Today's is my 150th entry.  It seems just a short time ago that I was marveling at hitting #100, but at the rate of one every third day, it must have been five months ago.  I had no idea when I began that I'd be around for so many entries or that I'd have enough to say to produce so many words.  I'm approaching 15,000 page views or (who said Americans can't do math?) about 100 views for every page.  I'm very grateful for all the regular readers and your comments, both complimentary and critical.  In the section of statistics about audience, I can see where the readers are located.  I seem to have a regular follower or two in Russia and Germany.  Last week, there were two pageviews from Rwanda and one from Bangladesh; I wonder what, as they stumbled across the blog, they made of it.  Here's to the next fifty blogs.

Last night on TCM I watched Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound with Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman.  It brought back memories that I hadn't thought of in a long time.  Virginia Pruitt and I edited three volumes of Dr. Karl Menninger's letters, two of his professional correspondence and one of his brief time (1930-32) as an advice columnist for the Ladies' Home Journal.  In the first two volumes, most of the correspondence is quite serious as psychoanalysis found its place in American intellectual and popular thought, but sometimes there were unexpected byways.  The Spellbound diversion begins on July 13, 1944, when Joseph Mankiewicz, the famous Hollywood writer, director, and producer, writes a long and alarmed letter to Dr. Karl about the dangerous portrayal of psychoanalysis in the film, which is set in part at a mental hospital.  He writes, "The psychoanalysts at the sanitarium are almost without exception maladjusted men--and they spend their time twitting each other about their fallibilies.  They take turns in making passes at Bergman, whom they constantly tease as being emotionally and sexually frigid.  I think I have rung enough gongs--it's time to get down to the purpose of this letter."

The script was written by Ben Hecht, whom Mankiewicz describes as "glib," and like "every other [David O.] Selznick productionn, [Spellbound] will be heavily exploited and there is every reason to believe that it will be an enormously successful film--which means that it will have an audience of millions of people."  Mankiewicz wants Dr. Karl to write Selznick urging that the script be vetted by psychoalanlysts and that changes be made.  Dr. Karl does indeed write Selznick, a letter rather obvious in its flattery, suggesting that the APA would be happy to review Hecht's script and make it one that educates the public about the true nature of psychoanalysis.  Selznick replies that they were "very careful about everything in connection with the film," that Ben Hecht probably "knows more about psychiatry than any other writer in Hollywood," and that Beverly Hills psychoanalyst May Romm, a friend of both Hecht's and Menninger's, has given approval to the film.

Dr. Romm weighs in with a rather contradictory letter.  On the one hand, she says that her efforts to make changes in the film have been consistently frustrated: "To give you an example, I wanted to take out the word psychoanalyst and substitute psychiatrist for the leading female character [Bergman], but it was impossible to accomplish that.  For even what I considered an improvement, I had to chew carpet."  On the other hand, as inaccurate as the portrayal of psychoanalysis is, she says that the current version is a vast improvement on the original and that anyway "I, personally, feel that this is not an important picture from the standpoint of giving the public an understanding of the meaning of psychiatry or psychoanalysis.  It's just an ordinary murder mystery."

Selznick does agree to an opening voice-over explaining the nature of psychoanalysis.  The content quickly becomes a matter of contention, and the narration is changed to unspoken words that scroll across the screen at the film's opening.  The final version reads "Our story deals with psychoanalysis, the method by which modern science treats the emotional problems of the sane."  [I detect Dr. Karl's hand in that last word.]  The analyst seeks only to induce the patient to talk about his hidden problems, to open the locked doors of his mind.  Once the complexes that have been disturbing the patient are uncovered and interpreted, the illness and confusion disappear . . . and the devils of unreason are driven from the human soul." 

Some readers have suggested that writing the blog must be "therapeutic," a word I'd resist.  But who knows?  Maybe I am driving the devils of unreason from ... but then again, 'soul' isn't a word in my vocabulary.