Geekery: Murder, the Occult, and Young Sigmund Freud Meet in This Netflix Series
Netflix reaches across the pond for a new crime thriller that could entice Penny Dreadful and The Alienist fans.
This historical fiction takes place early in Freud’s career, and imagines that he worked with a medium and a police officer to stop a serial killer. It pulls from different bits and pieces of Viennese society at the turn of the century – the rise of psychoanalysis, spiritualists being in vogue, and a society deeply dug in to stiff morality that was being challenged by an influx of immigrants and free thinkers.
This could be interesting. It’s not really clear how far into the occult this will go based on the trailer. Seances were a popular party event in the upper echelons of society of Europe at the time, so those scenes may be grounded in reality or they could lean another direction. While non-fictional Freud was not a fan of spiritualism and consistently called his peers and students, particularity Carl Jung, out for relying on it the monologue in the trailer does fit into his theories on the psyche and sex.
Freud drops on Netflix March 23rd.
