Abstract

The events narrated in the film “A Dangerous Method” (Cronenberg, 2011) go back to 1904, with the hospitalization of Sabine Spielrein in a Zurich clinic where she was inconsistently treated by Carl Jung. At the time Sigmund Freud was revealing his first considerations regarding the boundaries that doctors should set to erotic transferential feelings from patients. One hundred years later, in 2004, the first conviction in Buenos Aires of a female therapist, who got involved with her patient, takes place. This paper analyses the development of Freudian conceptualization in matters of neutrality and abstinence, and at the same time points out some of the risks that still burden the professional practice. In this way the value of Cronenberg’s film is re-signified in that it records the historical moment of tension between the strength of an eminent theory and the practical difficulties encountered by analysts of implementing it.

Key Words: Ethics | Transference | Psychoanalysis | Jung