This is fascinating, an extended interview with Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung conducted by the BBC’s John Freeman in October of 1959, when Jung was 84-years-old. The format of this program, Face to Face, is fascinating, almost like an interrogation. The camera zooms in on the subject and they rarely cut away.

Face to Face was the first program on British television to unmask public figures and show what lies beneath the surface. Harsh lighting and close-up camera angles were employed to capture each flicker of emotion, a method critics referred to as “torture by television.” Among those who submitted to Freeman’s remorseless scrutiny were Evelyn Waugh, Henry Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Carl Gustav Jung.

When Carl Jung consented to be interviewed, the medical community was surprised that this very private figure was suddenly willing to allow an interviewer into his personal space. When the program was first aired in 1959, Jung himself was taken aback at the unexpectedly positive response from the general public. This strong interest in his work inspired Jung to write his final work, Man and His Symbols, his theory of the symbolism of dreams, explained in lay terms so as to be accessible to all who would come seeking answers.

 
Thank you Jesse Merlin!

 
This is a fine interview with Allen Ginsberg taken from the BBC series Face to Face, in which Ginsberg opens up about his family, loves, identity, drugs and even sings.

The series, Face to Face originally started in 1959, and was hosted by John Freeman, whose skill and forthright questioning cut through the usual mindless chatter of such interview shows. Freeman, a former editor of the New Statesman was often considered brusque and rude, but his style of questioning fitted the form of the program, which was more akin to an interview between psychiatrist and patient. The original series included, now legendary, interviews with Martin Luther King, Tony Hancock, Professor Carl Jung, Evelyn Waugh and Gilbert Harding.

In 1989, the BBC revived the series, this time with the excellent Jeremy Isaacs as questioner, who interviewed Allen Ginsberg for this program, first broadcast on 9th January 1995.

Watching this now, makes me wonder what has happened to poetry? Where are our revolutionary poets? Where are our poets who speak out, demonstrate, make the front page, and tell it like it is? And why are our bookstores cluttered with the greeting card verse of 100 Great Love Poems, 101 Even Greater Love Poems, and Honest to God, These Are the Greatest Fucking Love Poems, You’ll Ever Fucking Read. O, for a Ginsebrg now.