A young woman called Emma Eckstein visited Sigmund Freud early in his career, looking for help with a phobia about shopping. As she also suffered from frequent nosebleeds, the as-yet unknown Viennese nerve specialist referred her to his closest friend, a surgeon who believed that a woman’s nose held the key to unlocking her sexual and psychological personality. A series of botched operations followed, and while Freud supported his colleague in public, in private he was disturbed by seemingly related dreams of his patient. These dreams led Freud on a journey of self-discovery to develop his theories of how the mind works. Using dramatisation, excerpts from Freud’s own letters and modern analysis, this film tells the story of one of Freud’s earliest cases, one he might perhaps have preferred to forget?
A young woman called Emma Eckstein visited Sigmund Freud early in his career, looking for help with a phobia about shopping. As she also suffered from frequent nosebleeds, the as-yet unknown Viennese nerve specialist referred her to his closest friend, a surgeon who believed that a woman’s nose held the key to unlocking her sexual and psychological personality. A series of botched operations followed, and while Freud supported his colleague in public, in private he was disturbed by seemingly related dreams of his patient. These dreams led Freud on a journey of self-discovery to develop his theories of how the mind works. Using dramatisation, excerpts from Freud’s own letters and modern analysis, this film tells the story of one of Freud’s earliest cases, one he might perhaps have preferred to forget?
