One of the most exciting things David Cronenberg’s latest, almost out-of-character film, A Dangerous Method, is watching its two lead actors, Michael Fassbinder and Viggo Mortensen, disappear into the seemingly out-of-character personalities they portray. Those roles also happen to be giants of the field of psychology, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, and so there is some double play going on here. We bring our associations about Jung and Freud, as well as Fassbinder and Mortensen, and what we get is something altogether different.

It all seems very appropriate, considering Cronenberg’s latest movie is deeply concerned with the all too elusive nature of the self. Psychology and drama – and especially the cinema – are familiar bedfellows when it comes to questions of personality and how we mask them. Fassbender’s Jung is a pinched, cramped personality; his shoulders perpetually turned inwards, his introspection and introversion a form of retreat. Mortensen’s Freud, on the other hand, combats associations we may have with the grandfatherly old professor. His Freud is a revelation, as fizzy, virile, and swaggering as the cigar-chomper’s ideas.

As they are portrayed in A Dangerous Method, these two fathers of psychology couldn’t be more divergent personality types, yet they form a deep bond through their passion for psychology. The two come to mental blows, though, when a girl – and a patient – comes between them. She is Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a young Russian who shows up at Jung’s Zurich institute in complete hysterics. Jung begins to analyze her, and her case becomes a landmark in the practical application of psychoanalysis. Jung uncovers Sabina’s deeply internalized mortification, that she was beaten by her father as a young girl and yet she found the experiences sexually arousing. Uncovering that shame and helping to force it to the surface allows Sabina to begin normalizing her life. In fact, she soon takes up the study of psychology herself. But even after the treatment, Jung is drawn to Sabina, a fascination that both sexual and intellectual, one of passion and cerebral curiosity.

The very measured Jung needs a catalyst, however, to act on his inclinations, and that comes from Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel), who is a doctor, a relative of Freud, and a licentious philanderer ostracized from the psychological community. Gross tells Jung that he has been using sex as a treatment with his patients. While Jung is appalled by the young doctor’s behavior, Gross’ attitude slowly works on Jung, and he eventually acts on his passion for Sabina. She becomes his mistress, and he even indulges her in the sadomasochistic behavior that still arouses her (guilt free, now). But even as the psychologist and the psychologist-in-training make love, they each reserve an eye for observation, ever watching and analyzing each other’s behavior even in their embraces.

Interestingly enough, it is not the tryst between Jung and Sabina that provides A Dangerous Method’s its lasting appeal; that comes from the rift that opens between Jung and Freud, when the senior psychologist learns of Jung’s indiscretion with his patient. This launches the two into an intellectual struggle, one which has as much to do with ideas of psychology (notably Freud’s insistence on sexual explanations of the unconscious) as it does with jockeying for power and influence. In one revealing scene, Jung relates his dreams to Freud while on a cruise to America. After the older man has analyzed his colleague’s dreams, Jung asks to hear about Freud’s own. He refuses, insisting that that would undermine his authority as the senior figure, the master.

While on its surface, A Dangerous Method seems like new, heady ground for Cronenberg, it ultimately presents many of the director’s old obsessions in new, intellectualized form. The movie is about power and influence, despite the lack of onscreen violence (save the odd spanking). Sabina uses sexual, emotional and intellectual means to pursue desire and ambition, and the in-office debates between Jung and Freud are often as engrossing as any street shootout. When the threat of the First World War shows up on the horizon by film’s end, the viciousness and brutality of that conflict no longer feels as foreign to the refinement of the age that it might otherwise seem.