Directed by David Cronenberg. Starring Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen, and Keira Knightley. Rated 14A.

The old trope about therapists being crazier than their subjects may be a convenient tool for modern denial, but it has its roots in the notably neurotic relationship between the father and metaphorical stepson of the Victorian-era field of psychoanalysis. That view is supported by Canadian director David Cronenberg in A Dangerous Method, working from a screenplay by Christopher Hampton, itself based on Hampton’s play The Talking Cure and John Kerr’s nonfiction book A Most Dangerous Method.

Today, the differences between Viennese Jew Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Swiss Protestant disciple Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender, far outstripping his turn in the tangentially related Shame) are no longer as pronounced as they once were. The younger man’s allowance for spiritual wildness and resentment of his psychiatric guru’s stuffily imperious nature—literally encapsulated, during one lovely sequence here, by Freud as an uncomfortable passenger on a tiny boat manfully captained by Jung—show reason enough for conflict. But both men were primarily concerned with the sexual impulse and its primacy in all human behaviour. And here they were not different enough; that is, they were both men.

The missing element was female. In a performance that starts as near popeyed parody and gets steadily stronger, Keira Knightley plays Sabina Spielrein, a Russian maverick who became Jung’s panicky patient at a clinic near Zurich in 1904. She went on to be his student and, eventually, lover, while challenging his conventional marriage and attempting to expand his view of sexuality to include both destructive and regenerative motives—hence all the spanking.

As a director, Cronenberg has long since traded visceral horror for subtler, more allegorical stuff. His Method probably could have used a little more madness and a little less talk, but it’s a provocative, well-considered tonic and he deserves kudos for restoring Spielrein—and a woman’s voice—to the historical equation. And, yes, she did smoke a mean cigar.

Watch the trailer for A Dangerous Method.