Word: freuded
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Psychoanalysis, which is a religion to its followers, has its own high church, and an elaborate collection of schismatics and nonconformists. The simon-pure fundamentalists are the anointed followers of the late Dr. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis. Most of this tight group of disciples are in the U.S. Out last week was their first Year book of Psychoanalysis, which reverently reiterated their creed that in the beginning was sex, is now, and ever shall...
Under the watchful eye of Manhattan's Dr. Abraham Arden Brill, 70, pocket-sized, learned apostle who knew Freud in 1908 in Vienna, the Freudians hold it necessary for salvation that the neurotic sinner be subjected to total immersion (perhaps 200 or more one-hour sessions) to wash him down to the childhood facts behind neuroses and persuade him to face them. This often does a lot of good. The true-blue Freudians have only scorn for what Dr. Brill calls "societies and individuals who offer the public better, cheaper and quicker psychoanalyses." A true Freudian is a monotheist...
...will and the will of their clients." Said the moderate Risorgimento Liber ale: "Don't be angry, Eccellenza Nenni, but do you think it is wise to attack Neapolitan shoeshine boys, who also will have their share in elections, with a tendency towards socialism? . . . And do you know-Freud found that our indignation at a word or a contemptible action is in direct proportion to our secret disposition towards that word or action we reprove so much? . . . The word eccellenza is derived, if we are not mistaken, from . eccellere [to excel]. Doesn't Nenni excel as a politician...
Prominent in this unpleasant situation is awl-eyed Sydney Greenstreet, a psychoanalyst who explains to married friends who would presumably know a shorter word for it that, according to Freud, "love" is the root of all evil. Physically appropriate as the frigid sister-in-law, Alexis Smith is less persuasive as an actress. On the other hand, Director Curtis Bernhardt and his colleagues exploit such action possibilities as the fierce, desolate murder scene with masterful detail, turn the story's emotions into something more cruel and vivid than a series of plot signposts...
...very sinister; lawyers (notably Cruikshank-like John Carradine) are crooks who will not only not stop at murder but prefer to begin with it; gangsters (William Bendix et al.) hold stockholders' meetings as punctiliously as any other big businessmen; the high priest of the mysteries exhumed by Sigmund Freud is a wild-eyed goon (Jerry Colonna) who can't stop slapping his own face. There is also a capitalist (Robert Benchley) who appears at his daughter's wedding with a neon endorsement of his product-PARKER'S PASTE KILLS RATS-glowing on the back...