Saturday, December 28, 2013

Devils of unreason

Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945 film) starts with this preamble:
Our story deals with psychoanalysis, the method by which modern science treats the emotional problems of the sane. The analyst seeks only to induce the patient to talk about his hidden problems, to open the locked doors of his mind. Once the complexes that have been disturbing the patient are uncovered and interpreted, the illness and confusion disappear... and the devils of unreason are driven from the human soul.
It is funny to see psychiatrists in this era taken so seriously.

Nowadays, it is more common to see them as incompetent quacks who are covering up their own neuroses, such as in the hilarious 1991 movie What About Bob?.

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