This film suffers from it's dated views on psychiatry as entirely based on psychoanalysis. Darin's character is portrayed as being pathological because of an abusive, violent father and a weak, inappropriately affectionate mother. This makes the entire series of sessions between doctor and patient a waste of time, since the outcomes are only those that a traditional psychoanalyst would have predicted from the outset, without bothering with any examinations. It offers the tired, naïve liberal sop that all so-called bigots are psychopaths and the product of some textbook dysfunctional family situation. This over-simplification was discredited long ago, and serves only to create an emotionally soothing stereotype.
The film also portrays Darin's character as highly intelligent, yet explains his antisemitism as caused by the belligerent attitude of one Jewish father towards him, although the obvious problem with this would be that by hating all Jews, he would also have to hate the man's daughter, whom he described as the kindest, most caring person he'd ever met! Such a general prejudice could never be adopted by a person of such high intelligence without more compelling evidence than a single bad experience featuring such ambivalent emotions.
Basically, this script was conceived in the most contrived Stanley Kramer tradition from a simplistic, moronic, liberal worldview. The actual causes behind such pathologies are much more complex and contradictory of such a mindset as Kramer's. Writing off such pathologies with obsolete psychoanalytic platitudes does a great disservice to the Hollywood audiences who lap it up without the slightest reservations. Liberals like Kramer just love dismissing their opponents as mentally aberrant psychopaths because it means they never have to seriously deal with any of their detractors' actual arguments, which most of them are not mentally equipped to understand in the first place.
The film also portrays Darin's character as highly intelligent, yet explains his antisemitism as caused by the belligerent attitude of one Jewish father towards him, although the obvious problem with this would be that by hating all Jews, he would also have to hate the man's daughter, whom he described as the kindest, most caring person he'd ever met! Such a general prejudice could never be adopted by a person of such high intelligence without more compelling evidence than a single bad experience featuring such ambivalent emotions.
Basically, this script was conceived in the most contrived Stanley Kramer tradition from a simplistic, moronic, liberal worldview. The actual causes behind such pathologies are much more complex and contradictory of such a mindset as Kramer's. Writing off such pathologies with obsolete psychoanalytic platitudes does a great disservice to the Hollywood audiences who lap it up without the slightest reservations. Liberals like Kramer just love dismissing their opponents as mentally aberrant psychopaths because it means they never have to seriously deal with any of their detractors' actual arguments, which most of them are not mentally equipped to understand in the first place.