Daily Dialogue — November 12, 2013

Dr. Constance Petersen: You’re resisting a memory. What is in your mind?
John Ballantyne: No.
Dr. Constance Petersen: You’re resisting it.
John Ballantyne: Don’t start that again! Don’t stand there with that wiseacre look. I’m sick of your doubletalk.
Dr. Constance Petersen: You’re looking at the bed. What frightens you? White… lines. When I made fork marks in the table cloth, it agitated you. The night you kissed me, you pushed me away because my robe was white with dark lines on it. Try to think. Why does the color white frighten you? Why do lines frighten you? Think of white, white.
John Ballantyne: It frightens me, I can’t look.
Dr. Constance Petersen: Don’t look away. Look at the white spread. Look at it and remember.

He looks at the bed and collapses unconscious.

— Spellbound (1945), screenplay by Ben Hecht

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is therapy, suggested by Despina. Today’s suggestion by @goodejim10.

Trivia: Writer Ben Hecht consulted many of the leading psychoanalysts of the day when he was penning the screenplay.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Ah, Hollywood’s fixation on massive breakthroughs in therapy. We’ll see a lot of that this week including with Spellbound. Doesn’t happen often in real life. But in the movies, yes, it can and does happen.