The Talking Cure

Christopher Hampton's The Talking Cure deals with the early years of C.G. Jung, and his decision to experiment, using Freud's controversial new method of psychoanalysis, with a young Russian patient, Sabine Spielrein. The success of the experiment and the blossoming of his relationship with Sabine inaugurates, haunts and ultimately poisons Jung's friendship with Freud; and the ideas and conflicts which engulf the three of them embody, as Jung comes to realize, the destructive forces which are to overwhelm the disastrous century ahead. The Talking Cure premiered at the National Theatre, London, in December 2002.