Montgomery Clift in the title role. Set early in Freud's career. Psychiatrists back then discovered they could help patients overcome symptoms of PTSD by putting them under hypnosis and having them recount the traumatic events that caused it. In one scene, a young woman (Susannah York) has partial hysterical blindness. Under hypnosis, she relives an incident where she had to identify her father's body. Her vision is instantly restored.
These same techniques among others were used on soldiers suffering "combat fatigue" or PTSD during World War Two. I haven't seen it, but, John Huston made a documentary about this in 1946 when he was still in the Army Signal Corps. The film, Let There Be Light, was suppressed by the government until the 1980's.
Freud was made the same year as The Manchurian Candidate. Both movies had sequences of patients under hypnosis, showing first a distorted version of events, then again showing the identical events as they really appeared. The patient makes the first Freudian slip, confusing "protestant" and "prostitute".
With David McCallum, two years before The Man From U.N.C.L.E., as a patient who unnerves Freud by giving him his first brush with an Oedipus Complex.
I had seen Freud on TV a couple of times decades ago. I was impressed by it and wondered why I hadn't seen it again in so long. It's available now on the Criterion Channel which is featuring the films of John Huston.
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