SILENT-MOVIE18 of 36
A silent film about the talking cure which tells the story of the outbreak, psychoanalytic treatment, and cure of a knife phobia in a man, who has been living for some years in a happy but childless marriage. A murder next door and the return of his wife's cousin from abroad release in him a desire to murder his wife, which he does in a nightmare, but which a sudden inability to touch knives of any kind prevents him from carrying out in reality. Distressed to the point of suicide, he flees to his mother's house where he remembers a psychoanalyst, who had previously recognized his state of mind, and whose help he now seeks. During months of treatment, telescoped into three sessions of intense dream interpretation, the analyst takes the analysand through the presenting problem back to the original childhood trauma and forward into health via a cathartic abreaction as unconscious processes are made conscious.