IntroductionInterview with Dr. Linda van Dyck, Jungian Analyst, for workshop on “Active Imagination: Pathway to the Soul” Interview with Patrick Parham for “The End of the Age of Bling” Dream Tending Interview with Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D. Interview with Danila Crespi, Jungian Analyst, and Scott Feaster, professor of film, on Coppola’s Youth Without Youth
Interview with Danila Crespi about the movie “The
Lives of Others”
Interview with Michael Gellert, Jungian Analyst about The Way of the SmallInterviews
Interview with Danila Crespi about the movie “The
Lives of Others”
Lucia Leao: In the movie “The Lives of Others,” the turning
point for Wieler is when he listens to Sonata for a Good Man, played on the
piano by Dreyman, the playwright. It seems that in that scene he is at the same
time getting in touch with his Shadow1 and with his Anima2. According to Jung,
that is the order in which one gets closer to the Self. What would you say makes
music so powerful in this process?
Danila Crespi: Music is the language of
emotion par excellence, a universal language everybody understands, where
reason, the rational, has little influence. And emotion (e motion) moves us. In
the film, the music – Sonata for a Good Man – is a complex and haunting piece.
It is tender and at the same time powerful, it seems to trigger a state akin to
a meditation, taking Wieler to some deep place where mysterious connections
occur. And, yes, that moment is a turning point, it is the beginning of a
transformation, and we, the spectators, are there to observe how this man slowly
separates himself from that collectiv“ism” he has lived in and for all his life,
and begins to assume the responsibility and the path of the ‘individual’ that he
truly is.
LL:The theme for the 2008-2009 program of the Center of
Jungian Studies of South Florida is “Image and Individuation – Jung’s Path to
the Self.” Wieler’s contact with the lives of others is made through sounds
(music and words) and not visual images. Would you say that the process of
transformation presented in the movie is more intense (or less intense) because
of that?
DC: In the movie, Wieler hears and
doesn’t see. He hears the words (and the music) of others, but he is not a man
of many words himself. Yet we, the viewers, are subtly, and yet powerfully,
informed by what we see. I think that the visual images, the treatment of the
color palette, are profoundly telling in this movie, especially as they guide us
in establishing the differences between Wieler the “collective man” and Dreyman
“the artist”. For example, the contrast between Wieler’s apartment and the
interior of Dreyman’s place immediately tells the viewer about the absence of
soul in Wieler’s life. The sequence of the quick visit of the prostitute also
says so much about the total absence of Eros in that poor man’s world . . . One
could say that, as the sounds, the music, the words, penetrate Wieler’s psyche,
his inner images begin to form . . . and transform.
LL:
The transformation process occurs also for Dreyman, the
playwright, and also through music. It is interesting to know that Sebastian
Koch, who plays Dreyman, had never played piano before, learned to play Sonata
for an Old Man and played it in the movie. He also ended up purchasing a “grand
piano” for his home, and to this date it is the only piece that he plays, albeit
in a marvelous way! Would you comment on how, in Jungian terms, the process of
individuation3 of one person may create a chain effect and bring about changes
of a bigger dimension?
DC: I would like to quote Jung when he
says: “ … the bond established by the transference – however hard to bear and
however unintelligible it may seem – is vitally important not only for the
individual but also for society, and indeed for the moral and spiritual progress
of mankind.” “Individuation has two principal aspects: in the first place it is
an internal and subjective process of integration, and in the second, it is an
equally indispensable process of objective relationship.” So, you see, the
process of individuation carries inherently a supreme responsibility!
LL: Would you say a few words about why you chose this movie
for the movie discussion?
DC: I can’t really say much, since it
was not a very reflected choice. When suggesting films for this next season, it
sort of came spontaneously to my mind. I had been deeply moved by the film when
I first saw it (by the way I remember seeing it the Sunday afternoon right
before the Oscar ceremony where it won the award for best foreign film!) and was
equally moved the second and third time I watched it. It is masterfully produced
and directed, and acted, it touches on so many layers of complexity of the human
psyche, of life in the outer world of our society and life in the inner world of
our privacy. And then, it turned out to fit to a “T” with the topic of this
08-09 program at the Center: “Image and Individuation – Jung’s Path to the
Self.”
Danila Crespi, MA, LMHC, is a Jungian Analyst practicing in South Beach. She was a founding member of Venezuelan society of Jungian Analysts and is the Training Director of the Florida Association of Jungian Analysts and a member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. She has a multi-lingual practice with a special interest in psychological readings of myth, film and the arts.
Definitions for Jungian terms that appear in this interview. From Jung’s Map of the Soul, by Murray Stein.
1 Shadow: The rejected and unaccepted aspects of the personality that are repressed and form a compensatory structure to the ego’s self ideals and to the persona.
2 Anima: The archetypal images of the eternal feminine in a man’s unconscious that forms a link between ego-consciousness and the collective unconscious and potentially opens a way to the self.
3 Individuation: The process of the psychic development that leads
to the conscious awareness of wholeness. Not to be confused with individualism.
