61.1marinelli

Smoking, Laughing, and the Compulsion to Film: On the Beginningsof Psychoanalytic Documentaries

Marinelli, Lydia.Barber, Christopher.

American Imago, Volume 61, Number 1, Spring 2004, pp. 35-58 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/aim.2004.0016

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35Lydia Marinelli

American Imago, Vol. 61, No. 1, 35–58. © 2004 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

35

LYDIA MARINELLI

Smoking, Laughing, and theCompulsion to Film: On the Beginnings of

Psychoanalytic Documentaries

“The projectionist has informed us that the pictureswould be enjoyed much more and would be clearer iffewer people were smoking.”—Announcement made by Philip R. Lehrman during

the screening of the film Sigmund Freud, His Family,and Colleagues, 1928–1947

Blue Haze

Scene: The cigar is thrown away with a hasty, almostannoyed gesture—smoking is prohibited during the shooting,but only for the “star.” He complies with the injunctionunwillingly and only after it has been repeated several times.The tribute that he must pay to the camera is nothing less thanthe renunciation of the insignia by which the public identifieshim. Contrastingly, the “supporting actors” smoke continually,as if their cigarettes had to compensate for this lost signifier.The forbidden cigar and the rising clouds of smoke that blurthe images are among the most important props of the film.When one follows the blue haze back into the history ofpsychoanalysis, the impression arises that the film has taken asits model Wilhelm Stekel’s “Conversations on Smoking,” a1903 account in dialogue form of the first psychoanalysts at theWednesday Society meetings in the Prager Tagblatt in which anunbreakable connection is posited between psychoanalysis,tobacco, and the disappearance of metaphysics: “Could notthe decline of the metaphysical sciences, the retreat of philoso-phy before the other sciences, be attributed to the widespreadvice of combining mental exertion with smoking?” (1926,

36 On the Beginnings of Psychoanalytic Documentaries

543), asks an unnamed psychoanalyst, who is the only onepresent to have renounced the habit.1

Although the film containing the miniature episode ofthe cigar does not reenact Stekel’s primal scene of the psycho-analytic movement, it does possess the distinction of being thefirst known documentary about Freud and the early psycho-analysts. It was made by Philip R. Lehrman, who with his familyjourneyed from New York to Vienna in 1928 for the purpose ofundergoing a didactic analysis with Freud. Using footage shotin the course of that year, Sigmund Freud, His Family, andColleagues, 1928–1947 was later edited by Lehrman with thehelp of his daughter Lynne Lehrman Weiner. It has in theinterim become commonplace for scholars of both film andpsychoanalysis to draw attention to the synchronicity of theseepiphonemena of modern culture and to seek in the latter amethod for dissecting the former. It is likewise conventional tonote the absence of comments by Freud himself regarding filmand for the parallels to be explored on a purely theoreticallevel, often with the aid of The Interpretation of Dreams.2

In the present paper, however, I am primarily concernedwith elucidating how a detailed historical perspective thatmakes use of new sources and extends beyond Freud can openup a whole host of illuminating questions. Utilizing Lehrman’s“psychoanalytic documentary” as a springboard, a consider-ation of the convergence of the histories of film and psycho-analysis, which has long been centered on feature films, can beexpanded to include films in whose creation psychoanalystswere involved not only in front of but also behind the camera.By reconstructing the conditions under which these cinemato-graphic products came into existence, I hope to give a newtheoretical accent to the lively discussion already in progressregarding the relations between psychoanalysis and film.

Conflicting Images

Having emigrated from the Russian city of Plissa at the ageof nine, Lehrman studied medicine in New York. In 1920 hestarted a medical practice there, and a short time later hebegan training as an analyst under Abraham Arden Brill, who

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provided the connection to Freud. Lehrman had already beento Vienna in 1926, but without his camera and without theopportunity to have analysis sessions with Freud, who wrote tohim on April 6: “it is commendable that you are seeking a well-founded training in psychoanalysis. You are certainly right thatthis is more likely to be achieved in Europe, in Vienna orBerlin, than in America.”3 However, an analysis with Freud didnot come to pass, and a second attempt was necessary. Brill,who had often sent patients from the U.S.A. and thus hadcontributed to supplementing Freud’s scanty income duringthe postwar years, continued to solicit Freud on behalf of hisfriend and colleague.

During Lehrman’s second stay in Europe, the moviecamera turned out to be as helpful an ally in achieving thedesired analysis as smoking had been in fueling the psychoana-lytic critique of metaphysics. Lehrman rightly surmised that hewould again run into difficulties in 1928. Freud had hadanother cancer operation, and it remained uncertain whenand if he would find the time for new analysands. Not knowingwhat exactly awaited him in Vienna, Lehrman decided in thecourse of the summer to postpone the journey no longer andinstead to while away the time in Europe with his new state-of-the-art sixteen-millimeter Bell and Howard camera. He wasencouraged by a letter from Freud that, although it did notpromise an analysis right away, presented the attraction of anagreeable summer retreat at Semmering. On March 11, 1928,Freud had informed him of his conditions:

Dear Dr. Lehrman, I see no fundamental obstacle why Ishould not accept you for an analysis. But as my time isvery much restricted I am not ready to bind myselfbefore I heard more about you. I could take you onOctober first this year, coming back from Semmering. Aperiod of about nine month (until next years vacation inJune) would seem a proper time for a thorough analysis.I would prefer if it could be done in German, but that isno serious obstacle (You need the knowledge of Germanif you intend to hear lectures or examine cases here). Myfee is $25 an hour. I expect your further communica-tions. Yours truly Freud


Brought along mostly as a way of passing the time until thestart of the analysis, the little camera proved to be an instru-ment that created an eye-catching cross-cut of private familymementoes, psychoanalytic history, and—perhaps most sur-prisingly—cinematic “symptomatology.” Even though thesesequences, often shot with an unsteady hand, seem at firstglance to be extremely casual, the film that Lehrman later puttogether from these images and commented upon showsseveral peculiarities that can be ascribed to the interplayresulting from analysts being both in front of and behind thecamera.

To meet Freud, who was convalescing in the Schloss TegelSanatorium and thus at first not in a position to begin treatinghis American patient, Lehrman had to travel on from Viennato Berlin. Thanks to this journey, Lehrman obtained footageshowing the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and the ErnstSimmel Sanatorium. Nonetheless, his “star” continued to refuseto appear on camera. Lehrman had to wait several monthsbefore he succeeded in changing Freud’s mind. Since it wasdifficult simply to do nothing and wait, he filmed Freud’scolleagues in Berlin, traveled to Paris to visit Marie Bonaparte,and, upon his return to Vienna, began filming other membersof the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. He created portraits ofmore than seventy psychoanalysts; in several cases his footagecontains the only surviving pictures.

For a long time the film reels went unnoticed in Lehrman’sprivate collections, and he never mentioned their existence inany of his publications. Finally, in the early 1950s, prodded byhis daughter Lynne Lehrman Weiner, he started workingthrough the material. Sections of the uncut footage wereshown at an American Psychoanalytic Association conventionin 1950, and the audience’s enthusiasm led to a repetition ofthe screening in 1954. Both times Lehrman annotated thefilms through a microphone, and the recordings of his com-mentary and the audience’s reaction contributed an importantelement of the later version. Stimulated by the success of thesepresentations, he made a compilation in 1955 that splicedhighlights of the silent footage into a twenty-minute film. Thisfirst edited version continued to eschew the use of sound, butdid feature subtitles. At that time many of the people who had

39Lydia Marinelli

been filmed could not be identified, with the result that onlythe better-known analysts were shown in addition to Freud andhis family. This first compilation continued to be handled as aprivate film, and only one copy found its way into the SigmundFreud Archives, where, however, it was immediately put underlock and key until 2057.

Lynne Lehrman Weiner was more than a little surprisedwhen she learned about this policy of the Freud Archives,whose logic is at times not very apparent.4 In this instance, thereason is to be found in the image of Freud presented by thefilm, which strikingly contrasts with more conventional depic-tions. Superficially, the film appears to be an everyday amateureffort, which, conforming to the “naive” representationalintentions of private films, shows family members traveling andprofessional associates in a sort of happy family of analyticpioneers. The silent images of analysts waving to the camera,Freud strolling about, and a party at Marie Bonaparte’s in Parisdo not at first betray anything to distinguish them from otherfamily films, which cannot be accused of being offensive orincriminating. But in the eyes of certain people, the pictures ofFreud captured by Lehrman had become disagreeable.

During her research for a new film version, LehrmanWeiner sought the advice of various psychoanalysts in order toidentify the many faces that remained unknown. Anna Freudwas among those contacted, but she refused to cooperate. Itwas not Freud’s oft-cited shyness toward film that made herunwilling to help. In Lehrman’s films, Anna Freud foundherself confronted with an image of her father that in no waycorresponded to what she wanted to establish for posterity. It iswell known how much care she took in steering the memory ofher father into certain channels. In addition to controlling thescientific reception of Freud’s works through rigid manage-ment of their editions, Anna Freud also attempted to mold herfather’s public image in a visually dominated culture. In thedomain of film and popular culture, her efforts were much lesssuccessful than they were within the psychoanalytic world,ending eventually in capitulation in the face of an explosion ofimages.

On many occasions Anna Freud distanced herself fromattempts to film her father’s life story—for instance, in the case


of John Huston. Although Freud himself harshly rejected filmproducers who sought to win his cooperation, the film industrycontinued to approach the family after World War II. In hisplan to make a Freud film, John Huston met with a maximumof resistance. Despite his pleas that he intended to make aserious film and not a popular spectacle, and despite attemptsto convince the family that continued for more than ten years,Anna Freud rejected any form of authorization and mobilizedViennese psychoanalysts who had emigrated to the U.S. againstthe project. When Huston decided to release the film withoutthe family’s approval, Anna Freud was forced to admit toMasud Khan on July 12, 1970 that she had “not been able toprotect her own father against becoming a film hero” (Young-Bruehl 1988, 358).5

Anna Freud’s idea of an acceptable representation of herfather can be clearly reconstructed through consideration ofthe conflict over the Lehrman footage. After initial hesitation,she herself began to review film material in the family’spossession and agreed to provide the commentary for theresulting compilation, Sigmund Freud, 1930–1939. This film,which later became the official home movie of psychoanalysis,spliced together excerpts shot during the thirties by membersof the Freud family, Marie Bonaparte, Ruth Mack Brunswick,Mark Brunswick, and others, along with historical scenesincluding the march of the National Socialists into Vienna. Onone occasion, the idea of releasing films for commercial usehad already arisen. Mark Brunswick, who had fallen intofinancial difficulty, suggested selling the footage that he hadshot in Vienna as a way of financing his analysis. This planaroused both the professional and familial disapproval ofAnna Freud, who at the time was still using all available meansto prevent this private material from appearing on publicscreens. Her attitude cannot be explained through a generalurge to censor. It points out a fundamental problem in the useof sources that emerge from the private into the public sphere.Such a change of status also applies to documentary filmswhere it is unclear if the images were made with the consent ofthe persons shown and if they were initially created exclusivelyfor a very specific circle of viewers. The question of consent,and with it of the legitimate public use of film, dominates the

41Lydia Marinelli

discussion among anthropologists, but it also applies to otherforms of documentary, and is not to be simplistically equatedwith censorship.

It was years later that Anna Freud, knowing that LehrmanWeiner wanted to release a similar documentary, changed herposition and agreed to allow excerpts from the footage in herown archive to be compiled under her name. In this autho-rized documentary, Freud is shown as a family man and dog-lover, appearing in his summer domiciles and London exile ineveryday situations that were mostly contrived for the camera.To the eye of the uninvolved observer, what differentiates thesescenes from Lehrman’s footage is hardly perceivable, and yet itwas described by Lehrman Weiner as follows:

He [Lehrman] cared because Anna Freud apparentlydid not like the idea that these pictures were so goodthat they showed Freud’s wound on his cheek. He hadcancer of the mouth, and he was in pain a lot from 1923on. He was in pain almost every day of his life, and shedidn’t want it known. She also declined to help meidentify people because she said she didn’t approve ofmaking films public. She thought if the general publicwere to see him in the distress he was in that it wouldtake away from his intellect. To have anybody say any-thing negative was a tremendous source of horror forher. (Green 2000, 3)

Compared to the later films, Lehrman’s footage retaineda reality effect that was too strong for Anna Freud anddisturbed her ongoing project of preserving an unblemishedpublic image of Freud. Anna Freud’s attempts to control thecontours of her father’s image were not only a product of laterdebate; their origins can be traced in the footage itself. Thescene mentioned at the beginning, showing Freud reluctantlythrowing away his cigar, provides a paradigm for this public-relations effort. Wrapped in thick fur coats, Sigmund andAnna Freud stroll through the wintry streets near their apart-ment. For a moment Freud holds a cigar in his hand, only tothrow it hastily to the ground following a gesture made byAnna. The rest of the scenes in which they appear together


show Freud in the unaccustomed role of the nonsmoker.Lehrman later reported that Anna, upon seeing the camerapointed at them, had demanded that her father throw thecigar away immediately. He was, after all, a man with a seriousillness, and posterity was not to be given the impression that hewas an undisciplined addict.6 Since he found it difficult tocomply with the smoking prohibition, he violated it withpleasure in the scenes without Anna. The shots of a fragilelittle Freud being admonished by his daughter apparentlycontradicted her ideas. Despite being a compilation thatmakes use of seemingly everyday family footage, Lehrman’sfilm in no way comes across to today’s viewer as a sentimentalsouvenir. Compared to the static nature of later Freud films,the images assembled by Lehrman range from sentimentaldetails to scenes reminiscent of silent-film slapstick in whichoverly enthusiastic dogs threaten to bowl Freud over, only toturn on the camera itself to the director’s chagrin. Thesesequences are not the sort that could be used to project theimage of Freud as a dignified researcher and scholar.

Through Anna Freud’s unexpected reaction, LehrmanWeiner discovered that she had not only inherited uniquematerial from her father, but that his film had the potential toimpact the official iconography of psychoanalysis. She did not,however, let herself be daunted by the restrictions and contin-ued to seek out possibilities for compiling all of the footageinto a work that would be at least twice as long as the original.She made stills of the unknown faces and sent them tonumerous psychoanalytic associations in the hope of clarifyingtheir identity. Thus she was able to compile an almost com-plete list of the persons shown. In 1985, she finally succeeded,with the financial support of the New Land Foundation andthe New York Psychoanalytic Association, in restoring the filmand producing a new, extended version entitled Sigmund Freud,His Family, and Colleagues, 1928–1947. Lehrman Weiner alsoexperienced doubt as to whether the images that had beencreated in private and initially safeguarded as an intimatefamily document could be exposed to the public eye withoutfurther ado. She solved the problem by not releasing the filmfor public distribution, instead passing it on to several scien-tific archives and for the most part deciding herself on the sites

43Lydia Marinelli

for screening.7 This policy helps in part to explain why docu-mentary films created by psychoanalysts themselves were for along time overlooked in discussions of the parallels betweencinema and psychoanalysis.

The New Version

The new version grew to a length of fifty minutes, fittinglycorresponding to an analytic session. A short introduction wasadded in which Lynne Lehrman Weiner discusses how the filmcame to be divided into two parts.8 On the visual level, as I havenoted, the original film gave the impression of a conventionalamateur effort, showing family members traveling and verybrief shots of adherents of the psychoanalytic movement. Thenew film includes in its entirety the older shorter version,complete with subtitles, in its first section, which for the mostpart is set in Europe. Because Lehrman was forced to work indaylight, the footage made using the small hand camera wasalmost always shot outdoors or by a window. Conditions wereharsh for the subjects, especially those in Vienna who had toendure one of the century’s coldest winters.

Despite the film’s title, its first part begins with sequencesfrom New York in 1927 in which several members of theVanderbilt Clinic staff are introduced. Dramaturgic interven-tion in the material is limited to rearrangement of the footagethat was shot in Europe over the course of a year, which is notshown chronologically but spliced together according to placeand groups of people. When Freud in 1928 had to interrupthis summer holidays to undergo treatment at the Schloss Tegelsanatorium, Lehrman did not hesitate to travel to Berlin tomake contact with colleagues there. Impressions of Berlin’sstreet life, into which Lehrman erroneously inserted the ViennaOpera, are followed by footage of the Berlin PsychoanalyticInstitute, which opened at its new address during Freud’s stay.9

In addition to such well-known analysts as Ernst Simmel,Sándor Radó, Franz Alexander, Max Eitingon, and HaraldSchultz-Hencke, one finds others who have received less atten-tion, including Moshe Wulff and Erich Kraft.


A trip to Paris supplied footage of a family meal in MarieBonaparte’s garden and gave Lehrman the opportunity to visitthe clinic in Sainte-Anne. Thus the first French analysts areshown with representatives of diverse other disciplines. GeorgesDumas and Georges Parcheminey appear as a harmoniouspair, although the former, as an adherent of Pierre Janet, madefun of the psychoanalytic conception of sexuality and itsallegedly German character. The second led the psychoana-lytic ward of Sainte-Anne Clinic and was working on a psycho-analytically based psychosomatic theory. Among these heterog-enous group shots from Paris, one also finds a prolonged focuson the physician and amateur ethnologist Gustave Le Bon, ofwhom Marie Bonaparte was an admirer and student. Le Bon,over ninety years old, demonstratively holds Psychologie desfoules up to the camera for several seconds to make clear thatFreud’s mass psychology took his theories as a point ofdeparture.

The longest segment of the first part is devoted tomembers of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society. The icy coldof the 1928/29 winter forced Lehrman to shoot a number ofindoor scenes despite the poor lighting conditions. RobertWälder, Paul Federn, and Adolf J. Storfer are shown in theoffices of the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, con-centrating on a book or busily talking on the phone—scenesthat were set up for the film to give the impression of a bit of“action,” as Lehrman stresses in his commentary. Isidor Sadgeralso appeared at the Verlag, allowing himself to be immortal-ized as one its oldest members. The footage that shows himmost likely provides the only surviving pictures of this analystand psychiatrist, who was killed in 1942 in the Theresienstadtconcentration camp.

It is not always Lehrman who guides the viewer’s gaze.Sometimes the camera playfully passes from the filmer to thefilmed. At one point Wilhelm Reich films Lehrman; at anotherAnna Freud attempts with a shaky hand to get her father intoview, with little success. In addition to the family and both ofFreud’s sisters, Paula Winternitz and Rosa Graf, Lehrmanfilmed almost all of the Viennese psychoanalysts during thosewinter months. A group shot, which futilely attempts to holdtogether the numerous analysts in front of St. Stephen’s

45Lydia Marinelli

Cathedral, turns out to be a highpoint of the Austrian scenes:“Federn, Hitschmann, Jokl, Richard Sterba, Federn,Hitschmann . . . “ can be heard off-camera. The figures walk offthe screen only suddenly to come back on again although itwas already another’s turn, costing the commentator, who hadnot reckoned with such an unruly mob, quite a bit of effort tokeep them all straight.

The shorter second part of the film is compiled frommaterial shot in New York in the forties and has commentaryby Lynne Lehrman Weiner. A shift from black-and-white tocolor corresponds with the change of setting from Europe tothe U.S.A., an odyssey that many of the persons shown hadthemselves undergone in the course of fleeing National Social-ism. On the screen, American analysts ride on horsebackthrough Central Park. In the case of Sidney Klein, LehrmanWeiner cannot resist cracking a joke: “Freud, who had a greatwit, perhaps might have commented that Klein’s frequentequestrian display of masculine dominance could have beencompensation for the meaning of Klein in German.” The filmconcludes with images from Brill’s birthday party in 1947,where Lehrman attempts to recreate a shot that he had takenin Vienna with Freud. It is quite apparent that Brill likedposing in front of the camera more than his predecessor.Because Freud had only ventured halfway into the sunlight inthe corresponding Semmering shot, he remains a shadowyoutline, while Brill eagerly positions himself in the blazing sun.

Analysts of Film on Film

After this last scene with Brill, which despite being anhomage to Freud seems also to compensate for his unwilling-ness to expose himself to the camera, the question ariseswhether the film simply juxtaposed people who happened tobe practitioners of the psychoanalytic profession. To deter-mine whether—and, if so, how—Lehrman disclosed a newfacet to the affinity between cinema and psychoanalysis, pa-rameters must be established to measure their association.Since I cannot discuss these interrelationships in detail here, Iwill limit myself to presenting four points of view associated


with analysts actually captured by Lehrman on celluloid whoembody both the theoretical and practical involvement oftheir era with film. On the one hand, the four positionsexemplified by the individual psychoanalysts serve as an exter-nal point of orientation for Lehrman’s work. On the otherhand, a focus on the analysts captured in the film brings tolight associations that have gone unnoticed in the relevantliterature.

Not all younger analysts shared Freud’s aversion to thefilm world. Several of them are known to have visited cinemasin their leisure time, although this private indulgence neverfound its way into their public statements.10 They shared theattitude of the casual moviegoer who with pleasure gives in tothe power of the medium but abstains from exacting criticalobservation. Franz Alexander, whom Lehrman met in Berlin,can be numbered among these amateurs. As a fan of Chaplin’sfilms, he seized the opportunity to get to know the actor anddirector personally in the United States. At an intimate dinnerin Chicago in 1936, he attempted to obtain Chaplin’s explana-tion regarding his immortal figure of the tramp, without,however, passing on the results to anyone at a later date.11

What characterizes Alexander’s approach, and is carriedover by many other analytic moviegoers, is the preferencegiven to the actor instead of the role acted. In this biographicalreading, film characters derive from the same motivations thatimpel actors in their personal experiences. Neither the specialnature of the medium nor the technique of acting forms thepoint of departure for this mode of analytic inquiry, whichemploys paradigms derived from pathography. Although theregressions that cinema encourages in the viewer are at theforefront of later psychoanalytic film theory, the first analyststhemselves often fell prey to a form of theoretical regressionthat denied them access to the full range of their ownmethodological possibilities. At the beginning of Lehrman’sfilm, the request is heard in the background that the audiencestop smoking for a short period so that the images can be seenmore clearly. On a metaphorical level, the early analysts didnot heed this advice. Although they had euphorically exploredother cultural forms (such as literature and the visual arts)since the inception of the Wednesday Society meetings, their

47Lydia Marinelli

relation to cinema vacillated, like that of the smoker tocigarettes, between attraction and repulsion. Only much laterdid the plumes begin to disperse and cinema, with all of itspeculiarities, become visible in psychoanalytic work.

One of the first to discover film as a medium to beanalyzed in its own right was Hanns Sachs, in whose wake therefollowed a multitude of psychoanalytic interpretations. Hisendeavors inaugurate the second stage in the relations be-tween psychoanalysis and film. At exactly the same time asLehrman filmed Sachs in Berlin, Sachs was composing theshort text “On the Psychology of Film” (1929). On the basis ofworks by Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Lubitsch, he adopts aperspective that differentiates him from many of his succes-sors. To be sure, Sachs does undertake symbolic interpreta-tions, but at several points he displays a sensitivity to cinemato-graphic aspects in a narrower sense. In contrast to most otheranalysts, who concentrate on characters and dramatic motifs,Sachs turns his attention to the dialectic of form and contentin film. He devotes himself to specific expressive techniques bypursuing the question of how the psychological phenomenonof tension can arise in this medium. He correlates Eisenstein’smontage principles and seemingly meaningless gestures thatescape awareness, thereby coupling the development of silentfilm with the theory of parapraxis. The head movement of thesentry sent to the firing squad in Battleship Potemkin (1925),which for a short moment lingers seemingly free of context,becomes for Sachs a cinematic gesture that escapes conscious-ness and toys with casualness. The parallel succeeds becausethe image is on the screen for an interval too short to beperceived consciously (Sachs 1929, 123).12

René Allendy, whom Lehrman filmed in Paris, was alsoamong the first analysts to take into consideration the specialnature of film. He was in contact with Eisenstein and investi-gated (1927) the emotional effect of film images. Allendycontrasted real images with those symbolically interpreted inmovies in order to derive points of correspondence withunconscious process. Following Bergson’s linking of opticalimages with memory, he conceptualizes cinematic images asrecollected phenomena that call forth unconscious states (75–103). Thus film has specific effects at its disposal that are to be


related less to logical and waking than to regressive forms ofthought. Allendy’s orientation toward the viewer and his or herstructures of consciousness anticipates a line of thinking thatdid not reappear in psychoanalytic film theory until it wastaken up by Christian Metz (1977) and Jean-Louis Baudry(1978).

A third, rather eccentric, meeting between psychoanalysisand cinema manifests itself in the form of the analyst as actor.It probably comes as no surprise that excursions into thethespian art are not among psychoanalysts’ most frequentmodes of involvement with film, and perhaps this is not to beregretted. Thus it is all the more worth mentioning one of therare instances of an analyst who was also an actor. AdrienBorel, whom Lehrman filmed in Paris in 1928, was a psychia-trist and founding member of the Société Psychanalytique deParis, and his reputation primarily unfolded in the world ofartists and intellectuals. His analysis of Michel Leiris andGeorges Bataille had a major impact on their writing, as bothof them later noted.13 Borel’s artistic contacts also landed hima role in a film that seemed to be tailor-made for him. In TheDiary of a Country Priest (1951), Robert Bresson cast almost allof the supporting roles with amateur actors. In a story thatcenters on the inner drama of a dying young priest, Borelunder the pseudonym of André Guibert played an older priest.Bresson liked the results and decided to realize his futureprojects primarily with amateur actors. Whether he ever putother psychoanalysts in front of the camera has not yet beeninvestigated.

The fourth and rather controversial link is found in thephenomenon of the psychoanalytic scriptwriter. A number ofarticles have investigated Sachs’s work on G. W. Pabst’s Secrets ofthe Soul (1925–26) and Siegfried Bernfeld’s attempt to create acinematic alternative to this commercial project.14 Lehrman’sfilm presents these two analysts as harmonious coworkers atthe Berlin Institute. The task of scriptwriting raised the diffi-cult question of whether psychoanalysis could be representedon the screen, and if so how. Whereas Sachs opted for aconventional feature-film plot that elucidated the method andfunctioning of psychoanalytic therapy and advanced teleologi-cally toward the cure of a patient, Bernfeld, in the context of a

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full-length film that incorporated the visual effects found inmore advanced contemporary cinema, used the medium re-flexively in a variety of ways in his design for a cinematicdepiction of Freudian psychoanalysis.15 A remarkable trait ofhis draft script, which was never realized, is that it attempts toreveal the congruence between film technology and the func-tioning of the Freudian psyche. Film actors appear in his scriptexplicitly as film actors; characteristic elements from otherfilms such as Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)are integrated; themes from Cowboy-and-Indian films popu-late the dream-images. In one scene, the cinematographicapparatus itself in the form of a projector throws images fromthe external world onto the ceiling of the interior of a spatialconstruction corresponding to the scene of psychic events.Bernfeld develops a logic of the “film in the psyche” byincorporating reflections of the technical parameters similarto those used in feature films from the period. The projectorserves as a metaphor for psychic processes and at the sametime produces images that reappear as the day-residues indreams. Compared with the depiction of the psychoanalyticcure in Secrets of the Soul, Bernfeld puts much more emphasison self-analytic methods.

Sounds and Symptoms

In view of these heretofore uncharted connections be-tween theory and practice in psychoanalytic film studies, onemight conclude that Lehrman has merely furnished posteritywith an archive whose value as an “analytic” project lags farbehind that of the more sophisticated positions presentedabove. From the standpoint of genre, the twofold meaning ofthe label “documentary film of psychoanalysis” now seems tohave opened an overly wide semantic field. Admittedly,Lehrman’s cinematographic presentation of psychoanalysts iscompiled from private footage; in other words, it is a film aboutpsychoanalysts. But does that make it a psychoanalytic film?Does it, beyond the profession of those shown, succeed inbringing us closer to psychoanalysis as such through its use ofthe cinematic medium?


A first answer that suggests itself is that the psychoanalyticstudy of family relationships resulted in an institutional struc-ture that likewise had the characteristics of a family. From thisperspective, the history of psychoanalysis becomes a furtherexample of the oedipal model presented by Freud in Totem andTaboo. Since Lehrman’s film, in the style of a home movie,depicts images of a familial group, this could on the surface beenough to claim that it allegorically captures those harmoni-ous moments from which the violent mythos emanates. Theallure of this scenario derives from the correspondence ofwhat seems today to be its technical deficiencies and itshistorical distance. The amateurish nature of the images, withtheir jarring cuts and sudden changes of lighting, evokes asense of history because film itself is disclosing its own child-hood as a technical medium. But viewed more closely, aspectsof both the form and content of the film contradict the imageof a purely familial movie. Although I have primarily consid-ered the visual level of the material, it is the second formallevel—that of sound—that goes against the grain of familydocuments and adds undertones that divert the images fromtheir course.

When Lehrman obtained his hand-held camera, synchro-nized sound lay far in the future for amateur filmmakers. Untilthe 1950s, documentaries were forced to make do with differ-ent forms of audio accompaniment from feature films. Com-mentary from off-camera, the successor to musical accompani-ment, was the only possible means of organizing the imagesacoustically (Kemner and Eisert 2000). As I have stated,Lehrman screened the first short version of his film for theAmerican Psychoanalytic Association as a silent documentary,but he commented on the images live through a microphone.His daughter took the tape made on this occasion as the pointof departure for her soundtrack, to which she added her owncommentary on individuals her father had been unable toidentify. But the soundtrack includes more than the father’sand daughter’s voices. In the background one can hear thereactions of the audience. Laughter, applause, and called-outnames accompany the commentary and images. At one pointthe projectionist requests that the audience refrain fromsmoking. In this way there is an involuntary kaleidoscopic

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fracturing of the realistic conventions usually followed inprivately made documentaries. The demand that the mediumefface all signs of the technical means of production in favor ofwhat is being depicted is one of the expectations laid down forthe “realistic” feature film, as well as for the cinéma véritédocumentary (Colleyn 1993). Lehrman’s film does not go afterthis mode of immediate reality. Instead, the polyphony ofunseen voices breaks the frame of referentiality at multiplepoints.

Without overdoing the father-daughter relationship, Iwould say that the effect produced by the interplay of the twocommentators is to destabilize the localization of the narrative.One voice describes in short sentences the appearance of thesubjects, but the sound track takes a contrapuntal turn throughthe second, overlaid voice. What occurs when one speaker isinterrupted by a second goes beyond the addition of supple-mentary factual knowledge. This doubling causes the com-mentary to lose its narrative authority as such. Gaps becomeapparent that would be glossed over by the continuous narra-tion of only one commentator.

The most unusual audio component is the babble ofaudience voices. Thus the film not only represents a visual, andlater aural, record of analysts; it also uniquely undertakes toreproduce its own screening. Just as the voice of Philip R.Lehrman is interrupted by that of his daughter, the compositenarrative voice is accompanied by a further multiplication ofvoices that can be heard in the room where the film is beingshown. In the style of sitcoms and other TV shows, the reactionof the audience (in this case also comprised of analysts)accompanies the images, constructing a reference to a second-ary screen that is not seen but heard. This gives the film itsformal ambiguity. Today’s viewer is confronted by an invisibleDoppelgänger, which, as its reactions demonstrate, has a strongaffective bond to what is being shown. Many of the peoplefilmed, who in the meantime had emigrated from Europe(such as Richard and Editha Sterba or Jenny Wälder), weresitting in the audience during the sound recording andreceived a round of applause; one of the loudest was for FranzAlexander, who in his pinstriped suit reminds one of a Chicagomovie gangster. The reactions also become an indicator for the


diverging theoretical and institutional positions that aresmoothed over by the film’s family-like visual surface. Thelaughter is stifled in an instant when Wilhelm Reich, who atthe time of the screening was behind bars in a Maine prison,appears on the screen. An indecipherable murmuring iselicited by René Laforgue. He, as several of the people in theroom well knew, had sought to cooperate with Mathias H.Göring. Through this seismographic monitoring of the audi-ence, an image-for-image record of their reaction is createdthat turns the film into a sort of multiple exposure.

While the commentator’s voice-over provides the pictureswith an explanation, this narrative is punctuated by the moreor less amused reaction of a public that is both internal andexternal. This aural self-referentiality can be added to thoseforms of mise en abîme that Marc Vernet (1980, 230) hasexplored on the visual level. Vernet describes how, bothtechnically through the use of projection mechanisms andmaterially in the play of shadows, the cinematography offeature films often creates an inner abyss (abîme) through itsown duplication. The multiple framing of images is a well-known device in nineteenth-century painting, and Vernetshows that in film the result is to remove the boundary of thescreen, causing the image to seem to free itself and to becomean object in its own right. The technical procedures of cinemathemselves become apparent at the visual level. Lehrmansteers this process away from the means of production andtoward the effects of cinema through the acoustic doubling ofthe audience. Thus the abyss opens not only on the screen, astheory oriented toward feature films proposes, but also in thescreening room. Beyond the presence of the camera’s eye, theviewer himself is put into a doubled body.

Through this shift from a self-referentiality of techniqueto one of effect, one can discern a connection to the psycho-analytic reflections on cinema in a narrower sense. Theorientation of reflexivity toward the viewer links Lehrman’sfilm with both Bernfeld’s script and the work of Sachs andAllendy. For Sachs it is the moviegoer’s ways of seeing that aresubverted by the cutting techniques used in films such asEisenstein’s. Sachs makes a case for extending the symptomologydescribed by Freud in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which

53Lydia Marinelli

borrows from criminolology, to the phenomenon of cinematictension because film has for its part borrowed techniques fromliterary or scientific criminolology that play with the receiver’sthreshold of perception. Thus the cutting techniques used infilm create psychic conditions in the viewer that operate atleast partially within the framework of regression as describedby psychoanalysis. Allendy too recognizes the role of regres-sion by aligning cinematic images, alongside dream-images,with the Freudian category of primary-process thinking. Thisexplains the enjoyment that cinematic images produce in theviewer. Although Allendy conceptualizes cinema as offering ahallucinatory wish-fulfillment without distinguishing it moreprecisely from dream states, Bernfeld develops a second line ofpsychoanalytic thinking, which has too long remained in theshadows, that acknowledges cinema to have other capacitiesbeyond stimulating regression. His script, in a way similar toLehrman’s film, directly incorporates the technical apparatus,but Bernfeld’s integration of an analytically inspired projectand cinematography arises under different auspices fromLehrman’s.

Lehrman excuses himself at the beginning of his film forits amateurish nature and delivers an unusual justification forthe genesis of the images: “This picture is the result of mywork, my analysis with Freud, who at that time took my need totake pictures of him as a symptom.” Parts of the film came intobeing in tandem with the director’s analysis with Freud and arenot to be seen as just a leisure-time diversion, but as directlylinked to the analysis. The interplay of the camera and his ownanalysis, which Lehrman took as the point of departure for hisfilm, most clearly differentiates his work from the aforemen-tioned documentary of Freud by Anna Freud. It brings intoplay the potentials of cinematography that Bernfeld alsoattempted to incorporate into his script by drawing parallelsbetween cinematic and analytic processes of knowledge. Thesynchronization of Lehrman’s own analysis and the film’simages took an unexpected course. His analysis took place inthe months between the shooting of the first footage andFreud’s appearance before the camera. He attempted toshorten the period of waiting with the camera, but then thecamera took on a new role with the beginning of the analysis.


He primarily brought his camera along to Europe because hewanted to capture Freud on film, though Freud repeatedlyresisted this wish. He was not in Vienna when Lehrmanarrived, and in Berlin he could not be persuaded by hispursuer to appear on camera. To the contrary, Lehrman’shabit of constantly hounding psychoanalysts with his Bell andHoward seemed to strengthen Freud’s reservations towardAmericans, and he complained to Brill about the new pa-tient.16

If one takes Lehrman at his word, Freud’s appearancebefore the camera required as many analytic sessions as thenumber of rolls of film the camera consumed. One no longerknows whether filming served the analysis or vice versa. Afurther difficulty delayed the beginning of the analysis. Al-though Lehrman underwent analytic treatment in order tofurther his professional training, Freud operated under theassumption that his analysand would have to develop a “trans-ference neurosis” so that he could proceed with the treatment.At first Lehrman was not able to produce such a “transferenceneurosis,” but a solution was nonetheless found. Among thesymptoms through which a transference neurosis manifestsitself are various forms of compulsion, and because no othertransference neurosis could be established, the compulsive-ness with which Lehrman uninterruptedly filmed others as asubstitute for his desire to film Freud was made into the pointof departure of his analysis: “Freud took my need to takepictures of him as a symptom.” A symptom around whichtreatment could be started was thus found, but Freud did notwant to appear before the camera until the desire to film himhad been thoroughly analyzed. Since during the work ofanalysis one thing always relates to another, Lehrman contin-ued to film Freud’s colleagues while he did his analysis andawaited Freud’s consent to be filmed.

The mere acting out of a compulsion did not conform toFreud’s conception of a cure. In the film Lehrman severaltimes jokingly states that he was expected to behave accordingto the principle of Versagung. In mentioning “frustration,”Lehrman alludes to the meaning that Freud gives to symptomformation during the analysis. Freud (1919, 162–64) observedthat in the course of their treatment patients find substitutes

55Lydia Marinelli

for their symptoms by giving a great deal of attention toeveryday actions, thus diverting the cure from its path. Theanalyst must take energetic action against the obstruction thatthis premature substitute formation can represent. Obsessivefilming during the analysis would have been considered one ofthese substitute symptoms. Freud’s appearance on the screenserves as a seal of success in having found the wish underlyingthe symptomatic action of filming and thereby reached theend of the frustration: “Finally, when the Professor especiallythought that we have enough extracted out from this experi-ence, he did permit me to take some pictures of him,”comments Lehrman on this breakthrough. The question ofwhat knowledge it may have been that illuminated his compul-sion is left open. It is also impossible to ascertain if Freud wassatisfied with the result of Lehrman’s obsession, but he wassatisfied with the result of the analysis.17

The last images, which show Brill and other Americananalysts in the 1940s, many years after Lehrman’s analysis,reassure the viewer that although a clarification was found forthe compulsion to film, Lehrman nonetheless continued tofind enjoyment in his avocation. The whole film thus takes onthe quality of an overdetermined symptomatic act, whosedramaturgic staging derives from a threefold self-referentiality.As a viewer, one is confronted with a Doppelgänger that cuts theillusory floor from under one’s feet, while the director appearsboth as a commentator who is doubled by a second voice andas an analysand, from whose perspective the film seems to be arelatively unimportant byproduct. The observer must give upall hope of uncovering the causes of the compulsion to film.

It was precisely the reflexive implementation of the me-dium that caused the first psychoanalytic film theories toretreat into new formulations. Ironically, this is the back-ground from which Lehrman’s film programmatically distin-guishes itself. At the center of the first psychoanalytic specula-tions stood either the beguilement of the viewer in the face ofcinematic representation or the ensuing regression that over-comes the viewer in the darkened movie theater. Motionpictures were held to elicit enjoyment because they skillfullyexposed the viewer to a consciously accepted act of illusorydeception. However, the “suspension of disbelief” can only be


systematically applied to films that demand such a pact fromthe viewer. Thus the principles by which cinema yields plea-sure were primarily developed to account for feature-filmgenres, while documentaries for the most part remainedoutside the scope of psychoanalytic film theory. Accordingly,films that contributed to various forms of disillusionmentshould not have been able to find an audience because theydid not make use of the mechanisms of regression and,according to a rigorous application of the theory, should onlyhave been able to produce displeasure. Hence it remains anopen question why a documentary film such as Lehrman’s canprovide so much enjoyment to its viewers.

Sigmund Freud FoundationBerggasse 191090 Vienna

[email protected]

Translated by Christopher Barber

Notes1. Stekel’s 1926 text, “On the History of the Analytic Movement,” includes his 1903

piece in the Prager Tageblatt.2. Recent discussions of psychoanalytic literature on the feature film can be found

in Marcus (2001) and Bergstrom (1999). On the figure of the psychoanalyst infeature films, see Gabbard and Gabbard (1987).

3. All quotations from Freud’s letters to Lehrman are taken from manuscripts inthe Freud Collection, Library of Congress, Washington. There are sixteenletters from Freud to Lehrman, written originally in English, in which, however,the film is never mentioned.

4. In an interview with the New York Times, Lynne Lehrman Weiner reported onthe Freud Archives’ denial of access to the film: “Dad and I had done a 20-minute version. I later learned they were supposed to be locked until 2057. Icalled Dr. Kurt Eissler, the former director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, andsaid: ‘You know what will happen in 2057. You are going to find nothing butdust in that vault. The films will be dust’” (Green 2000, 3). Following herintervention, the copy was released in the late 1980s.

5. According to Young-Bruehl, Anna Freud believed that the problem would solveitself since the film was destined to be forgotten due to its “artistic heavy-handedness” (1988, 358). One may doubt whether this attempt to end ascientific-political conflict with an aesthetic judgement has proven successful.

6. This statement is based on a personal communication from Lynne LehrmanWeiner.

7. Copies of the film are currently kept in the Lehrman Weiner Archive (NewYork), the Freud Collection of the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), theFreud Museum (London), and the Sigmund Freud Museum (Vienna).

57Lydia Marinelli

8. Because the film is not available through official lending institutions and copiesare held by only a few archives, I shall describe its content.

9. In addition to the Vienna Opera, several other buildings and monuments alsoled to confusion, but Lehrman Weiner, perceiving her father’s version as ahistorical document, decided against making corrections.

10. Among the earliest moviegoers was Otto Rank, who in his study “The Double”(1914) discusses the connection between dreams and cinematic technique withreference to the example of films by Hans Heinz Ewers. Rank, whose concep-tions had by 1929 become far removed from Freud’s, naturally does not appearin Lehrman’s film.

11. Otto Fenichel, who also can be counted among these moviegoers, cites thereport of this episode from the newsletter of the Chicago Institute in his circularletter of November 30, 1936: “Unfortunately, Dr. Alexander refuses to revealmore details” (Mühlleitner and Reichmayr 1998, 509).

12. For today’s viewer, who is used to rapid cuts, this scene does not seem to benearly as short as Sachs describes it. Rather than limiting the validity of histheory, this attests to what degree cinematic technique and audience expecta-tions have changed since the 1920s.

13. For more biographical details on Borel, see Roudinesco (1986, 358–60), Surya(1992), and Leiris (1992).

14. Discussion has primarily focused on the effects of these efforts on institutionalpolitics. See Eppensteiner, Fallend, and Reichmayr (1987); Ries (1995; 2000). Arather unsystematic cross-section of the psychoanalytic reception of film,starting with Pabst, is offered by Lacoste (1990).

15. Bernfeld wrote two scripts, both dated 1925. The shorter one, “Three Worlds inOne Room—Childhood Variations on an Adult Theme: The Idea of a Film withPsychoanalytic Perspectives,” develops a scenario that remains a sketch, and hasbeen published by Fallend and Reichmayr (1992, 153–56). Bernfeld’s second,much more developed outline for a script, to which I here make reference,Outline for the Cinematic Depiction of Freudian Psychoanalysis in the Framework of aFull-length Feature Film, was published by Eppensteiner and Sierek (2000, 37–98).

16. In an unpublished letter, Freud wrote to Brill on July 11, 1928: “Maybe I wouldnot have taken him if you had informed me sooner” (Freud Collection, Libraryof Congress, Washington, D.C.).

17. Lehrman succeeded in diminishing Freud’s prejudices against Americans, asevidenced by a January 1, 1929 letter to Brill: “Lehrman has turned out to be apleasant surprise for me. Even after your reports, I hadn’t expected very muchfrom him, but I find that he is of a better substance than most of the AmericansI have met” (Freud Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.).

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of the Image]. In L’art cinématographique [The Cinematographic Art]. Ed. PierreD. Mac Orlan, André Beugler, Charles Dullin, and René Allendy. Paris: LibraireFélix Alcan, pp. 75–103.

Baudry, Jean-Louis. 1978. L’effet cinéma [The Cinema Effect]. Paris: Éditions Albatros.Bergstrom, Janet, ed. 1999. Endless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories.

Berkeley: University of California Press.Colleyn, Jean-Paul. 1993. Le regard documentaire [The Documentary Gaze]. Paris:

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Case of Professor M.: Psychoanalysis on Screen]. Paris: Gallimard.Leiris, Michel. 1992. Journal—1922–1989 [Diary—1922–1989]. Ed. Jean Jamin. Paris:

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and History, 1:51–68.Metz, Christian. 1977. Le signifiant imaginaire: psychanalyse et cinéma [The Imaginary

Signifier: Psychoanalysis and Cinema]. Paris: Union Génerale d’Éditions.Rank, Otto. 1914. Der Doppelgänger [The Double]. Imago: A Journal for the Applica-

tion of Psychoanalysis to the Human Sciences, 3:97–164.Ries, Paul. 1995. Popularise and/or Be Damned: Psychoanalysis and Film at the

Crossroads in 1925. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76:759–91.———. 2000. Film und Psychoanalyse in Berlin und Wien 1925 [Film and Psycho-

analysis in Berlin and Vienna, 1925]. In Eppensteiner and Sierek 2000, pp. 171–97.Roudinesco, Elisabeth. 1986. Histoire de la psychanalyse en France [The History of

Psychoanalysis in France]. Vol. 1. Paris: Seuil.Sachs, Hanns. 1929. Zur Psychologie des Films [On the Psychology of Film. Die

Psychoanalytische Bewegung [The Psychoanalytic Movement], 1:122–26.Stekel, Wilhelm. 1926. Zur Geschichte der analytischen Bewegung [On the History

of the Analytic Movement]. Fortschritte der Sexualwissenschaft und Psychoanalyse[Advances in Sexology and Psychoanalysis], 2:539–75.

Surya, Michel. 1992. Georges Batailles: La mort à l’œuvre [George Bataille: Death to theWork]. Paris: Gallimard.

Vernet, Marc. 1980. Clignotements du noir-et-blanc [Flickerings in Black andWhite]. In Théorie du film [Theory of Film]. Ed. J. Aumont and J. Leutrat. Paris:Albatros, pp. 222–33.

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