The Talking Cure

Her illness fascinated them.
Her ideas seduced them.
Her beauty intoxicated them.

In the early 1900’s in Vienna, Sigmund Freud introduced a radical new therapy, psychoanalysis — the talking cure. Carl Jung, practicing in Zurich, put the technique to test on a young Russian/Polish patient, Sabina Spielrein. The success of the experiment and the blossoming of their seminal relationship completely changed the face of analysis and perhaps the course of modern history.

In his new play, Christopher Hampton reveals the early years of psychoanalysis as a new science, one that dared place sexuality at the center of human relationships. The Talking Cure tells the captivating story behind the irreconcilable break between the men whose partnership established the 20th century’s revolutionary new method of understanding human consciousness, and the woman who was the catalyst.