A Dangerous Method

In the years before the First World War, Carl Jung takes on a severely disturbed young patient, Sabina Spielrein, whose recovery and intellect draw him into an affair that breaches the bounds of treatment. Around this entanglement runs his correspondence and rupture with Sigmund Freud over the shape of the discipline they are inventing.

The film dramatises the birth of psychoanalysis and, at its centre, the transference that binds doctor and patient and the difficulty of holding the frame when it does. It brought a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in 2012 for Viggo Mortensen and is based on A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr, by way of the play The Talking Cure by Christopher Hampton.