Have you ever wondered what would happen if you suppressed your sadistic or masochistic tendencies? Did you ever question whether you were crazy for being into BDSM? Or did the existence of psychiatric diagnoses of sadism and masochism make you pause about your own sexual desires? Then maybe you should watch A Dangerous Method. Now, I don’t generally use the word maybe. Kinkstarter, after all, is a blog dedicated to recommending films, books and web shops. However, A Dangerous Method is a tricky film.
As this movie stars Viggo Mortensen, Keira Knightly and Michael Fassbender, I’m sure you have heard of it. It’s poster proudly boasts that it explores the relationship between Freud, Jung and one of their patients “who came between them.” As usual, the slogan doesn’t really fit. But indeed this movie centers on the two most famous psychoanalysts of all time. And the patient mentioned, just happens to suffer from sexual masochism. Now, if that doesn’t set the scene for an interesting BDSM plot, I don’t know what does.
The plot of A Dangerous Method
When Jung first encounters Sabine, she is dragged to his hospital because she has hysterical fits. After some “experimental” talking sessions with dr. Jung, a method developed by Dr. Freud, she professes that that her hysteria is caused by her masochistic tendencies. She tells us that she used to be hit by her father and after a spanking was required to kiss his hand. From her first memory of a spanking on, she always got “excited” when she felt pain or humiliation. Yep, that’s a masochist if I ever saw one. Luckily, the good doctor is able to heal her to such an extent that Sabine can enroll in medical school.
Interestingly, it is not the masochism, but rather the hysteria that she overcomes. What’s more, when Sabine and Karl Jung start an affair (really, I’m not spoiling here, this you see coming from their very first scene together) he doesn’t seem to think that indulging her masochistic desires is wrong. In fact, he seems to struggle much more with another patient’s polygamist views than he does with her masochism. I guess that’s a point for the BDSM-enthusiasts?
Working out the Kinks
What makes this portrayal of masochism interesting to me, is exactly that positivity. Similar to what we saw in Secretary, the psychologically damaged protagonist doesn’t need to overcome her masochism to find her strength. Rather, it is because of a sadomasochistic relationship that she finds freedom. Which is all pretty neat, huh? Now, when it comes to Jung’s and Sabina’s “sadomasochistic” relationship, a lot of questions remain unanswered. Does dear Karl enjoy hurting his willing masochist? And does it trouble him, intellectually? Can Sabina orgasm without the experience of pain? One blogger argued that this is a portrayal of healing trauma through BDSM. But if she always experienced her father’s spankings as pleasurable, is there any trauma to speak of? All these questions are worthy of lengthy discussions.
Now, the reason I’m not sure I would recommend this movie to everyone, is because there’s a whole lot of assumptions about BDSM, such as the aforementioned “trauma” aspect, that are present in the movie and part of the long history of misrepresentation. Though again masochism here is not presented as a disease, the person experiencing it is deeply troubled and flawed. Again, his seems to reinforce the idea that BDSM is fine, for people who are outside the norm anyway. When you’re crazy, it only makes sense that you are into some crazy sexual stuff. I think that what we need instead, are more highly successful and “normal” (can I use quadriple quotation marks?) BDSM-enthusiasts represented in media. Then again, any movie that tells us not to suppress our kinky desires because THAT will be the thing to drive us crazy, is a movie I’ll want to discuss on this blog.
In Conclusion
Do not watch this movie if you want to watch hot BDSM scenes. It does contain some light bondage and spanking, but that’s about it. If, however, you want to watch something thought-provoking that doesn’t paint masochism in a negative light, A Dangerous Method might be the film for you. And anyone interested in psychoanalysis, psychology and the relationship between Freud and Jung: expect a brief, but entertaining, introduction. After all, this is a feature film, not a dissertation.
95 thoughts on “A Dangerous Method: the cautionary tale”