Screen Memories: Towards a History of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis in the Movies

Abstract

In his famous biography, Ernest Jones turns aside from his central theme at one point to relate a curious episode involving psychoanalysis and Hollywood, in the persons of Freud and the well-known film producer Samuel Goldwyn. Like many others in the film industry, Goldwyn was fascinated with the challenge of exploiting the association between psychoanalysis and sex on screen, but although he approached ‘the greatest love specialist in the world’ with an offer of $100 000 for his co-operation in making a movie, Freud declined and even refused to see him. To some degree, Freud's antagonism sprang from his distaste for America and its values, which he contemptuously dismissed as a blend of crude behaviourism, materialism and consumerism, epitomized in the figure of Goldwyn, whose reputation for vulgarity had preceded his arrival in Europe. But for the most part, he remained sceptical that the theories of psychoanalysis could ever be properly expressed on the silver screen, even when the attempt was made by two close acquaintances, Hanns Sachs and Karl Abraham.