Popularise and/or be damned: psychoanalysis and film at the crossroads in 1925

Geheimnisse einer Seele'--the only film in which film producers and psychoanalysts have openly collaborated to bring psychoanalysis into the public domain--was an immediate success with the general public and reviewers and is still considered a milestone in the early history of the cinema. By contrast it caused disagreement within the psychoanalytic community, which put personal and professional relationships to a test, which Freud came to feel that 'our Circle has not passed well', and which has left the film as a millstone round the neck of psychoanalysis and its practitioners. By drawing on new documentary material and placing the 'Film Affair' in its wider context, the author aims to highlight the significance and complexity of this episode as an important event in the early history of psychoanalysis.