Vater und Sohn

In 1982, director and writer Thomas Mitscherlich decided to make a docudrama on the intense relationship between himself and his famous father, Alexander Mitscherlich, the head of the Sigmund Freud Institute from 1960-1976 and a distinguished psychoanalyst himself. As both confront each other and the camera, viewers become privy to discourses that reveal the father-son relationship and at the same time are entertained by the humor and insights that lighten the material — as in the fictional scene where Mitscherlich encounters a woman on the train who questions what he is doing to his “parental god.” Mitscherlich’s recounting of his years spent as a child growing up in an environment of intellectual ferment is similarly lightened in spots. The elder Mitscherlich died while the film was partially completed, so in many ways, it became a eulogy to him as well as to his relationship with his son (who still claims Herbert Marcuse as his real mentor).