Chodorkoff and Baxter provide a detailed historical account of the making of Pabst's Secrets of a Soul, taking it as an important example of post-World War I German film, which offers a "significant by forgotten aspect of the history of psychoanalysis" (319). They include a brief reception history as well as a look at the film's form and structure and the experimental nature of presenting dream on the screen in an historical context. They also quote extensively from the letters of Karl Abraham and Freud on the subject of the making of the film and film in general to show Freud's lack of interest in the project--Freud was concerned with protecting psychoanalysis from exploitation and delegitimation. Chodorkoff and Baxter's treatment of the dynamic between Abraham and Freud over film offers context to Freud's often-quoted assertion that "satisfactory plastic representation of our abstractions is at all possible" (323). But the authors find that despite Freud's notion that psychoanalysis could not be captured on film, the resulting film is better at representing psychoanalysis "plastically" than "verbally"--the film uses an excess of text in the form of titles (sub- and inter-), which take away from the film's successes. Finally, the authors read Secrets of the Soul as an historical document that sheds light on early psychoanalytic practice, and they end with a note on the repressed homosexuality in the film, which they suggest is exemplary of Weimer cinema.

There are many elements of The Exorcist that shock people, one of which is sex, as the dialogue in the movie touches on this theme with extreme vulgarity. In the article titled “The Turn of the Screw and The Exorcist: Demoniacal Possession and Childhood Purity”, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, examines the sexual undertones of The Exorcist and maintains that it is a major theme in the story.

Beit-Hallahmi parallels demonic possession with “forbidden aggressive and sexual drives” (296). Through the jokes and perversions, he writes that The Exorcist portrays a distortion of sex, which turns into evil. Essentially, the source of evil is seen outside of one’s self, though the sexual drive arises from within; he argues that we have to protect ourselves from the returning evil, which we must exorcise. And so, he concludes, the major theme in The Exorcist is a protection sexuality projected onto evil.

Regan is the only character that represents good, life and asexuality, while all other characters are mixed. The Demon represents evil, death, sex, and bad religion. Beit-Hallahmi claims that Regan thus serves as a battlefield for good and evil, and that only asexual adults (the priests) are able to save children. He urges the ideal of keeping children pure and innocent by saving them from sexual development. Although Beit-Hallahmi holds an unconventional analysis of the film, it is interesting to understand the vast diversity in opinion that emerged from the film. The vulgar treatment of sexuality is in the movie more for shock value, but according to Beit-Hallahmi, provides a deep meaning and lesson to Blatty’s story.