A Matter of Heart
(1983)
110 mins | Documentary | 21 October 1983
Director:
Mark WhitneyProducer:
Michael WhitneyCinematographer:
Mark WhitneyEditor:
Mark WhitneyProduction Company:
C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles
According to production notes in AMPAS library files, director Mark Whitney began work on the film as a cinematographer when production began in Europe in the mid-1970s. He and his crew made four ensuing trips to Switzerland, as well as visits to New York City, London, England, and northern CA. The result was forty hours of footage, which Whitney brought to Los Angeles, CA, and edited to twelve hours over the course of a year. He previewed this version in New York City and London for “professional associations” before spending another year achieving the final edit. Assisting Whitney in the process were his brother, producer Michael Whitney, and Suzanne Wagner, who conceived and scripted the project.
The 14 May 1986 Var reported that distributor Kino International acquired A Matter of Heart from its previous distributor, Horizon Releasing. Over the previous twelve months, the picture earned more than $50,000 during a pair of seven-day engagements in San Francisco, CA, and Brookline, MA.
A Matter of Heart opened to mixed reviews. While the 22 Oct 1986 NYT called it “a good introduction to Jungian analysis,” the 15 Nov 1985 LAT lamented the film’s failure to familiarize the audience with its subject, psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung.
The film opens with the following statements: "The psyche is the greatest of all cosmic wonders and the 'sine qua non' of the world as an object. It is in the highest degree odd that Western man, with but very few - and ever fewer - exceptions, apparently pays so little regard to this fact. ...
According to production notes in AMPAS library files, director Mark Whitney began work on the film as a cinematographer when production began in Europe in the mid-1970s. He and his crew made four ensuing trips to Switzerland, as well as visits to New York City, London, England, and northern CA. The result was forty hours of footage, which Whitney brought to Los Angeles, CA, and edited to twelve hours over the course of a year. He previewed this version in New York City and London for “professional associations” before spending another year achieving the final edit. Assisting Whitney in the process were his brother, producer Michael Whitney, and Suzanne Wagner, who conceived and scripted the project.
The 14 May 1986 Var reported that distributor Kino International acquired A Matter of Heart from its previous distributor, Horizon Releasing. Over the previous twelve months, the picture earned more than $50,000 during a pair of seven-day engagements in San Francisco, CA, and Brookline, MA.
A Matter of Heart opened to mixed reviews. While the 22 Oct 1986 NYT called it “a good introduction to Jungian analysis,” the 15 Nov 1985 LAT lamented the film’s failure to familiarize the audience with its subject, psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung.
The film opens with the following statements: "The psyche is the greatest of all cosmic wonders and the 'sine qua non' of the world as an object. It is in the highest degree odd that Western man, with but very few - and ever fewer - exceptions, apparently pays so little regard to this fact. Swamped by the knowledge of external objects, the subject of all knowledge has been temporarily eclipsed to the point of seeming nonexistence. C. G. Jung, 1946"; and, "Not nature, but the 'genius of mankind,' has knotted the hangman's noose with which it can execute itself at any moment. C. G. Jung, 1952." End credits include the following statements: "Fund raising assistance: Jack Carlsen, Ilona Foyer, Ferne Jensen, Georgia Johnson, Paula Kirkeby, Russell Lockhart, Ph.D., Mr. & Mrs. Fritz Moser, Nancy Mazur, Teruko Yokol"; "This project made possible through grants from: Joyce and Ted Ashley, Bettina Bancroft, Richard Chachere, Charipeg Foundation, Tita Cooley, Isabelle Davis, Barbara Factor, Federation of Migros Cooperatives, Béat de Fischer, Sam Francis, Martha Bentley Hall, Ray and Ruth E. Hammond, George and Ann Hogle, Margaret Phillips Johnson, Ph.D., Thornton Ladd, Margaret L. McClean Fund, Eleanor Payson, Pro Helvetia, Penelope Tarasuk, Jane Wheelwright, Joseph Wheelwright, M.D., Steven Hing Wog, Lore Zeller, Micropro International and 525 additional individuals"; "Acknowledgements to The Analytical Psychology Club of New York, Inc., for: Dr. Carl Gustav Jung at Bailey Island, Sven Ahlberg, Erica Anderson, BBC, Stephan Black, Gustav Dreifuss, Ph.D., Esther Dunn, Richard Evans, Ph.D., C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, Ingaret Giffard, Rick Gordon, Robert E. Harlan, Eberhard Kornfeld, Ruth Lane, Pacy Markman, William McGuire, C A Meier, M.D., Friedel Muser, Melbao Nee, Culver Nichols, Maud Oakes, Freddy Stahl, Swiss Broadcasting Corp., Elizabeth Eyre Taylor, William O. Walcott, Ph.D., Jeanne Warne"; "Matter of Heart is sponsored by The C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles; "The interview excerted here are from a 40 hour archive produced by the Jung Film Project between 1975 and 1981"; "Excerpts from interviews of C. G. Jung conducted by Dr. Richard Evans of the University of Houston in August 1957, Zürich, Switzerland are used with the permission of Dr. Evans"; "Excerpts from the Collected Works of C. G. Jung and C. G. Jung Letters (copyright © respectively 1959 and 1975 by Princeton University Press) are used with the permission of Princeton University Press and Routledge & Kegan Paul"; An excerpt from C. G. Jung Speaking (copyright ©1977 by Princeton University Press) is used with permission of Princeton University Press and Thames & Hudson"; "An excerpt from Memories, Dreams, Reflections (copyright ©1951, 1952, 1963 by Random House, Inc.) is used with the permission of Pantheon Books and Routledge & Kegan Paul."
Former patients, protégés, and colleagues of pioneering psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung discuss the man, his philosophy, and his effect on their individual lives. Jung was born on 26 Jul 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland, and in 1900, became the first staff physician at Burgholzli Mental Hospital. He married Emma Rauschenbach in 1903 and fathered four children. In 1906, Jung began his correspondence with psychologist Sigmund Freud, and three years later, they were invited to lecture at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where they spent much of their free time analyzing each other’s dreams. Jung published his first book, Symbols of Transformation, and labeled his technique “analytical psychology,” to differentiate it from Freud’s “psychoanalytic” approach. Freud was offended by this challenge to his theories and ended their friendship. It was during this period that Jung drew inspiration from his dreams and fantasies, and shortly before his death in 1961, credited them as the foundation for all his works and “creative activity.” Jung also promoted the concept of “contrasexual components,” described as “the masculine side of woman, the feminine side of man.” He indentified the phenomenon of “transference,” in which patients assigned emotions to the analyst that they had once felt for others in the lives. In an extreme example, one female patient insisted on marrying Jung, undaunted by the fact that he was already married. The analyst humored her until she abandoned the idea on the day before her wedding. Beginning in 1910, Jung engaged in a long-term affair with fellow analyst and former patient Toni Wolff. ...
Former patients, protégés, and colleagues of pioneering psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung discuss the man, his philosophy, and his effect on their individual lives. Jung was born on 26 Jul 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland, and in 1900, became the first staff physician at Burgholzli Mental Hospital. He married Emma Rauschenbach in 1903 and fathered four children. In 1906, Jung began his correspondence with psychologist Sigmund Freud, and three years later, they were invited to lecture at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where they spent much of their free time analyzing each other’s dreams. Jung published his first book, Symbols of Transformation, and labeled his technique “analytical psychology,” to differentiate it from Freud’s “psychoanalytic” approach. Freud was offended by this challenge to his theories and ended their friendship. It was during this period that Jung drew inspiration from his dreams and fantasies, and shortly before his death in 1961, credited them as the foundation for all his works and “creative activity.” Jung also promoted the concept of “contrasexual components,” described as “the masculine side of woman, the feminine side of man.” He indentified the phenomenon of “transference,” in which patients assigned emotions to the analyst that they had once felt for others in the lives. In an extreme example, one female patient insisted on marrying Jung, undaunted by the fact that he was already married. The analyst humored her until she abandoned the idea on the day before her wedding. Beginning in 1910, Jung engaged in a long-term affair with fellow analyst and former patient Toni Wolff. When Jung’s imagination began to overtake his grasp of reality, Wolff moved into his home, acting as his “guide,” and supplementing the role of his wife. Although the relationship became physical as well as intellectual, Emma Jung eventually came to accept Wolff’s presence, and the arrangement lasted forty years. In 1955, following the deaths of both women, Jung occupied himself with building a tower onto his home in Bollingen, Switzerland. He also developed a relationship with his neighbors, the Hugenmatter family. He had ambivalent feelings about religion, believing that it can “block experience,” but also give solace to the lonely. Jung criticized Christian clergy for neglecting to investigate the consciousness of modern man to better understand the soul, and decried Christianity in general for eliminating the feminine aspects of the divine. Between 1912 and 1916, Jung had his first encounters with the “collective unconscious,” and recorded his experiences in paintings and journal entries, some of which appeared in his work, The Red Book. Jung predicted a “final catastrophe” that will destroy mankind, which could only be avoided through introspection and a better understanding one’s own opposing natures.
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