by Herbert H. Stein

Some day you can tell your grandchildren (it might even be now) that there was a time (1956) when psychoanalysis was so prominent in the popular culture that it was used as the basis for the plot of a glossy, high budget science fiction film with flying saucers and a powerful humanoid robot. I’m referring to the film, Forbidden Planet, that brought us the tagline, “Monsters from the Id.” I can probably be justly accused of looking a gift horse in the mouth when I say that the filmmakers tended to confuse Freud’s first and second theories; but, that is a sin for which they should be forgiven since many of the psychoanalysts of the time probably fell into the same error.  I also think that a closer examination of the film suggests that those “monsters” are multiply determined and perhaps even more terrible than they seem. Continue reading FORBIDDEN Planet