And Now, Love

AND NOW, LOVE is the story of 96 year-year-old Dr. Bernard W. Bail, a highly decorated Jewish World War II hero who was shot down over Nazi Germany. Imprisoned in a German Hospital, he began a clandestine affair with his nurse, Irmgard, who introduced him to a spiritual love unlike he had ever experienced which became the guiding light for his life and career. Determined to understand why this pure love is so often unattainable, he became a doctor and psychoanalyst who revolutionized the psychoanalytic process with a new theory called "the mother's imprint," an idea that strikes at the root of all mental illness. Bail posits that we all live impressed by this imprint, the unresolved negative feelings a mother has about herself that are unconsciously passed down in utero from generation to generation. This imprint is the result of centuries of female oppression and abuse that cuts us off from pure love and knowing our true potential. Though the psychoanalytic establishment tried to censure him for going beyond traditional Freudian methods, Bail moved forward with boundless courage and dedication as he formulated a new psychoanalytic paradigm to help his patients. As his work evolved, his conviction in the undeniable link between social progress and the centuries of oppression and abuse women have suffered made him the ultimate feminist and a firm believer in the idea that if the world is ever to know peace, women must lead the way. In her newest documentary, filmmaker Jill Demby Guest chronicles Bail's personal journey as he fights his way out of a Philadelphia immigrant ghetto, across the skies of war-torn Europe and through psychoanalytic institutes resistant to new ideas. Interviews with Dr. Bail, experts in psychology and neuroscience, as well as testimonials from patients, paint an indelible portrait of his courage, fortitude, compassion and single-minded purpose. Renowned child psychiatrist Dr. Gilbert Kliman praises Bail as an "avant garde thinker who did not fear to tread where Darwin had given up." From his well-deserved place at the forefront of psychoanalytic thought, Bernard Bail has introduced the world to the experience of pure love, or as he says, "not the illusion of love, but real love."