From 1961 until his death in 1993, for the great filmmaker the ancient text from China was a constant companion and source of inspiration.
by Massimo Introvigne
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![Federico Fellini. Credits.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BITTER-WINTER-4-6.jpg)
![Federico Fellini. Credits.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BITTER-WINTER-4-6.jpg)
On April 16, 1974, Federico Fellini (1920–1993), arguably one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, confronted with a difficult choice sat in front of a friend and fervently asked: “I need to be comforted by your suggestions and comments. You know how I see this situation as obscure and uncertain.”
The friend Fellini asked for comfort was not a person. It was a book, the “I Ching.” Indeed, the ancient text and the corresponding system of divination played a key role in Fellini’s life and career, as he himself reported in his “The Book of Dreams.”
Dreams were all-important for Fellini. He remembered them and annotated each dream every morning. He also wrote that sometimes “the ‘I Ching’ dreams on our behalf,” and for decades he consulted the “I Ching,” using the traditional three coins, every day.
The “I Ching” was crucial when Fellini had to decide whether to go on with his “Casanova,” the film on the erotic exploits of the Italian 18th-century adventurer Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798). The film premiered in 1976 and eventually won critical acclaim, but Fellini knew it would run into problems with both producers and censorship. He hesitated between making it or switching to an easier and more sellable subject.
Fellini threw his coins, consulted the I Ching, and interpreted the answers as “Stagnation ceases” and “You have to do the work for the sake of the work and not of the result.” He annotated in his journal an enthusiastic “EVVIVA!” in all capitals and went on with “Casanova.”
![A scene from Fellini’s “Casanova.”](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BITTER-WINTER-5-5.jpg)
![A scene from Fellini’s “Casanova.”](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BITTER-WINTER-5-5.jpg)
There were also times in which Fellini asked the “I Ching” for more general suggestions about his life. From the fifth hexagram, he understood that, “If you know how to wait without hope, without fear, without attempting initiatives, just wait, happy with yourself and your life, and completely identified with the present moment in an innocent waiting, if you wait knowing that the universe is perfect, then nothing and no one can affect you in any way, and you will be free forever.”
In an interview with the daily “Repubblica,” Fellini clarified that he used the “I Ching” for divination but did not care to understand why it “worked.” He just knew it did. “I don’t really explain it. In general, I don’t ask questions that I cannot answer. I can listen to someone more knowledgeable than me, if they can explain the arcane. But for my part I can only say that so many times when I have found myself in situations of stalemate, impossibility, helplessness, this book has given me help… Indeed, in some cases I was even dazzled by the deep insight into my character, my temperament. And especially of the particular situation I was in.”
But how did Fellini come in touch with the “I Ching”? Here, we should introduce German psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhard (1896–1965). It was this extraordinary character who initiated Fellini into the “I Ching.”
Bernhard was a Jewish medical doctor from Berlin (and the son of another well-known physician), who discovered Freudian psychoanalysis but rejected its materialistic approach. Bernhard was a deeply spiritual man, although he did not attend any church or synagogue, and was a strong believer in astrology.
![Ernst Bernhard. From X.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BITTER-WINTER-6-3.jpg)
![Ernst Bernhard. From X.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BITTER-WINTER-6-3.jpg)
A crucial meeting for Bernhard was the one with Julius Spier (1887–1942) in the early 1930s. Spier was a business executive and self-trained psychologist, who tried to transform traditional palmistry into an acceptable psychological science, “psychochirology,” deducting a person’s character from the shape and not only from the lines of her hands.
Spier, whose ideas have been recently studied by Dutch scholar Alexandra Nagel, became known to a larger public after his death, when the journals of his pupil Etty Hillesum (1914–1943), a Jewish Dutch author who died in Auschwitz, were published. It was Hillesum’s moral resistance to the horror that captivated the readers, but she also mentioned Spier and psychochirology.
Bernhard also embraced psychochirology and gave three lectures promoting it in 1935. It was through Spier that Bernhard was introduced to Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), of which in the same year 1935 he became a pupil. Jung accepted both psychochirology and astrology, and Bernhard found his approach to psychoanalysis more “spiritual” and acceptable than Freudian orthodoxy.
The relationship between Bernhard and Jung quickly deteriorated for political reasons. Jung, who later changed his attitude, was trying to compromise with the Nazi regime and refused or was not able to protect the Jewish Bernhard, who decided to move to Italy, where Jews were not yet persecuted. Bernhard and Jung eventually reconciled after the war.
It was Jung who introduced Bernhard to the “I Ching,” which quickly became one of his main interests. Jung used at that time the translation of Christian theologian and former missionary to China Richard Wilhelm (1873–1930). Although important for making the “I Ching” better known in the West, Wilhelm’s translation included missing parts and mistakes. Jung and Bernhard both understood that the translation was not satisfactory, made a philosophical Confucian interpretation prevail on the more practice-oriented Taoist one, and marginalized divination.
In Italy, Bernhard became a friend of Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci (1894–1984), whose academic institutes in Rome and Naples included native Chinese speakers. This eventually led, after Bernhard had become one of the inspirers of the new specialized publishing house Astrolabio, to the publication in 1950 of the first Italian translation of the “I Ching.” Although based on Wilhelm’s, it was regarded as more accurate than other Western versions available at that time.
![Giuseppe Tucci. Credits.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BITTER-WINTER-7-2.jpg)
![Giuseppe Tucci. Credits.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BITTER-WINTER-7-2.jpg)
This, however, happened in 1950, after Bernhard had gone through several tragic experiences. After Italy allied with Nazi Germany, in 1938 Jewish professionals were prevented from working in Italy and some were detained. Bernhard ended up in the detention camp of Ferramonti, in the middle of nowhere in the Southern region of Calabria. The camp is today a museum, with a literary park named after Bernhard.
Bernhard was put on a list of prisoners to be transferred to Auschwitz but was saved by Tucci, who was a prominent member of the Fascist Party. Tucci also found a place in Rome where the psychoanalyst could hide until the end of the war.
After the war, Bernhard quickly emerged as one of the most fashionable and well-paid psychoanalysts in Rome. His patients included the well-known industrialist and social reformer Adriano Olivetti (1901–1960), who also embraced “I Ching” divination through Bernhard, writers and poets such as Allen Tate (1899–1979), Natalia Ginzburg (1916–1991), and Cristina Campo (1923–1977), and Bobi Bazlen (1902–1965), who had a key role in the birth of the prestigious publishing house Adelphi.
Many if not most in this milieu, and in the famous Eranos gatherings he started attending in Switzerland, shared Bernhard’s interests in astrology, palmistry, divination, and the “I Ching.” Paradoxically, it were his disciples in the Italian Association of Analytic Psychology, which Bernhard founded in 1961 to certify and organize Jungian psychoanalysts, who put pressure on their mentor asking him not to mention the “I Ching” in public. They were afraid that this would make Jungian psychoanalysis less “respectable” as a science.
The world of Cinecittà, the Italian Hollywood, also regarded Bernhard as a fashionable and effective therapist. Another highly respected director, Vittorio De Seta (1923–2011), included in the opening credits of his 1966 movie “Un uomo a metà” (Half a Man) his handwritten dedication of the film to Bernhard.
![Vittorio De Seta. Credits.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BITTER-WINTER-8-2.jpg)
![Vittorio De Seta. Credits.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BITTER-WINTER-8-2.jpg)
Fellini was a creator of myths, and his autobiographical accounts are often embellished. As he told the story, he met Bernhard by chance. In 1961, he found in the pocket of his jacket a piece of paper with a telephone number he had forgotten was there. He believed it was the number a beautiful woman called Maria had given to him at a party. He decided to call and instead Bernhard answered. The psychoanalyst explained to him that there are no coincidences and arranged a meeting.
To assess Fellini’s story, we should also mention that at that time he was interested in esotericism and Spiritualist seances, as well as in experimenting with LSD. His colleague Vittorio De Seta when they were passing under the windows of Bernhard’s apartment in Via Gregoriana in Rome, told Fellini there lived a man he should absolutely meet, and put the note with the psychoanalyst’s number in his pocket.