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New movie imagines an intriguing possibility.
HOLLYWOOD — C.S. Lewis is back on movie screens this winter.
Released this Christmas, Freud’s Last Sessionstars Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud and Matthew Goode as Lewis.
The movie is set on the eve of the Second World War. Having fled the Nazi takeover in Austria, Freud has ended up in London. It is there, in his Hampstead house, that he meets the Oxford academic Lewis, who, a few years earlier, has converted from atheism to Christianity. The purpose of Lewis’ visit to the dying “Father of Psychoanalysis” is to debate the relationship between science and religion, faith and logic, and how the intellect may help, or hinder, the soul’s path to belief in God. Including fantasy sequences, the movie frames this existential debate between the two men in and through their past experiences and present reality.
Of course, the film is pure fiction; there is no record that the two men ever met.
The film’s genesis may be traced to 1967, when Dr Armond M. Nicholi Jr., clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, gave a series of lectures at Harvard University called: “The Question of God.” They explored Freud’s atheistic theories but included discussion of aspects of Lewis’ Christian writings. Subsequently, in 2003, Nicholi published the lectures as: The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
HOLLYWOOD — C.S. Lewis is back on movie screens this winter.
Released this Christmas, Freud’s Last Sessionstars Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud and Matthew Goode as Lewis.
The movie is set on the eve of the Second World War. Having fled the Nazi takeover in Austria, Freud has ended up in London. It is there, in his Hampstead house, that he meets the Oxford academic Lewis, who, a few years earlier, has converted from atheism to Christianity. The purpose of Lewis’ visit to the dying “Father of Psychoanalysis” is to debate the relationship between science and religion, faith and logic, and how the intellect may help, or hinder, the soul’s path to belief in God. Including fantasy sequences, the movie frames this existential debate between the two men in and through their past experiences and present reality.
Of course, the film is pure fiction; there is no record that the two men ever met.
The film’s genesis may be traced to 1967, when Dr Armond M. Nicholi Jr., clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, gave a series of lectures at Harvard University called: “The Question of God.” They explored Freud’s atheistic theories but included discussion of aspects of Lewis’ Christian writings. Subsequently, in 2003, Nicholi published the lectures as: The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.
Continued below.
Freud’s Last Psychoanalysis With C.S. Lewis?
New movie imagines an intriguing possibility.
