASS VIAL
Back to scene
He sits back on his chair. He closes his eyes.
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FADE TO BLACK SUPERIMPOSE:
February 1884 Vienna School of Medicine The Cocaine Period FADE IN
INT. FREUD’S OFFICE – DAY
Freud is 28 working at Vienna General Hospital. He is at his desk, with a vial of white powder. He is writing a letter to his fiancée, Martha Bernays.
FREUD
Martha my sweet, I think I have stumbled upon a great discovery, a medicine that could change the course of treatment for so many people. I have been reading about the anesthetic and invigorating effects of cocaine, the effective ingredient of coca leaves which some Indian tribes chew in order to make themselves resistant to privation and fatigue. I have been experimenting with the substance and I believe now it may prove effective for the treatment of morphine addiction.
FADE TO BLACK.
SUPERIMPOSE:
June 1884
INT. FREUD’S OFFICE – DAY
Freud and ERNEST FLEISCHL are together.
FREUD
What are we to do?
ERNEST FLEISCHL
It is not your fault my friend. The cocaine seemed so promising at first, the craving for morphine was reduced within weeks. I was a free man for a time, and then the cursed coca plant has driven me to insanity, the hallucinations the mania, yes I am now insane, the addiction is all consuming.
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FREUD
I have replaced Satan with a worse devil.
ERNEST FLEISCHL
Please my friend it is not your fault, I have studied and worked in the same circles as you, I have also spent my life devoted to healing and medicine, I too believed in this remedy, but you must (desperate crying, ringing his hands) continue the treatments. (He looks up at the ceiling) My skin feels like it is being ripped off my body or covered with insects eating away at my flesh. I feel I must get back to morphine, but my body craves both substances.
FREUD
(defeated)
How can I do this? The very injection I administer is like injecting you with poison and watch my dearest friend become destroyed. I am no better than a common criminal. Maybe we can find a sanitarium in the country to let the drug ease from your body until your metabolism returns, is that so impossible?
ERNEST FLEISCHL
(stands up and stares at Freud angry)
You know I have been to two sanitariums without relief. I will not ask you again my friend; I will demand you inject me.
Freud stands up as if two boxers are about to go at it. Then Freud’s face softens, and he reaches out to the shoulder of his friend.
FREUD
Yes, I see. (defeated)
You are right I have brought you here; it is my responsibility to carry you through. Please sit.
[Freud then directs Ernest Fleischl to lie on the couch and extend his arm, then Freud goes into a cabinet and takes out the vile and syringe and sets up the injection.]Page 42
FLEISCHL
Make sure when you insert the needle it does not infiltrate the vein, I have no strength to deal with infection.
CLOSE ON NEEDLE BACK TO SCENE
Freud silently motions to Ernest Fleischl and injects him. The CAMERA PANS ABOVE Fleischl’s face whose eyes are closed; there is a glimmer of a smile on Fleischl’s face as the CAMERA TRACKS closer.
INT. JEWISH TEMPLE – DAY (MAY 1891)
Freud waking a Jewish temple with people dressed in black, including JOSEPH BREUER.
JOSEPH BREUER
(they are in front of a synagogue)
You spoke well and honestly about our great colleague, he was truly a shining light in our world taken from us much too fast.
FREUD
(Head down despondent) Joseph, we all owe a death to nature, but not suffering like his, not this pathetic crumbling of such a brilliant personality. You know his illness haunts my dreams in so many ways, I am certain it will be a long time before I can live with myself over what happened.
JOSEPH BREUER
At least he is at rest, poor fellow.
Silence JOSEPH
TRACKING SHOT
The two men walk together. They stop to light up cigars, a MAN walks by them you can hear him faintly.
MAN
Dirty Jews.
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(Freud glances up and says nothing.)
FREUD
Are we just fools pretending to know when we don’t? Are we just primitives, one step removed from the animals we eat? Darwin understood this. I feel I can see a great truth that surrounds me, yet when I try to reach out it to touch it evaporates like a cloud. Like Fleischl’s death, he exists and now he is a memory. Are we just prisoners of our memories?
JOSEPH BREUER
Ernst was brilliant and as charismatic as anyone, maybe a genius, but he had a weakness in his character we all new this to be true. You have used cocaine for years, and still have not succumbed to its gravity.
FREUD
Our culture has been threatened by many of an enemy and I fear I have introduced yet another scourge to society.
JOSEPH BREUER
Don’t be so melodramatic, Dr. Freud; he is my patient too.
FADE TO BLACK.
SUPERIMPOSE
The Wednesday Psychological Society June 1909
Members who attended during its 20 year period Hanns Sachs, Wilhelm Stekel, Sandor Ferenczi, Ludwig Jekels, Paul Ferdern, Eduard Hitchmann, Sandor Ferenczi, Carl Jung, Oskar Pfister , Max Eitingon, Karl Abraham, Alfred Adler Otto Rank.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY
It is day. A collection of men on chairs, including OTTO RANK. Cigar smoke creates a shroud. The CAMERA FOLLOWS down a large whiff of smoke to the hand that is holding the cigar, then pulls back to take in the whole group.
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FREUD
We will begin this Meeting of The Psychological Wednesday Society. (The CAMERA PANS over Freud’s shoulder surveying the group.)
It is good that we have new faces and old friends here today; psychoanalysis needs allies in this time of evolution, I especially like to thank our Swiss friend Dr. Jung who has made the journey from Zurich to be with us today. He has been strong proponent in our efforts.
I must express deep concern this day.As I do each day I walk along the city center and there our mayor is on a platform surrounded by a crowd of people…
EXT: – DAY (V.O.) City Plaza there is a crowd of people listening to a haughty man pontificate from a podium.
“the Jewish question remains…” difficult to make out what he is saying. Freud is walking on the periphery of the crowd when a short man with slicked back hair, work clothes carrying a bag over his shoulder and angry eyes directly runs into Freud. Startled at first, nearly knocking him over.
Excuse me sir.
FREUD
YOUNG ADOLF HITLER
Yes, yes (shouting)! Our mayor the great Karl Lueger, he is wise, we should learn from him.
FREUD
(strong)
What he says it is not new or wise, it is an old story of blame the Jews.
FREUD WALKING AWAY FROM THE PLAZA FROM THE SPEAKER
Int. Living room – day
(V.O.) I was taking my time this morning listening to his speech. Thinking
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about that young man. Lueger spoke how the Jews of Europe as parasites and we Austrians had to answer the Jewish question. I am disturbed that it is too late for humanity. Psychoanalysis may be too late. Let us get on with today and think about tomorrow when it comes.
INT: LIVING ROOM DAY
I will turn the meeting to my young colleague Otto Rank who has been willing to function as the Wednesday Society’s Recording Secretary.
OTTO RANK
(Rank motions to start from right to left)
Thank you, Herr Professor. I will ask all members to state their name, since we have some new participants.
(The men announce their names, beginning from right to left, each speaks his name, in sober direct attitude, HANNS SACHS, WILHELM STEKEL, LUDWIG JEKELS, PAUL FERDERN, EDVARD HITCHMANN, CARL JUNG, OKAR PFISTER, MAX ETINGON, KARL ABRAHAM,
ALFRED ADLER, SANDOR FORENCZI and, sitting next to Freud, Otto Rank.)
OTTO RANK (CONT’D)
And I am Otto Rank. The Wednesday Psychological Society, is a society of professionals whose mission is explore and extend the principles put forth by Herr Professor, the originator of psychoanalysis. This meeting is called to Order.
The members reach into an urn and pull numbers, the member with the lowest number must present.
They reach in few members agree that this urn business is unnecessary and silly. But they continue to oblige the process. The group looks at the numbers, Alfred Adler is first.]
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I seem to be on a run in recent times, I have presented quite frequently if the group by consensus allows l will forgo my intended continued presentation on organ inferiority and the compensatory nature of neurosis to honor the presence of out esteem colleague from Zurich, Dr. Jung.
CARL JUNG
Thank Dr. Adler, your work is most appreciated Zurich, I wish I was more of a regular participant at these important meetings. Herr Professor’s works remains in a cornerstone in modern psychological practice.
FREUD
(ignoring the previous comments)
I have been hearing some rumblings about my theory on Sexuality. Since the three Essays, has been published, I believe this represents the new milestone in the scientific journey as the dream book once was, these ideas which represent the bedrock of human consciousness will evade you, and you will find reasons to ignore these truths. I knew I would have resistance from most if the medical establishment, but from what I had been told, not so much from my own group.
WILHELM STEKEL
(pushy, showoff)
It is not that there is dissention, it is just the theory greatly deviates from the idea of trauma that you had once so beautifully advocated, I can’t speak for my colleagues but I for one feel that we must consider factors beyond sexuality, such as aggression and hate. Take for instance the idea of the desire for suicide anyone who desires to kill himself at one time desired to kill someone else, aggression must be considered.
FREUD
Yes, what you say has truth and your command of what can be seen is unchallengeable but the murderous aggression and hatred begins with the Oedipus complex and the theory of libido, which exists below the surface, Dr. Stekel.
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Yes, it does not address the natural state of inferiority of the self in the face of the dominant parent figure, as well as the inferiority of the individuals organs, take for example the stutterer who had early esophageal blockage; certainly we must concede to that as a fundamental physics of life. The notion of inferiority based on the physical pressures of domineering parents and organ weakness, must account for much of the disposition of the illness.
FREUD
(dismissive)
Your ideas are much valued Dr. Adler, as well as you Dr. Stekel, but I must remark, nonsense.
(with authority)
We, as our friend Darwin, clearly and scientifically reported are products of an incessant drive to evolve, to create ourselves. It is in this drive and the attempt through countless generations of suppression of that drive that now has long been forgotten, what was once suppressed it is now repressed, we struggle against that truth, and all its variants. We should not be caught in the obvious, and superficial, I have spent decades considering this question, and as my esteem group reminds me I once had a trauma theory, and organ inferiority is not a new idea. Free association is the only method of scientific validity, no other.
CARL JUNG
Yes, the compensatory nature of organ inferiority is well seen in dream content, Herr Professor it is true what you theorize, about the drives that belie consciousness. I fervently agree with you Herr Professor, but is there room for dreams and their content in this drive theory? Isn’t the dream in its manifest appearance speaks of a kind of truth.
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FREUD (FORWARD)
Has nothing that I have said or written sunk into those well-dressed European heads? Are you all entranced with the façade; is it that impossible to look beyond the surface and find the instinct that connects us to all mammals? Does any of my years of research; do you imagine for a moment I haven’t considered the things you are saying? It is the drive within that does the talking; the events of our life, like the face of a remembered dream; merely reinforce what is already there; like a neurotic symptom, a disguise.
KARL ABRAHAM
Yes, I had been working with male compulsive sexual deviant, upon the expression of his desire to touch his mother’s lingerie, which brought great waves of humiliation and masochistic arousal, through his treatment his compulsions receded to merely a distraction.
Herr Professor should be honored in every way that he has changed the way we look at being human, and I for one stand there.
(Members of the group “here here” at this.)
WILHELM STEKEL
Yes, but we must consider all possibilities, unless we are no better than the suppressors that forced the instinctual drives underground.
HANNS SACHS
The possibility that we are driven by repressed incestuous longing, is something that society is not prepared to know, it is something that remains underground, they would rather go to war.
FREUD
Or blame the Jews. (The group laughs.)
CARL JUNG
(serious)
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I still must challenge, although I owe my entire thinking to Herr Professor.
(to Hanns Sachs)
I am not too concerned with society my good man, it is this group of skeptics I must win over. I have spent my career surrounded by skeptics, I am well practiced.
PAUL FERDERN
Yes, Dr. Jung is correct about this, we become the thing that suppresses our true nature if the nature of the unconscious can not to be challenged.
KARL ABRAHAM
It is one thing to challenge, it is another to deny to presence of sexuality on all human designs and forms that is evident.
CARL JUNG
Herr Professor has opened the door which we walk, not stand idle and watch. (Challenging) I still remained convinced that the associative method is the great breakthrough, but your book, in your dream specimen, the dream of Irma’s injection, the essential (personal) meaning of the dream has not been given. I insist on my students learning to understand dreams in terms of the dynamics of libido; consequently we sorely miss the personally painful erotic element in your own dreams. Perhaps this could be remedied by your supporting the Irma dream with a typical analysis of a patient’s dream, where the ultimate real motives are ruthlessly disclosed, so that the reader we will realize (right from the start) that the dream does no disintegrate into a series of individual determinants…. In my seminars we always concentrate for weeks on The Interpretation of Dreams, and I have always found that inadequate interpretation of the main dream examples leads to misunderstandings and, in general, makes it difficult for the student to follow the argument since he cannot conceive of the nature of the conflicts that are regular sources of dreams.
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I can always count on you Dr. Jung to offer a most telling question, and I am humbled by your use of my text within your class. You have very acutely noticed that my incomplete elucidation of my own dreams leaves a gap in the overall explanation of dreams, but here again you have put your finger on the motivation-which was unavoidable. I simply cannot expose anymore of my nakedness to the reader. Of each dream, consequently, I explain only as much as is needed to bring out a specific point; one throws light on the dissembling, the second on the infantile material, the third on wish fulfillment. In none do I bring out all the elements that can be expected of a dream, because they are my personal dreams.(Freud stops and surveys the group with a forceful eye) I would imagine how much each and every one of you would want to reveal about your inner workings in a book, I am sure we all have our secrets, in fact we are in the business of secrets…
So even if the critic and the seminar are perfectly right, I cannot do anything about it. The book proves the principles of dream interpretation by its own nature, so to speak, through its own deficiencies. But the method, will explain all.
OSKAR PSFISTER
If it up to me I am happy to put to rest the specimen dream, as Herr professor indicated it is a heuristic device nothing more, it is our own perverse desire to unmask, to destroy, as Oedipus killed his father, and have the mother’s love for his own, as Herr Professor anticipated in his work The Three essays, this impulse is what is at play which claims our thoughts on this matter.
The Oedipus complex looms large over us like a dark cloud that represents both our history of enslavement and through its awareness our rally and cause for freedom.
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Dr. Abraham is correct to say this. Euripides came upon in his story, that permeates the human condition, it is the central motif of human repression, the killing of the father and incestuous longing toward the mother. This is the foundation, and I will wage that a hundred years from now it will still not be accepted, perhaps even vilified, but it is nonetheless true.
(Group cheers “here here!”)
FREUD (CONT’D)
I have given this much consideration. I am working on another book with my young colleague Dr. Rank; I believe I have come up with an approach that will prove satisfactory to answer these questions that I may have stirred by not fully interpreting the specimen dream, to open it’s door to the repressed sexual element.
FADE TO BLACK.
SUPERIMPOSE:
The book with Otto Rank never appeared. The Case of Anna O, Vienna 1887 SUPERIMPOSE
CUT TO BLACK
INT. HOUSE IN A HALLWAY, DARK FOREBODING
Joseph Breuer, long beard, balding, has his hand on a doorknob, he looks back and there is ANNA O crying out, her pain cuts through, hysterical, sobbing.
ANNA O
This is your baby, this is your child, you fucked me, you fucked me, this is your baby.
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then manically grabs the doorknob and darts out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He stands at the doorway, he can’t catch his breath and listening to the woman he just slammed the door on. He hears her wailing. Joseph Breuer walks by the CAMERA and the CAMERA is now aimed at the closed door.] ANNA O (O.S.) (CONT’D)
(muffled by the door) I am with your child.
(desperate) You fucked me, you liar, you betrayed me, you loved me, this is your child I am pregnant with…
INSERT 1894
INT. BEDROOM IS POSITIONED TO ANOTHER DOOR OPENING, FROM WHICH SIGMUND FREUD IN A TOWEL AFTER A BATH EMERGES. HE ENTERS THE ROOM, AND IMMEDIATELY REACHES OVER TO A DESK AND PICKS UP A CIGAR, AND THEN, THE CAMERA WITHDRAWING, APPEARS A MAN WITH A LONG BEARD, JOSEPH BREUER, WITH A LIGHTER, LIGHTING FREUD’S CIGAR.
JOSEPH BREUER
There my friend, I hope that bath cooled you down; this is the hottest summer one can remember. It is almost too hot to think.
Freud plops himself in a chair, with cigar.
FREUD
A good bath is a remedy that knows no equal, if only it was that simple to cure hysterics.
Joseph Breuer looks a bit glum.
JOSEPH BREUER
We have much to discuss Sigmund.
FREUD
I am your captive and humble servant; direct me and I will follow. My
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head still swims from my year in Paris with Charcot. But to tell the truth I am no hypnotist, I can never muster the charisma that comes so natural to influence others, that is doubly so with my patients these days. I might as well be a carnival magician who has run out of tricks so to speak, at this rate I do not feel much like a doctor, maybe a wet nurse.
JOSEPH BREUER
Don’t be so hard on yourself Sigmund; you have done great work already.
FREUD
I was hopeful returning from Paris that hypnotic suggestion could bridge the psyche to the soma, using it with verbal commands, massage, the concentration method with my hand applying pressure, I was certain I could breach the fortress and to free my patients from their suffering, I feel so close at times, yet I am missing something. It is not the first road that was a dead end, you remember I was so hopeful in the beginning with cocaine, that was my great discovery, but it just another led to more suffering…
Herr Professor, I am at a loss.
[Freud takes a drag off of his cigar and stares off.] JOSEPH BREUERCharcot is a genius, that is without question, but a rather salty one. I met him years back, what I recall he indulged himself like a sailor on leave, but that was before he became the great neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot. You my friend do not have his appetites, but you have every bit as much or more of his intellect and charisma, but you are a scientist not a shaman or sorcerer, that is why the hypnotic method does not prove consistent or effective. Your work can and will equal his, I am certain. You are too young to be defeated.
FREUD
Joseph, you treat me too kind. It is you who is the great physician of this age. Your work with hysterics and neuropathy will be forever regarded.
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JOSEPH BREUER
I am not so clever as you imagine. But, I must speak of a case that continues to plague me. I wish I knew you sooner to have referred her to you, you could have cured her, I am sure of it. Looking back, I was a fool to believe I had the stamina for such a case, it is the cause of great private embarrassment and consternation, to this day my nights are haunted by her, I can still hear her howls of grief, her anger which cuts through me, yet I felt her presence as an addiction, I needed to be with her, close to her, I could not withstand her tortured mind, like the sirens call. You know her, Bertha Pappenheim; I had mentioned her to you before you went to Paris, although I did not give you the full accounting. To be honest with you the nature of her hysteria was beyond anything I was prepared. I secretly wished Charcot would steal her from me thus relieving me of this torment, now it is you I want to unburden myself with. I did not tell you the full scope of this which I will do tonight, because in this are the kernel of something significant, but I am too close to it to see, something in this case gives us hope and a new path of exploration.
FREUD
Herr Doctor, you have my undivided attention, and please never believe I will judge you, we are on unknown territory. We cannot assess the landscape until we first see it.
JOSEPH BREUER
Thanks you, as I have done throughout I can take you at our word. What was so striking in this case, that as soon as one symptom appeared it evaporated and something else appeared, it was the definition of madness, but throughout she guided me in treatment, although at first I believed I had cured her, but that was not the case, which you may know already.
FREUD
Yes, you did help her though
JOSEPH BREUER
Yes, thank you for saying that.
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FREUD
Actually my wife knows her, Miss Pappenheim is a very refined, cultured woman, also heard very intelligent, involved with women’s causes nowadays, but also I am aware she is very troubled. I know you had treated her, but I know little of the details of the case beyond her manifest symptoms you spoke of, and Martha has not spoken with her for a few quite a few years.
JOSEPH BREUER
I had been pondering the nature of this treatment, and believe this Bertha Pappenheim may have stumbled upon something that I cannot let go; perhaps it is my guilt that talks now. I left her in such an abrupt fashion; she has taught me something that surpasses hypnosis and the suggestive method; something more powerful, more organic in nature. She called it “talking cure,” which may be of help to you.
You have my undivided attention.
JOSEPH BREUER
What I will describe, I have not told anyone else, and please keep it between us.
The patient was 21 when I was invited to her home to treat her.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. HOME OF BERTHA PAPPENHIEM – DAY (1880)
Joseph Breuer is downstairs being greeted by Bertha’s mother, MRS. P., shaken nervous, he takes her hand.
MRS. P.
Bertha is upstairs, she sits in vigil with her father, not eating, not sleeping; the poor girl will follow her father into death. His illness was gradual, but the end will be soon, he is slowly dying form a severe case of tuberculosis. [Mrs. P. is tense, stern, cold, the house is not well lit, more like a tomb.]
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My daughter is her father’s nurse, she has a temper if I try to bring another care taker in, she is consumed with him, at the expense of her own health.
JOSEPH BREUER
Where is the patient?
MRS. P
Upstairs, ever since the illness of her father she is irreconcilable, it is her mind has been taken by possession.
JOSEPH BREUER
(calm)
Yes her mind is possessed, but with grief and hysteria which can often present as if a demon has come to visit, we will get to the bottom of this. [Joseph Breuer approaches the door, there is trepidation regarding what he will find within the room. He hears the faint sound of a woman crying, and coughing.
He knocks on the door and doesn’t wait then enters slowly.
BERTHA is kneeling by her father’s bedside damping his head with a wet towel. The FATHER lies near death in a coma.
Bertha ignores Breuer’s presence.] JOSEPH BREUER (CONT’D)
Miss Pappenheim I am Dr. Breuer your mother wanted me to visit with you if I could be of help.
Hello Miss Pappenheim.
[He put his hand on her shoulder.]Please Miss Pappenheim, please talk to me.
[She pulls back, then softens, not looking at Breuer; we hear her voice though she has her back to us.] BERTHA(Talking to the window)
Thank you for taking time away from your busy practice…
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(she then speaks in French) I am certain others would be more in need of your services than some bourgeois Jewish woman lonely matron, and nurse maid.
[Joseph Breuer is smoking a cigar, long beard, stately, formal.] JOSEPH BREUERPerhaps lonely bourgeois Jewish woman are deserving of help too. [Bertha smiles, and then starts a coughing fit. She stands and throws herself on the floor and continues to cough, Joseph Breuer reaches down at that moment we see her face.]
CLOSE ON BERTHA
Beautiful, yet deranged, she then squints contorting her appearance.
BERTHA
Father, I failed you.
BACK TO SCENE
Joseph Breuer intuitively reaches over to her.
JOSEPH BREUER
It will alright Miss Pappenheim, I am here.
Joseph Breuer puts his hand on his hand on her head.] JOSEPH BREUER (CONT’D)
Miss Pappenheim listen to my voice, count with me as I count backwards from ten.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6,5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – now fall into a sleep where you are no longer troubled
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by the thoughts in your mind, and where the air is clear easy to breathe. [Her coughing begins to subside.
Immediately Bertha complies as appears into a sleep, her breathing becomes regular, no coughing her face smooths out her eyes appear normal, pretty young woman.] JOSEPH BREUER (CONT’D)
That is good. You will only remember this moment of peace, when you awake from your sleep, with the pressure to cough and squint your eyes vanished. Please awaken, Miss Pappenheim.
Please help me. The voices with in me are loud and bully me, and I am lost in a world of demons and snakes, I am responsible for the poor broken souls that exist in this world, she pushes her jaw forward, and head jerks back “black snakes!
Blacksnakes! Blacksnakes!
[She screams and falls again into a sound sleep. There are snakes where her arms should be.Joseph Breuer confused by her quick variation in her symptoms and mood.] JOSEPH BREUER
(firm)
If you can hear me Miss Pappenheim, I will come visit you every work day twice a day if I must, and we will start the treatment, which I believe will help relieve you or your suffering.
CLOSE ON BERTHA’S FACE
With eyes closed, Bertha smiles.
BERTHA
(with a slight smile)
Yes Dr. Breuer, there is much to tell you, I have a great many things to say.
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[Joseph Breuer is surprised that she was talking as if she was quite awake.] JOSEPH BREUERYes then, I will see you tomorrow and you will tell me everything.
BERTHA
Yes everything, see you tomorrow if I am still alive.
INT. OFFICE CONSULTING ROOM
FREUD AND JOSEPH BREUER LIGHT CIGARS BOTH COLLARS ARE OPEN.
FREUD
I will get dressed and let’s take a walk; I find the mind is less restricted when walking in nature, under an open sky.
EXT. DIRT ROAD – NIGHT
Freud and Joseph Breuer are still walking. Their view overlooks greater Vienna. (CAMERA TRACKING them)
JOSEPH BREUER
I should have turned my back and walked away and not look back, her illness was as mischievous as an angry teenager, as menacing as a poisonous spider. The truth was I did not treat her, I was merely a captive audience to her suffering, and the delusions that afflicted her, I cannot describe it any other way.
FREUD
You are a great physician, perhaps the greatest in Vienna, if not Europe.
JOSEPH BREUER
In Bertha’s company I am none of those qualities, I am merely a canvas which she paints her torment.
Like our steps this evening we are still in the dark on so many aspects of
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human consciousness.
JOSEPH BREUER
The treatment lasted 18 months until I had her regretfully committed to a sanatorium, she was remarkable, during times of the day she would be as thoughtful as engaging as any woman I had known, but as if as a sudden storm would appear she would become someone else.
FREUD
Was there hereditary involved?
JOSEPH BREUER
(formal sounding)
Yes. More than likely had a moderately severe neuropathic heredity, since some psychoses had occurred among her more distant relatives. Her parents were normal in this respect. She herself had hitherto been consistently healthy and had shown no signs of neurosis during her period of growth. She was markedly intelligent, with an astonishingly quick grasp of things and penetrating intuition. She possessed a powerful intellect, fluid in three languages, with great poetic and imaginative gifts, which were under the control of a sharp and critical common sense. I hate to mention this Sigmund, but she nearly ruined my marriage along with my reputation claiming I had impregnated her. If this had gotten out I don’t know what would have happened. You know how fragile my wife can be, she could not tolerate my involvement with this patient. I had to get away to save myself.
FREUD
You must tell me everything about this woman; I will not judge.
JOSEPH BREUER
Thank you; it is your courage I draw from. The men light up the cigars.
FADE TO BLACK.
JOSEPH BREUER (V.O.)
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At the time of her falling seriously ill, mid 1880, Bertha was twenty-one years old, there was some sense she was predisposed to neuropathic illness, with her family background. The surprising feature that she appeared to come from normal healthy parents and displayed markedly high intelligence and imaginative gifts, and quite astute grasp of things in general with a penetrating intuition, frankly I had not come upon a young woman of such qualities in my professional life thus I was naturally intrigued to take on the case. I recall one disturbing encounter early right when the father died.
INT. PAPPENHIEM HOUSEHOLD – BEDROOM – DAY
Everything Joseph Breuer describes unfolds in the scene.
JOSEPH BREUER (V.O.)
Bertha was at her father’s bedside, placing a cold towel upon his head, although he had passed earlier that day.
FATHER
I am with you. [Bertha moans.] JOSEPH BREUER
They had to sedate her to remove the father’s body. Some ten days after her father’s death a consultant was brought in, whom, like all strangers, she completely ignored while I demonstrated all her peculiarities to him. “That’s like an examination,” she said, laughing, when I got her to read a French text aloud in English. The other physician intervened in the conversation and tried to attract her attention, but in vain. It was a genuine “negative hallucination” of the kind which has since so often been produced experimentally. In the end he succeeded in breaking through it by blowing smoke in her face. She suddenly saw a stranger before her, rushed to the door to take away the key and fell unconscious to the
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ground. There followed a short fit of anger, “fuck demons; you have violated me, and killed my father!!!” Then, a severe attack of anxiety which I had great difficulty in calming down. Unluckily I had to leave Vienna that evening, and when I came back several days later I found the patient much worse. She had gone entirely without food the whole time; was full of anxiety and her hallucinatory absences were filled with terrifying figures, death’s heads and skeletons. Since she acted these things through as though she was experiencing them and in part put them into words, the people around her became aware to a great extent of the content of these hallucinations.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. PAPPENHIEM HOUSEHOLD – BEDROOM – DAY
Bertha in bed convulsing and thrashing, as if possessed, screaming. Joseph Breuer is looking on.
BERTHA
Tormented! Tormented! Tormented!
There was a war, and there was a boy and he was taken prisoner, and was placed in chains, and they exposed his member, (she points her finger in front of Breuer suggestion a phallus) and touched him there (she takes her other hand and molests the finger) and they starved him…
She starts to cough like having TB. BERTHA’S IMAGINATION – SIDE OF THE ROAD – DAY
A little girl with hair pulled back, like in Dickens, face dirty.
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BERTHA (CONT’D)
They made him into a little girl, named Hava. And, they used Hava and made her serve them like a slave and brought them breakfast. And for that they beat her as a distraction from their war. They were brave soldiers, and the girl was bad.
They had to leave, and they let Hava on the side of the road abandoned in starvation, in a ditch where snakes surrounded her. Hava, in an effort to stay alive had to train herself to ignore her hunger, and she became good at it…
END BERTHA’S IMAGINATION.
Back in the bedroom Bertha’s face starts to contort, squinting.
JOSEPH BREUER
Bertha please tell me everything that makes you tell me this story and makes your eyes squint
My heart is so open when we speak; I feel true love between a man and a woman. I remember that when I was little I wanted to be a boy and possess his privates as my own, I imagined that there was a war and I would be taken captive and they would use me. It was the feeling I had when my father took ill. I serve him, but he doesn’t see me, he would have wanted a son that is the origin of my story. His love meant everything to me. [Her face becomes calm.]
I feel at ease, now, thank you Dr. Breuer you have become my one friend who sees me, sees what is in my soul. I adore your visits they give me hope, I feel I live in a dream and when we talk I awaken, back in the
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world, where I feel the grief of my father’s death, I escape that grief by returning to a tortured dream inside myself.
Thank you my doctor my savior.
JOSEPH BREUER
It is I that must be thanking you for sharing such a private matter with such honesty.
BERTHA
When I talk to you I feel cured of my torment, when I see you my words release me, there are no chains, no prison, just freedom. I think of this “talking cure,” and it makes me cry.
EXT. DIRT ROAD – NIGHT
Joseph Breuer to Freud on a hill outside Vienna
JOSEPH BREUER
That is what she called it, “the Talking Cure” or fancifully “chimney sweeping.” But she was far from cured, at first, despite her unusual gifts, I believed she had a common case of hysterical neurosis, exaggerated by the profound grief of her father’s chronic tuberculosis, which during the treatment he tragically dies, which only compounded the fate of this poor woman. I felt she was open to suggestive intervention, that of course was false, in fact, she was completely unsuggestible; she was influenced at all it would be by arguments, rarely she would accept my solutions. Looking back I feel I misdiagnosed her from the beginning. Her willpower was energetic, tenacious and persistent; sometimes it reached the pitch of an obstinacy which only gave way out of kindness and caring for other people.
INT. FREUD’S OFFICE – NIGHT
Joseph Breuer and Freud are speaking.
JOSEPH BREUER (CONT’D)
Where did I leave off?
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FREUD
We are looking past the first year, following the father’s death. The men light up their cigars.
JOSEPH BREUER
Yes, of course. The regular order of things was the somnolent state in the afternoon, followed after sunset by the deep hypnosis for which she invented the technical name of “clouds.” If during this she was able to narrate the hallucinations she had in the course of the day, she would wake up clear in mind, calm and cheerful. She would sit down to work and write or draw far into the night quite rationally. At about four she would go to bed. Next day the whole series of events would be repeated. It was a truly remarkable contrast in the day-time…
FREUD
(cutting in)
In the day time she fights off her torment by hallucinatory reenactment of the father’s illness and death, the coughing, the paralysis, the anger are representations of a neuropathic suggestive state, on the surface she appears psychotic, by her hallucinations tell a story, a deeper more problematic truth, she has not lost a father -Joseph.
JOSEPH BREUER
I do not see where you are going with this Sigmund.
Dr. Breuer, she is a woman who not only lost a father, but a woman who has lost a lover. You see, her mind is divided, unwanted memories and impulses overrun her consciousness.
JOSEPH BREUER
Impossible! (abrupt, slamming his hand down) Sigmund, what are you saying? (indignant)
I want to travel with you my friend, I do not see how this can be… the Pappenheims are good people, wonderful caring people, I knew the father
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before his death, he was a man of sterling principles and resolve, and surly this is merely conjecture, and most certainly slanderous to the family, I would tread lightly, you will end up in a court room. Bertha must have an organic brain illness that I could not deduce, what you suggest is beyond me, it cannot be true.
FREUD
(slightly irritated)
Joseph (now on equal terms, leaning forward)the patient has led you to a place so that we can see her truth, it would be criminal to ignore her plea, as the hieroglyphics on a Greek temple, a story is being told, her love for her father has now been transferred to you. A form of an active hallucination, a transference, if you will, that speaks a truth.
JOSEPH BREUER
It is criminal what you are suggesting.
FREUD
Yes I believe there was a crime. The patient’s hallucinations and structure of her presentation are merely evidence of that crime and her wish to cover it up, to protect her father. (Freud sits back in his chair with his cigar) It is a violation, the seduction of a vulnerable child and the child’s desire to return that love, that we are witnessing and the permutations of her illness merely confirm that truth.
JOSEPH BREUER
I cannot believe this…
FREUD
(cutting off again)
Neither can she. Yet she offers something else, this Bertha Pappenheim, it is her method to discharge her ideas speak about her secret existence, the confession of the crime she was party too, when spoken aloud and in full, it frees her, her symptoms dissipate, she returns to us more in the world.
Hysteria is the product of pathological ideas, memories, it is evident. It is all there Joseph, we must push forward now, without hesitation or
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prejudice in our thinking. When I was a child I witnessed my father daily humiliations that our beloved culture so readily offers its chosen people. I could not have been more than 13 when my mind turned to Hannibal Barca, and I would visualize his epic journey with his elephants marching across Alps to capture Rome. The very essence of courage, the father I wanted to have. To do what could not be done. It is that story that drives me and us today my friend.
We fight all manners of enemy, and prejudice to achieve our goal, nothing should stop or the pursuit of our investigations. . Joseph my mentor, are we ready to conquer human consciousness?
JOSEPH BREUER
I wish I had your conviction Sigmund. (pause)
Although I am moved by your eloquence, and forcefulness of your belief in our work, but my time with Bertha has made me reconsider the very focus of my work, it is impossible for me to believe what you are suggesting, where you are going.
FREUD
Joseph, this is our work, where we are going.
FADE TO BLACK.
SUPERIMPOSE:
Studies on Hysteria was published in the spring of 1895
The book began with the case of Bertha Pappenheim who Breuer renamed Anna O. Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer for the most part ended their professional and personal relationship not long after the publication of the book. In the wake of their parting Freud found a new collaborator in Wilhelm Fliess, an ear nose and throat specialist who practiced in Berlin. FADE TO BLACK.
SUPERIMPOSE
February 22nd or 23rd, 1895 Vienna
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CAMERA PANS into a doctor’s operating room, although kind of homey, less institutional. Freud is there with WILHELM FLIESS.
FREUD (CONT’D)
Are you ready to operate Wilhelm, it has been a rather long journey from Berlin, wouldn’t you want more time to rest.
WILHELM FLIESS
Not necessary. Removing the nasal turbinate bone is an operation any first year surgery student can perform. It is a rather simple procedure.
FREUD
Your work with Miss Eckstein will change the way we look at neurosis, her hysteria has not sufficiently yielded to my hypnotic method, especially the nasal origin, along with your research on sexual cycles we are walking into a new era.
WILHELM FLIESS
Yes my friend, it is just a matter of time our work will converge and we will change the small minded medical establishment that has suppressed our research for so long.
FREUD
I will assist, then after Martha will prepare a dinner after. We have much to discuss the nose, menstruation, labor pains, neuroses, we are so close yet I only see an outline.
WILHELM FLIESS
It is true to the sexual etiology of neurosis looms large in my mind, I clearly see now the similarities between the urethra and turbinate bone, as you know it is the sexual element that is the key.
FREUD
I thank your god for our time. Nowadays I am looked upon pretty much as a monomaniac, while I have the distinct feeling that I have touched upon one of the great secrets of nature. There is something odd about the incongruity between one’s own and other people’s estimation of one’s intellectual work. There are still a hundred gaps, large and small, in the
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matter of the neuroses, but I am getting closer on some general perspectives. In every case it should be sexual excitation that undergoes these transpositions, but the impetus to them is not in every case something sexual; that is to say, in every case in which neuroses are acquired, it happens as a result of sexual disturbances, some of which heredity is at the root, other’s involve an external circumstance.
Let’s us go to Miss Eckstein I know she is anticipating your arrival and is prepared for the operation.
WILHELM FLIESS
Yes, it will be quick and we can look forward to a more leisurely discussion.
INT. OPERATING LOCATION – NIGHT
An office not well lit, the patient, EMMA lying.
Both Freud and Wilhelm Fliess are in operating gowns and with face masks. There is a NURSE attending too.
The CAMERA PEERS over the shoulders of the doctors briefly glimpsing the operation Wilhelm Fliess ask Freud for some gauze to pack and finish up.
WILHELM FLIESS (CONT’D)
That should hold her, it is a simple thing to remove and your patient should on the way to a full recovery free of neurosis.
FREUD
Your deftness with a scalpel is quite remarkable, my friend. It is strange to think we are on uncharted waters here, on the verge of an answer that has plaque humans since civilization emerged. I must embarrassingly admit I never was one for surgery and blood; maybe it is my avoidance that drove me into the psychological.
WILHELM FLIESS
Your powers of observation and ability to see the greater truth of the
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human condition, far outweighs my skill with a scalpel.
FREUD
Let us enjoy the rest of the evening…. (slapping Fliess on the back, with
cigar in hand) after I get Emma settled and comfortable.
FADE TO BLACK.
SUPERIMPOSE:
March 4th
INT.HOSPITAL – MAKE SHIFT BEDROOM DAY
Freud is by Emma’s side.
FREUD (CONT’D)
Dr. Gersuny, please come here.
FREUD (CONT’D)
I think we will need more morphine, Emma is in terrible pain. [She is heard moaning. Freud visibly upset. He turns to the patient and a wave of blood shoots forward onto his dressing gown. Gersuny reaches over, and packs the bleeding.] DR. GERSUNY
We will need a drainage tube inserted; the blood is mixed with pus.
INT. FREUD’S OFFICE – DAY
Freud IS holding his head writing to Wilhelm Fliess, with cigar.
FREUD (V.O.)
Persistent swelling, going up and down, like an avalanche of pain, so that the morphine cannot be dispensed with, bad nights. Today she had a massive hemorrhage, probably as a result of expelling a bone chip the size of a coin, there were two bowls full of pus Dr. Gersuny inserted a drainage tube.
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CUT TO BLACK.
SUPERIMPOSE:
March 8th
INT. HOSPITAL – MAKESHIFT BEDROOM – DAY
Freud is back at Emma’s side.
FREUD
It will be alright my dear, we will get to the bottom this I am certain. [Emma’s is moaning near coma. Her nose packed, bandages, camera
approaches first from the floor wide on whole scene, then tracks toward Freud another Doctor and, attending nurse, with the patient in bed, it is near dusk through the window.] FREUD (CONT’D)
Thank you Dr. Rosanes for coming here; Dr. Gersuny and I repacked the nasal cavity, but to no avail, the poor woman remains tentative.
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES
Her skin is pale and her pulse is weak, there is an awful rotting smell, do you smell it doctor Freud.
Yes, a fetid smell.
FREUD
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES
Like infection. Perhaps but… but where? (leans over to Freud in his ear)
If we don’t do something soon I am afraid we will lose her. [Freud is shaken.] FREUD
We must do something.
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES
Perhaps we need to remove the drainage tube from Gersuny and repacked the cavity, I see no other choice… we must stop the bleeding.
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FREUD
Yes, yes, please.
The CAMERA SNEAKS UP behind Freud and Dr. Ignaz Rosanes, up to this point we have not seen Emma fully, now the CAMERA TRACKS PAST the doctors and we see the hands removing the packing, blood is coming from her nose and mouth, Rosanes hands are steady, Freud’s hands not so.
They both move quickly absorbing the blood with towels; the bed is full of blood. Rosanes takes a metal device like a large tweezer instrument and enters the nasal cavity.
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES
(speaking to Freud) Dr. Freud, I am removing the first packing gauze
More blood emerges. Dr. Ignaz Rosanes throws the bloody gauze in a bowel resting on the side of the bed.
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES (CONT’D)
What is this? (surprise)
FREUD
What do you see Dr. Rosannes, I cannot see from this angle.
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES
It is a string or sorts, it appears connected to the septum area, I will pull gently, I think…
Oh my god! [Freud falls back. Emma is screaming the blood is flowing like a fountain. Freud gets to his feet. Dr. Ignaz Rosanes places pressure on her face, while holding bloody gauze in the other hand, the gauze that came out of her nose. Freud is with Rosanes, he then hands Freud the gauze, he is steadfast
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unmoved.
While holding the patients face, Freud holding the gauze.] DR. IGNAZ ROSANES (CONT’D)
It looks about a half meter; this, Dr. Freud, was left behind from the first procedure.
FREUD
(trying to regain authority) Keep the pressure strong. Let me.
She is barely alive; we must repack this to stop the bleeding.
The CAMERA SLOWLY TRACKS back from Emma’s face over the shoulders of the doctors, and then back to the original position on the floor, looking at a wide angle of the scene.
FREUD
Please Emma stay with us, stay with us.
(mumbling)
It all ends here, it is over…
FLASHBACK – EXT. CITY STREET – DAY
The old Jew with his hat being knocked off again. FLASHBACK – INT. CLASSROOM – DAY
Brief glimpse of the opening sequence. END FLASHBACK.
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Rosanes shirt with blood grabs Freud by the shoulder…
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES
Are you OK, Dr. Freud?
FREUD
(acting as if the girl is dead)
I just was a bit fatigued by it all, the loss of blood… the poor girl, it is tragic. I am so sorry to bring you into this. Up until this moment I felt unstoppable, I felt the natural world open up to me, now with Emma’s death, I will be doomed, the murdering Jew doctor.
[He closes his eyes in defeat.] DR. IGNAZ ROSANESDr. Freud she is alive, Emma is not dead, we had stopped the bleeding and removed the surgical gauze that remained from Fliess’s procedure; her pulse is stable. Once the gauze is removed we can hope that the infection will not infiltrate her, at least there will be no blockage.
FREUD
(looking up with relief)
I can’t thank you enough my friend, you not only saved me but all that I have worked for. Please forgive for my weak constitution.
[Rosanes walks over to the table and pours himself and Freud a cognac, then takes two cigars and walks back to Freud.] DR. IGNAZ ROSANESHere my friend handing him the drink. Our most reliable medicines. [He hands him a cigar he lights up Freud and himself, they smoke. They both sip the drink.] FREUD
We are not out of the woods yet; the night and tomorrow will have more to tell us. Let’s change out clothes.
DR. IGNAZ ROSANES
Hilda and Ellie are excellent nurses they will keep vigil.
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FREUD
Yes someone has to; we are still sale in dangerous waters.
Freud at his desk, exhausted. Shaken. INT. FREUD’S OFFICE – DAY
Freud at his desk, writing to Wilhelm Fliess.
FREUD (V.O.)
…Gersuny replied on the phone that he was unavailable till evening; so I asked Rosanes to meet me. He did so at noon. He stayed until the evening. There still was moderate bleeding from the nose and mouth; the fetid odor was very bad. Rosanes cleaned the area surrounding the opening, removed some sticky blood clots, and suddenly pulled at something like a thread, kept on pulling. Before either of us had time to think, at least half a meter of gauze had been removed from the cavity. The next moment, came flood of blood. The patient turned white, her eyes bulged, and she had no pulse. Immediately thereafter, however, he again packed the cavity with fresh iodoform gauze, and the hemorrhage stopped. It lasted about half a minute, but this was enough to make the poor creature, whoby then we had lying flat, unrecognizable. In the meantime, that is afterward, something else happened. At the moment, the foreign body came out, and everything became clear to me – and I immediately afterward was confronted by the sight of the patient – I felt sick. After she had been packed, I fled to the next room and felt miserable. The brave Doctor then brought me a small glass of cognac, and I became myself again…
CUT TO BLACK SUPERIMPOSE:
On two more occasions over the next 30 days Emma Eckstein profusely hemorrhaged and Freud with assistance had somehow managed to keep her alive, along with the dream of psychoanalysis.
FADE TO BLACK.
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SUPERIMPOSE:
Vienna March 22, 1938
This was the year of Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, the year that released a building torrent of anti-Semitism, that emerged as a pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and Austria, in this phase the Nazi regime viewed psychoanalysis as a Jewish science, thus something to eradicate, along with its founder Sigmund Freud, and his followers became actively targeted.
EXT. HOTEL METROPOLE – ESTABLISHING – NIGHT TRACKING SHOT
CAMERA ENTERS the door and tracks into the hallway, then into a room with a woman, ANNA FREUD, at a desk, behind the desk a STERN MAN with glasses is smoking a cigarette.
Screams in another room. It startles Anna Freud. She is composed though, plain yet authoritative. It is an airless room. Screams, crying emerge from the hallway. She turns her head toward the screams. Anna Freud is stone face, determined. She is smoking a cigarette.
There is a MAN IN A TRENCH COAT, also smoking with a file in from of him. CAMERA PULLS back.
MAN IN A TRENCH COAT
You know where you are, Frau Anna Freud? [Anna Freud says nothing.
The Man in a Trench Coat doesn’t wait]
You are aware Frau Freud you are in Gestapo headquarters, and it would be best to cooperate.
He stares at her. She stares back. She takes a drag of her cigarette.
ANNA FREUD
Yes I know.
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MAN IN A TRENCH COAT
I hope you are not busy today Frau Freud; there is much to cover and you will be here quite a while, (instilling fear) would you like some coffee? [Anna Freud hesitates and thinks about it.] ANNA FREUD
Yes, that would be fine, coffee. [Then, another scream is heard.]
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. FREUD’S HOUSE – DAY
Freud slams down his hand on the desk. Martha and MAX SCHUR are there too.
FREUD
Can we contact anyone to bring her back, what if they remove her to a prison or even worse!
MAX SCHUR
We have no information; our contacts through Dr. Jones have no information. We are nearing completion to secure immigration permits for you Martha, Anna, and myself.
MARTHA
I hope it is not too late.
Anna is a thoughtful and clever woman; these Nazi scums are no match for her, she has regularly talked me into and out of things since she was a little girl.
MARTHA
I must lie down, I am exhausted please wake me if you hear of anything.
MAX SCHUR
(to Freud )
I will give her a sedative.
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[Max Schur grabs Freud by the shoulder and stares at him.]We have been through many things my friend, we are not done yet.
FREUD
I am angry at myself that I did not see this anti-Semitic pestilence as so infectious, despite my work; I feel the world has become even madder.
MAX SCHUR
Your work represents civilization moving to a higher plateau; the Nazi’s represent the culmination of the primitive, tribal murderous instinct, Thanatos unleashed. They will be stopped and your work with live on.
FREUD
I could care little of my work right now it is my precious daughter sitting at Gestapo headquarters that is most present on my mind, I wish I could do something. I am not one toward violence, but today I think I have crossed that threshold.
If only I had listed sooner, we would not be stuck in this hell.
MAX SCHUR
Dr. Jones has great influence and he has work tireless to secure our release, let’s see what the day brings. [Freud walks to the window and stars out.] FREUD
Yes let’s see what today brings.
POV FREUD
The day is bright.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. FREUD’S HOUSE – NIGHT INT. FREUD’S HOUSE
The door opens Anna appears, tired but relieved. Freud reaches over to her and holds her.
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FREUD
This has been the longest day of my life. [Freud holds back tears.]
I’ll get Martha.
MAX SCHUR
ANNA
We are safe for now. They mainly wanted to know about the International Society who was involved and where they were located, and they wanted to make sure that the international psychoanalytic congress was scientific organization not a political one. But I think our days in Vienna are numbered, we must leave as quickly as we can.
[Martha enters…] MARTHAOh, sweetheart you’re safe! (She hugs her and starts to cry.)
ANNA
Yes mamma I am safe, but we are not, please ready yourself all the family to be prepared to leave on a moment’s notice.
SUPERIMPOSE:
With help the help of Ernst Jones Freud escaped to London on June 4th, 1938 one step ahead of the Nazi’s. His jaw cancer progressed, causing unimaginable pain, yet he continued to write and work with patients. The last years Freud had the regular companionship of with his daughter Anna, and Max Schur his personal physician.
DREAM SEQUENCE – EXT. CITY STREETS – DAY
Much like at the very beginning. A Vienna street, busy full of people, some people are milling about also there is a few uniformed people, maybe police, forcing poor people to march along.
Men on a street milling about, hostile agitated, there Freud as an old man. He is walking slowly the men start to walk towards him he sees a hat on
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the street. He bends down to pick it up, when he does he is surrounded by angry men, whispering, “Jew.”
DREAM SEQUENCE – INT. LARGE HALL – DAY
Freud is at a party, then the party turns into INT. EXAMINATION THEATER – DAY
There is a WOMAN standing in front, her face is covered blood and she is screaming, howling.
He reaches to his head.
FREUD
Where is my hat?
His wound has been infiltrated.
MAN
It is his own fault. [It is Freud on the examination table.] MAX SCHUR
It is an organic illness, it is of instinctual origin. So this is the strong sex.
There is River. This side of the River is desert and the other side is lush with green vegetation.
CAMERA PULLS back and PANS as if the CAMERA is reluctant to observe the tragedy. Then there is an elephant that is dying, lying on its side, its last breaths are burdened and labored. Then it stops breathing, the scene then opens to the elephant alive next to an ancient temple in Greece, like the Parthenon.
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END OF DREAM SEQUENCE.
Freud awakens in his bed. FADE TO BLACK. SUPERIMPOSE:
London
INT. FREUD’S HOUSE IN LONDON – DAY
ANNA FREUD
Father, how are you feeling, can I get you something?
FREUD
Perhaps another ten years. Would that be enough?
ANNA FREUD FREUD
I doubt it, I am older than my father, older than time itself, I’m afraid. I feel I have outlived my usefulness.
ANNA FREUD
Don’t be ridiculous, even the silly English have taken in your work They all speak of you as some sort of prophet of the new age. You have made an enormous contribution to our world.
FREUD
When I look around and see the destruction that engulfs us, did I merely identify our true nature, only to recognize there is little we can do to change it, like the cancer that robs me of life.
At least I have the dream book, that will always be my legacy. [He coughs as his is trying to light a cigar.] ANNA FREUD
Poppa you must restrain yourself, it cannot help your situation those, dam cigars.
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FREUD
Next to you and my dreams they have been my truest most loyal companion.
You have learned to deflect me well poppa.
FREUD
I thought it was you who was the expert in defensive strategies, your book will light the way, I am very proud father. How is it with the British society?
ANNA FREUD
Well there is Miss Klein’s work she has made a a very big deviation from your original work claiming the Oedipus situation and other instinctual elements are present in full force from early infancy on, the first year.
FREUD
(a bit irritated) ) Impossible, does she not see and listen to her patients. The structures are merely nascent, evolving, they are not delineated yet, the narcissism of the child is not organized in a way to incorporate the fantasy of the oedipal. I hope you are correcting these falsehoods.
ANNA FREUD
I will be at the meetings, you can be certain Miss Klein’s work will be properly handled. I thinks she is rather envious of me, and my position. She acts diplomatically friendly to me, but I sense she has other intention. Although she does hold you in great regard, claiming she is the true Freudian.
FREUD
I cannot count how many times people have said that in my life time, they swear allegiance on to stab you in the back. A true Freudian she labels herself (laughing slightly) … At this juncture I wonder if I am still a true Freudian.
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ANNA FREUD
(laughs)
You are the only one!! The camera circles then returns to them in full view. Freud is sitting up.
[Silence they are sitting, he is with a cigar. Anna is holding his hand.]INT. FREUD’S HOUSE IN LONDON – DAYS LATER
Anna Freud enters the room; Freud seems weaker and more fragile. Anna Freud is holding a letter.
ANNA FREUD (CONT’D)
I had some bad news poppa, I had waited to tell you.
FREUD
In this day and age bad news comes in the bushel, all I do is worry about the children will there be a world left to them.
ANNA FREUD
You remember the Hammerschlags?
FREUD
Of course. Samuel Hammerschlag was one of the great spirits of my early life, despite his religious preoccupations he never turned away from me, that family was the true embodiment of kindness. What news of them you bring?
ANNA FREUD
It is Anna; I know you had cared for her.
FREUD
Of course she is the reason for your name, perhaps my favorite patient, in no small measure she had led me to the Promised Land. What news?
ANNA FREUD
She has died. (pause)
She committed suicide last month in Vienna.
[Freud seemed frozen in sadness, he starts to cry, holding his hand to hisPage 84
eyes. Anna Freud reaches over to him and hugs him.] I am sorry, poppa.
FREUD
At least one beloved Anna still remain; thank you. Without you, I would be dead and forgotten.
ANNA
Stop it, poppa. You have given me the greatest gift a father could have given a daughter; a gift that has inspired not only me, but the world we live in. If I would want more, I would just be greedy.
SUPERIMPOSE:
“Interpretation of Dreams” had been published earlier in the year.
“There is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and… if that procedure is employed, every dream reveals itself as a psychical structure which has a meaning and which can be inserted at an assignable point in the mental activities of waking life.”
INT. FREUD’S OFFICE – DAY
CAMERA TRACKS past the antiquities in the office, picking up a trail of cigar smoke leading to Freud behind the couch.
Then tracks back to reveal his is in session with a MALE PATIENT.
FREUD
What idea are you blocking?
MALE PATIENT
I am a degenerate. What I am… is a pathetic disgrace to my family, you are probably mocking me behind your solemn tone, I am glad I can’t see your face.
FREUD
Please disregard the idea you must censor your thoughts only say what is on your mind.
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MALE PATIENT
I recall a dream, I feel a bundle of nerves I am witnessing a performance of Fidelio from the stores o the Opera House., I am sitting next to a man, my brother’s friend Ludwig. Who I find I enjoy his company; I want to be his friend. Suddenly he flies diagonally across the stalls; he puts his hand on his mouth and draws out two of his teeth. As the Opera performed Fidelio I recall the words He is a charming wife acquires.
FREUD
Please tell more from your dream, the bit where he flies diagonally across the stalls?
MALE PATIENT
Yes, I know now where it comes from it reminds me of recent memories, I had been over my brother’s home, he just mocks me and many ways, but mostly silently in his haughty manner. His friend and his friend’s wife that fat cow (sarcastic) were there, the man in the opera. I saw him look at me, and then turn his head. I thought at first he was signaling to me he was interested, so I approached him and he ran across the room as if I was an unwashed beggar felt so humiliated, then he left with his wife, I wanted to be the one leaving with him. Why am I so insane? I masturbated two times that evening before the dream.
FREUD
What was the idea you masturbated to?
MALE PATIENT
I have an idea my mind won’t get, I kept imagining Herr L, standing in front of me, I unbuckle his belt, and feel his man-ness, strengthen and pulse to firm attention, I roughly pull it from his pants and kneel down as if I was in front of an alter worshiping and I take him into my mouth and bite and suck him until he must release his elixir into me. I feel flush thinking about it, but it feels good to say to aloud. I am reminded when I was young boy and my father would drink and cry to my poor mother, and then he would leave for days. She would blame me, for being born and
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ruining her marriage, that is why your father left, she would scream in my face, he too flew away for days on end. I remember what if I was his wife, I would have a good marriage, I would make him stay home and be happy. I would suck his penis then he would feel good and stay home.
FREUD
Let us offer an interpretation.
It seems the dream reflects upon a sexual wish, that originates in the current realities of your life, as well as a deeper rooted element you carry from early childhood,; a longing in a fantasy of an absent father and a berating mother. It is thus no surprise that the Opera you refer to in the dream is named as such that is “a performance of Fidelio.” In dreams one idea often substitutes for another, I think the Opera would be better labeled fellatio, after the forbidden wish that engulfs your conscious mind, a simple play on words that was easy to capture. The two teeth is a displacement of a sexual wish, from your genitals, as your associations bear out, the two teeth that Herr L drew from his mouth revisited to the two times you had drew your member to masturbate, it is a common sexual reference.
MALE PATIENT
Yes, it is true what you are saying I feel so guilty and frightened, everyone knows about my predilection, but I pretend it is not true, I wish there would be a world where I can be the wife of another, I mean share a life with another man, where I am would be myself without fear and dread, I hate myself.
FREUD
You and I sometimes share a common idea; it seems we both find ourselves on the outer rim of our culture, the world as we know it appears barely able to accept heterosexual impulses, let alone homosexual. At least in this little corner of the world we needn’t live in the shadows, but rather
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we are not restricted to talk about such matters with the freedom and dignity they deserve.
INT. FREUD’S OFFICE – DAY
This scene is a different perspective of the scene when the publisher brings the proofs for the dream book.
Freud in his study, at his desk with a cigar He is writing with great focus and intensity, the camera moves in closer and he turns the page writing.
EXT. 19 BERGASSE – CONTINUOUS
There is DELIVERY MAN with a package, satchel style. He knocks at the front door of 19 Berggasse. A middle aged Martha Freud opens the door.
DELIVERY MAN
Publisher Greetings Frau Freud, I bring with me.
INSERT – TOP OF THE PAGE
sexual obsession, incest taboo, transference the case of Dora January 1900.
INT. FREUD’S OFFICE – CONTINUOUS
The knock on the door startles him.
FREUD
(a crank tone) What is this, why are you disturbing me?
The CAMERA PULLS BACK and revealing the red ornate couch on the other side of his desk.
Knock on the door again.
MARTHA
(insistent)
Sigi, open the door I have news!
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(again at his desk)
What is this business? I am in the middle of a thought; I told you not to ever disturb me.
He coughs.
The CAMERA RUSHES to the door knob and the door swings open, revealing a middle aged Martha’s face.
MARTHA
Stop being so crabby, your publisher is here with the proof; he says they are ready to move forward with the dream book.
[CLOSE ON FREUD
Freud turns his head, looking at the window.] FREUD
Yes.
CUT TO BLACK SUPERIMPOSE:
September 21 1939 London INT. FREUD’S HOUSE – DAY
The window that ended the previous scene begins this scene. The CAMERA TRACKS back to the bed where Freud, who is very sickly, is staring into the light of the window. Dr. Schur approaches his patient and friend.
MAX SCHUR
It is time my dear friend. It is with great sorrow and love that we must say goodbye.
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(whispering)
You are not only a great doctor but a loving friend. I hope I didn’t leave this world a worse place.
MAX SCHUR
You merely have shown us the truth and have taught us how primitive we are, we are not grown up enough to appreciate fully the gift you have given us.
FREUD
Thank you Max, I began my journey all those years ago with an injection, (image of Irma and the syringe) and now it is time. With that comment Max Schur removes two vials of a drug and a syringe from a doctor’s satchel. He injects Freud, wiping tears from his eyes. Freud then falls into a deep restful sleep. Then Schur injects a third dose, and starts to weep at the side of the bed. Anna Freud and Martha, kneel beside the bed with Schur.
FADE TO BLACK.
SUPERIMPOSE:
Freud was given on September 21 1939 a hypodermic of two centigrams of morphine, he fell into a peaceful asleep and then another dose was administered. His body depleted from the cancer lapsed into a coma, and he did not wake up again. He died on September 23 1939.
The Interpretation of Dreams is published and the world never looked quite the same.
EXT. RUINS OF ANCIENT ROME – DAY
A civilized man in a suit is walking amongst the ruins, an archeologist. He looks down and see’s something in the ruins, it is a hat. He picks up the hat, dusts it off, the setting sun is so bright in his eyes looking toward the
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understood it all.
FADE TO BLACK.
Zither music plays.
INSERT IMAGE OF THE 19 BERGGASSE
It has a swastika banner. SUPERIMPOSE:
Freud’s Vienna at the end of the 19th Century was a dream, full of promise and enlightenment, soon to be crushed and reshaped by the cruel reality of the 20th century.
We may continue to argue about the content of Freud’s theories and their relationship to his biography. Yet, in so doing, we must always acknowledge that it is his risking of everything and teaching us the process of self-discovery that will always be his legacy.
EXT. LONG SHOT OF THE RUINS
Outside, a man standing amongst the ruins, it is Freud surveying the lays of an ancient city.
FADE OUT.
INSERT IMAGE OF BOOK DE TRAUMDEUTUNG SUPERIMPOSE
Book of Interpretation of Dreams SCROLLING WORDS
In 1900 Freud’s masterwork was mostly ignored, it took 6 years to sell 600 copies, yet today Interpretation of Dreams is considered one of the most influential books ever written.
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Jack Schwartz
Jack Schwartz, LCSW, PsyD, NCPsyA is a psychoanalyst/psychotherapist in private practice, NJ. He graduated from the New Jersey Institute for Training in Psychoanalysis, where he is a faculty member, lecturer and control analyst. He is a NAAP Nationally Certified Psychoanalyst, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor. He holds degrees from Fairleigh Dickinson University Yeshiva University (where he received the Distinguished Graduate Student Award) and International University. He served as the Senior Forensic Psychologist in Passaic County New Jersey for over 15 years, specializing in criminal investigations, probation, child custody issues, and has regularly served the court as an expert witness. Dr. Schwartz maintains a full private practice in Northern New Jersey, working with children, adolescents, couples and adults. He frequently lectures on dream analysis, PTSD, resilience and other matters related to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. He is a regular contributor to the New Jersey Institute Viewpoints newsletter, and is the editor for the NJ Clinical Social Worker highly regarded newsletter, the Forum. Dr. Schwartz has written both short fiction, and technical articles on Dream Analysis and Holocaust Survivors, and has published a psychoanalytic novel, Our Time is Up, available on Amazon, soon to be an e-book. Dr. Schwartz’s article “Freud’s Irma Dream, The Origin of Psychoanalysis and a Bloody Nose” was published in multi-disciplinary journal MindConsiliums in 2014 (MindConsiliums). It had received a Gradiva® nomination from the National Association for Advancement of Psycho-analysis in 2015.
How to Cite This:Schwartz, J. (2015). The secret of dreams and the case of Sigmund Freud (screenplay). MindConsiliums, 15(12), 1-92. https://doi.org/10.70763/mc399862d3b9d6b76c8436e924a68c45b
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