My thanks to David Archard, for providing me with helpful bibliographical information at the start of my research, to Jeffrey Richards and Jill Morawski for reading and commenting on an earlier draft, and to the anonymous referees who made suggestions for improvements.

¹ ‘America’, Freud once joked, ‘is a mistake; a gigantic mistake, it is true, but none the less a mistake’ (see Jones, Ernest, Sigmund Freud: Life and Works, 3 vols, London, 1953–1957, II, p. 67Google Scholar). For other examples of Freud's distaste, see Jones, Ernest, Free Associations: Memoirs of a Psychoanalyst, New York, 1959, p. 190Google Scholar; Eastman, Max, Great Companions: Critical Memoirs of Some Famous Friends, London, 1959, p. 129Google Scholar (‘I don't hate America, I regret it!’); Bettelheim, Bruno, Freud and Man's Soul, New York, 1984, pp. 79–80Google Scholar; and Freud, Sigmund, Civilisation and its Discontents (tr. Riviére, Joan), London, 1975, p. 53.Google Scholar

² Jones, , op. cit. (1), III, pp. 121–122Google Scholar; see also Clark, Ronald W., Freud: The Man and his Cause, London, 1980, pp. 461–463.Google Scholar

³ That such portrayals did much to foster racist stereotypes on screen may be gathered from the interesting study by Kracauer, S., ‘National types as Hollywood presents them’ Public Opinion Quarterely, (1949), 13, pp. 53–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also in Rosenberg, D. and White, D.M. (eds), Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America, News York, 1957, pp. 257–277.Google Scholar

⁴ See Gabbard, Glen O. and Gabbard, Krin, ‘From Psycho to Dressed to Kill: the decline and fall of the psychiatrist in the movies’. Film/Psychology Review, (1980), IV, 2, pp. 157–166Google Scholar; and Gorgh-Yates, Kevin, ‘Private madness and public lunacy’, Films and Filming, 02 1972, pp. 27–30.Google Scholar

⁵ See Daily Express, 19.5.1949.Google Scholar

⁶ Sunday Times, 22.5.1949Google Scholar; Daily Express, 19.5.1949Google Scholar; Sunday Express, 22.5.1949Google Scholar; Daily Mail, 19.5.1949Google Scholar. The Sunday Pictorial headlined its feature, ‘Judge for Yourself: Should the Film be Withdrawn?’ (2.6.1949).Google Scholar

⁷ Manchester Guardian, 13.4.1949Google Scholar; see also Daily Herald, 29.3.1949Google Scholar and Sunday Chronicle, 22.5.1949.Google Scholar

⁸ Daily Graphic, 20.5.1949Google Scholar; Sunday Express, 16.1.1949Google Scholar; Sunday Pictorial, 22.5.1949.Google Scholar

⁹ See Time, 20.12.1948Google Scholar; and Spectator, 27.5.1949.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Robertson, James C., The British Board of Film Censors: Film Censorship in Britain, 1896–1950, London, 1985, p. 162Google Scholar (Jeffrey Richards kindly supplied me with this reference).

¹¹ For descriptions of the censored scenes, and the arguments regarding the deletions, see Daily Telegraph, 19.5.1949Google Scholar; Daily Herald, 13.4.1949Google Scholar; Daily Express, 13.4.1949Google Scholar; and Daily Worker, 21.5.1949.Google Scholar

¹² Daily Mail, 16.6.1949Google Scholar; see also Daily Express, 16.6.1949Google Scholar and Daily Telegraph, 16.6.1949.Google Scholar

¹³ For details, see Manvell, Roger, The Film and the Public, Harmondsworth, 1955, p. 217Google Scholar; Le Harivel, J.P., Focus on Films, London, 1952, pp. 17 and 63Google Scholar; and Mayer, J.P., British Cinemas and their Audiences, London, Dobson, 1949.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Seethe report in the Daily Mirror, 16.6.1949Google Scholar. Interestingly, the controversy surrounding the Snake Pit in Italy followed a report that during the screening of the film in Rome, a 50-year-old man ‘was carried screaming from the audience into the foyer, and held down by four attendants until he could be removed to an asylum’ (Sunday Pictorial, 24.11.1949Google Scholar). The Daily Mail reported that at a showing in Brussels, ‘nine people fled from the theatre’, while a Belgian nobleman in the audience commented, ‘I'm not sure how good [Snake Pit] is amid the tension of post-war Europe’ (Daily Mail, 26.2.1949).Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Daily Mail, 17.6.1949Google Scholar and News Chronicle, 20.6.1949.Google Scholar

¹⁶ See Daily Telegraph, 5.7.1949Google Scholar; Star, 8.7.1949Google Scholar; Manchester Guardian, 19.10.1949Google Scholar; Evening Standard, 29.7.1949Google Scholar; and Daily Telegraph, 21.7.1949.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Time, 20.12.1948.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See, for example, Daily Mail, 26.2.1949.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Time and Tide, 28.5.1949.Google Scholar

²⁰ See, for examples, the article in Daily Mail (9.6.1949)Google Scholar which concluded that there were no ‘snake pits’ in Britain, although it did note that the intelligence level of the British public was falling by ‘2 points each generation’. Ritchie Calder's article in New Statesman, to the effect that the conditions shown in the film were ‘quite uncharacteristic of British practice’, drew a sharp and anonymous rebuke from a practicing mental nurse in a subsequent issue (see New Statesman, 28.5.1949 and 25.6.1949).Google Scholar

²¹ See News Chronicle, 27.5.1949Google Scholar; the chairman of one hospital's management committee attacked Snake Pit loudly: ‘America's colony of synthetic-minded men and women have touched a new low. Having exhausted a seemingly endless theme of cowboys and Indians, gangsters and psychiatrists, Hollywood now exploits what is probably the most distressing of all human afflictions—mental disease.’

²² See Daily Worker, 22.2.1949.Google Scholar

²³ This information comes from an unpublished document by Harry Brand, Director of Publicity at 20th Century-Fox, ‘Vital Statistics on “The Snake Pit”’ (British Film Institute Archives, London). Litvak's strong support for Freudian theory is mentioned in Time, 20.12.1948.Google Scholar

²⁴ Reynolds News, 22.5.1949.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibid.Sunday Express, 22.5.1949Google Scholar; Star, 19.5.1949.Google Scholar

²⁶ Time, 20.12.1948Google Scholar; see also Observer, 22.5.1949.Google Scholar

²⁷ See Daily Worker, 21.5.1949Google Scholar and Manchester Guardian, 21.5.1949.Google Scholar

²⁸ See Hale, N.G., Freud and the Americans, New York, 1971Google Scholar; and Bettelheim, , op. cit. (1), p. 20.Google Scholar

²⁹ See Holland, Norman, ‘Psychiatry in pselluloid’, Atlantic, (1959), 203, pp. 105–107.Google Scholar

³⁰ See Huston, John, An Open Book, New York, 1980, p. 125Google Scholar. For additional detail, Benayoun, Robert's interview with Huston is useful, ‘Huston avant le deluge’, Positif, (1965), 70, pp. 1–28.Google Scholar

³¹ Huston, , op. cit. (30), p. 294.Google Scholar

³² Before he began writing the screenplay, Sartre immersed himself in psychoanalytic literature: ‘I not only re-read Freud's books but also consulted commentaries, cricitism and so forth.’ (‘Interview with Sartre, 1975’, in Schilpp, Paul A. (ed.), The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, La Salle, Illinois, 1981, p. 12Google Scholar.) It would be an interesting exercise to attempt to piece together Sartre's particular debts, as these are manifest in his screenplay, but this would take us beyond the immediate aims of this study. Some useful insights are offered in Aronson, Ronald, ‘The individualist social theory of Jean-Paul Sartre’, in Jones, Gareth Stedman et al. (ed.), Western Marxism: A Critical Reader, London, 1977, pp. 201–231Google Scholar; and Collins, Douglas, Sartre as Biographer, Cambridge, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³³ The above lines are based on Pontalis, J.B.' Preface to Sartre, Jean-Paul, The Freud Scenario (tr. Hoare, Q.), London, 1985Google Scholar. Little has been written on Sartre's screenplays, but useful beginnings include: Contat, Michel, ‘Sartre et le cinema’, Magazine Littéraire, (09 1975), 103– 104, pp. 57–58Google Scholar; Rybalka, Michel, ‘Sartre et le cinema’, L'Esprit Créateur, (1968), VIII, 4, pp. 284–292Google Scholar; and Contat, Michel and Rybalka, Michel, ‘Appendix on the cinema’, in The Writings of Sartre, 2 vols, Evanston, Illinois, 1974, I, pp. 601–612Google Scholar. Sartre's fascination with film, like Huston's, developed early (see Sartre, 's The Words (tr. Frechtman, B.), New York, 1964, pp. 122–123).Google Scholar

³⁴ In Question de la Méthode (1960)Google Scholar Sartre notes, ‘Valéry is a petit-bourgeois intellectual, no doubt about it. But not every petit-bourgeois intellectual is Valéry.’ [Search for a Method (tr. Barnes, Hazel), New York, 1968, p. 56Google Scholar]. An interesting light is shed on Sartre's intellectual development in the late fifties and early sixties by Green, Martin, ‘British Marxists and American Freudians’, in Bergonzi, Bernard, Innovations: Essays on Art and Ideas, London, 1968, pp. 158–184Google Scholar; Zenberg, Gerald N., The Existentialist Critique of Freud: The Crisis of Authority, Princeton, 1976Google Scholar; and Hunter, Paul B., ‘Sartre's existentialist humanism and Freud's existentialist naturalism’, Psychoanalytic Review, (1977), LXIV, 2, pp. 289–298.Google Scholar

³⁵ See, on Freud's inner sufferings during the late 1880s, Ellenberger, Henri F., The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychology, New York, 1970, pp. 455–450Google Scholar; idem‘La maladie créatrice’, Dialogue [Canadian Philosophical Review], (1964), III, pp. 25–41.Google Scholar

³⁶ Sartre, , op. cit. (33), p. xii.Google Scholar

³⁷ This may indeed be an insolubly contradictory notion, as one philosopher has suggested; see Sève, Lucien, Marxism and the Philosophy of Personality, London, 1975, p. 12.Google Scholar

³⁸ See Huston, , op. cit. (30), p. 294Google Scholar; and Bosworth, Patricia, Montgomery Clift: A Biography, New York/London, 1980, p. 362Google Scholar, for the estimates.

³⁹ Letter from Sartre, to de Beauvoir, Simone, 10 1959Google Scholar, in Lettres au Castor et à Quelques Autres, 2 vols, Paris, 1983, II, p. 361Google Scholar; Huston, , op. cit. (30), pp. 295–298.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Huston quoted in Bosworth, , op. cit. (38), p. 362.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Freud, Sigmund, Leonardo da Vinci: A Study in Psychosexuality (tr. Brill, A.A.), New York, 1947, p. 112Google Scholar. Freud emphasized that ‘this criticism holds quite generally and is not aimed at Leonardo's biographers in particular’ (ibid).

⁴² See, on this, Sartre's 1961 interview in Tynan, Kenneth's Right and Left, London, 1967, pp. 302–312.Google Scholar

⁴³ See Benayoun, , op. cit. (30), p. 18.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ See Masson, Jeffrey Mousseiff, Freud: The Assault on-Truth, London, 1984.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Quotations from Motion Picture Herald, 26.12.1961 (p. 721)Google Scholar; Hollywood Reporter, 13.12.1961Google Scholar; and Film Daily, 13.12.1962.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Films and Filming, 10 1963, p. 23.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ For this criticism, see Financial Times, 30.8.1963Google Scholar; Hollywood Reporter, 13.12.1962Google Scholar; Films in Review, 01 1963, 44Google Scholar; and Filmblätter, 6.7.1963 (p. 549)Google Scholar. Huston himself admitted that some scenes were weak in this respect: the opening shots of Freud with his mother were, he said, ‘reminiscent of the old biographical pictures’ [op. cit. (30), p. 305].

⁴⁸ See, on this, Hudson, Liam, ‘The Eureka syndrome’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 11.6.1982Google Scholar, and de Solla Price, Derek J., Science Since Babylon, New Haven, 1967, p. 47.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ See Freud, Sigmund, The Origins of Psycho-Analysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes, 1887–1902, London, 1954, p. 214CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anxieu, Didier, L'Auto-analysis: Son Role dans la Découverte de la Psychanalyse par Freud, sa Fonction en Psychanalyse, Paris, 1959, pp. 59–65Google Scholar; Natenberg, Maurice, The Case History of Sigmund Freud: A Psychobiography, Chicago, Regent House, 1955, pp. 117–147Google Scholar; Jones, , op. cit. (1), I, chapter XIV.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ See, on this, Sulloway, Frank J., Freud: Biologist of the Mind, London, 1980, p. 494Google Scholar; Jones, , op. cit. (1), I, pp. 360–361Google Scholar; Ellenberger, , op. cit. (35), pp. 783–786, 792–793.Google Scholar

⁵¹ See adverse comments in Times, 29.8.1963Google Scholar; Films and Filming, 10 1963, p. 22Google Scholar; the Sunday Times, dubbed Freud ‘a kind of Buddenbrooks for the under-fives’ (1.9.1963). To many reviewers, one of the drawbacks of the seriousness of the film was that this would unnecessarily restrict its audience, e.g., to the adult, educated and ‘discerning’ (see Daily Cinema, 28.9.1963Google Scholar; Kinematograph, 29.8.1963).Google Scholar

⁵² Simon, John, Private Screenings, New York, 1967, pp. 45–46.Google Scholar

⁵³ Sartre quoted in Variety, 1.11.1961Google Scholar. It should be noted that Sartre himself made inevitable recourse to compressed, slightly didactic statements in his script; see op. cit. (33; Freud Scenario), pp. 127, 169–170, 172, 234 and 358 for instances.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ The interview originally appeared in The Observer, in 1961Google Scholar; see Tynan, , op. cit. (42) (p. 306 for quotation).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ See, for examples, Evening Standard, 29.8.1963Google Scholar; Financial Times, 30.8.1963Google Scholar; Times, 28.12.1962Google Scholar; quotation from Sunday Telegraph, 1.9.1963Google Scholar. An interesting attempt to trace the detective–thriller theme in some Hollywood psychiatric films of the forties is Vernet, Marc's ‘Freud: effets spéciaux, mis en scène USA’, Communications, (1975), 23, pp. 223–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁶ Daily Worker, 31.9.1963Google Scholar; see also Time, 29.8.1963.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ The notion of Sherlock Holmes as archetypal scientist comes down to us with Holmes' own approval: see, for examples, A Study in Scarlet (chapter 2), The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, and The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier, in Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Complete Sherlock Holmes (ed. Symons, Arthur), Harmondsworth, 1981Google Scholar. That the idea lives on may be seen from Aicken, Frederick's The Nature of Science, London, 1984, p. 6Google Scholar; and Shepherd, Michael, Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Dr Freud, London, 1985.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ See Variety, 1.11.1961Google Scholar; Screen, 10.11.1961Google Scholar; Evening Standard, 22.3.1961.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ See Guardian, 28.8.1963.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Variety, 24.4.1963.Google Scholar

⁶¹ The lithograph is reproduced in Jones, , op. cit. (1), I, p. 228Google Scholar and described in Freud, Ernest, Freud, Lucie and Grubrich-Simitis, Isle (eds), Sigmund Freud: His Life in Pictures and Words, Harmondsworth, 1985, pp. 114–115Google Scholar. The comparison of Charcot's theatre with the filmset constructed for Huston is vividly made by a photographic feature in Sunday Times, 26.11.1961.Google Scholar

⁶² Ernest Jones saw Freud's credulity as a key element in his personality; see his Sigmund Freud, op. cit. (1), II, pp. 150–156, 477–479 for instances.Google Scholar

⁶³ Variety, 1.11.1961.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ For different readings, see Evening Standard, 29.8.1963Google Scholar; Positif, 264, 1983Google Scholar; and Sunday Telegraph, 1.6.1963.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ See Simon, , op. cit. (52), p. 45Google Scholar; Macdonald, D., ‘Freud’, Esquire, 06 1963, 87–88Google Scholar; and Spectator, 6.9.1963.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Time, 28.12.1962.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ See Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W., Dialectic of Enlightenment (tr. Cumming, John), London, 1973, p. 144.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Huston quoted in Daily Express, 7.12.1961.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ On the innovative techniques of photography used in Freud, see Hollywood Reporter, 19.12.1961.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ See Handel, L., Hollywood Looks at its Audience, Urbana, 1950Google Scholar; Mayer, J.P., British Cinemas and their Audiences, London, 1948Google Scholar; Klapper, J.T., The Effects of Mass Communication, New York, 1960Google Scholar; Fearing, F., ‘The influence of the movies on attitudes and behaviour’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, (1947), 254, pp. 70–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷¹ The term ‘reality effect’ is taken from an essay by the same name in Barthes, Roland, The Rustle of Language (tr. Howard, Richard), London, 1986, pp. 141–148.Google Scholar

⁷² See, for example, McCabe, Colin, Theoretical Essays: Film, Linguistics, Literature, Manchester, 1985Google Scholar, especially the essay, ‘Theory and film: principles of realism and pleasure’. For a very different account of realist techniques and their effect on cinema audiences, see Carroll, Noël, ‘The power of movies’, Daedalus, (Fall 1985) (Volume 114, number 4, of the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences), pp. 79–103.Google Scholar

⁷³ See Matthews, F.H., ‘The Americanization of Sigmund Freud’, Journal of American Studies, (1967), I, pp. 39–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roazen, Paul, Freud and his Followers, London, 1976, pp. 372–388Google Scholar; Hale, Nathan, ‘From Berggasse XIX to Central Park West: the Americanization of psychoanalysis, 1919–1940’, Journal for the History of the Behavioral Sciences, (1978), 14, pp. 299–3153.0.CO;2-C>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Freud, Sigmund, The Question of Lay Analysis, New York, 1950, pp. 78–79.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ The term comes from the American psychologist Ernest Hilgard, quoted in Mannoni, Octave, Freud: The Theory of the Unconscious, London, 1971, p. 182.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Milgram, Stanley, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, New York, 1974Google Scholar. The emphasis on the scientific nature of the authority being tested is brought out in Barnes, Barry, About Science, Oxford, 1985, pp. 72–89.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Nunnally, J.C., Popular Conceptions of Mental Health: Their Development and Change, New York, 1961Google Scholar. The survey research was carried out from 1954–1959.

⁷⁷ Additional relevant data appear in Nunnally, J.C., ‘The communication of mental health information: a comparison of the opinions of experts and the public with mass media presentation’, Behavioural Sciences, (1957), 2, pp. 222–230CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nunnally, and Kittross, J.M., ‘Public attitudes towards mental health’, American Psychologist, (1958), 13, pp. 589–594CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Taylor, W.L., ‘Gauging the mental health content of the mass media’. Journalism Quarterly, (1957), 34, pp. 191–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁸⁰ Reingold, Nathan, ‘MGM meets the atomic bomb’, Wilson Quarterly, (1984), VIII, 4, pp. 155–163Google Scholar; and ‘Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer meets the atom bomb’, in Shinn, Terry and Whitley, Richard (eds), Expository Science: Forms and Functions of Popularisation, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster, 1985, pp. 229–245 (quotation from earlier version, p. 157).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸¹ On this, see Shallis, Michael and Shortland, Michael, ‘Shooting Movies: film and education’, Oxford Magazine (1987), 18, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

⁸² Although many of the contributors to Shinn, and Whitley, (eds), op. cit. (80), Expository ScienceGoogle Scholar, no longer conceive of ‘popularization’ as a one-way flow to passive, atomistic audiences, that process itself is thought of mainly in terms of knowledge; see, for example, the remarks of Richard Whitley, introducing the collection, on p. 4. Some of the problems with this approach are discussed in Goldsmith, Maurice, The Science Critic, London, 1986, especially chapter 1.Google Scholar

⁸³ I. A. Richards quoted in Srevenson, Ralph and Debrix, J.R., The Cinema as Art, Harmondsworth 1969, p. 30.Google Scholar