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Do you know Carlo Ginzburg's 1979 essay "Morelli, Freud and Sherlock  
Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method"? It should be useful to your  
endeavour.

One film noir, a B picture, which deals specifically with a  
psychoanalyst, dreams, hypnosis, and detective work is Maxwell  
Shane's FEAR IN THE NIGHT (US 1947), based on a Cornell Woolrich  
story, "Nightmare" (Woolrich writing under the pseudonym of "William  
Irish" for reasons of blacklisting/HUAC). The film was remade in 1956  
as NIGHTMARE, featuring Kevin McCarthy (who in the same year did  
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS) and Edward G. Robinson.

The themes of hypnosis - and amnesia, one might add - appear in many  
other noirs, too. While MIRAGE (Edward Dmytryk, 1964) does not deal  
with hypnosis, it does so with amnesia, with the protagonist (Gregory  
Peck), suffering from memory loss after a traumatic experience,  
seeking out, among others, a shrink for help.

Henry

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