Sex, religion and envy – how Freud and Jung’s frenetic friendship tore itself apart

In 1906, the young Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung received a collection of essays from none other than the founder of psychoanalysis himself, Sigmund Freud. When the two met in person a year later in Vienna, their first conversation lasted more than 13 hours, according to Jung’s account. And so began a collaboration that would blossom into an intense, albeit brief friendship between two titans of psychology. The duo toured the US together, giving lectures on psychoanalysis. They analysed each other’s dreams in depth. Twenty years his senior, Freud called Jung ‘the Joshua to my Moses, fated to enter the Promised Land which I myself will not live to see’. Their bond was so deep that at one point Jung wrote to Freud: ‘Let me enjoy your friendship not as one between equals but as that of father and son.’ Despite their shared interests and mutual admiration, in 1913 their relationship abruptly ended. But what caused their dramatic estrangement? And which one can lay claim to greater influence?

Freud versus Jung is the second instalment of ‘Philosophy Feuds’, Aeon’s original series of short animations, each of which tells the story of a famous – or not so famous – spat, break-up, falling-out or fracas. More than just revealing the hilarious and all-too-human pettiness of the world’s greatest thinkers, ‘Philosophy Feuds’ is about the fascinating ideas behind each of these rifts – and how these ideas continue to matter today.

Chase rolling hills and windmills on a jazzy ride through the California countryside

Interstate 5, the primary highway on the West Coast of the United States, runs for more than 1,000 miles between Mexico and Canada, through California, Oregon and Washington. In this experimental short film, the US filmmaker Conner Griffith takes the Californian stretches of the highway, and flips, spins, intercuts and speeds them up to exhilarating effect, set to a vigorous rendition of Take the ‘A’ Train, performed by the US jazz pianist Richard Tee. The video cleverly juxtaposes quintessentially East Coast urban music with West Coast rural imagery but, more than anything, it’s a wildly fun ride.

‘You wanna get rid of me?’ When the time comes to move mom into assisted living

During their weekly Sunday breakfast together, Ivy discovers that her octogenarian mother Riki is losing her memory. Soon after, Ivy decides that Riki would be better off moving out of the cozy Brooklyn apartment where she lives alone, and into an assisted living community in the Bronx, closer to Ivy’s own home. But, of course, when it comes to big family decisions, nothing is ever quite that easy. Ivy is making the request out of love, but Riki – resistant every step of the way – thinks her daughter is being controlling. When the time for a trial run at the community arrives, Ivy’s siblings start to question whether the move is premature, while Riki’s neighbours suggest that she’ll never be back. These delicate interpersonal dynamics are skilfully explored in this short documentary by New York-based filmmaker Brandon Barr. A tender and intimate portrait of ageing and the complexities of familial love, Sundays with Riki is likely to resonate with anyone who has helped to care for – or just cares about – an elderly relative.

A classic film finds order in randomness with the aid of some improbably elaborate sets

The Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) was formed in 1956 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the mission to create science-education materials for US high-school classrooms. In this PSSC film from 1961, the physics professors J N Patterson Hume and Donald Ivey of the University of Toronto deploy their expertise – as well as some seriously elaborate sets – to demonstrate how, with enough data, highly predictable patterns can emerge from unpredictable events. This version of Random Events has been visually and aurally enhanced by the Aeon Video team. For more elaborate educational wizardry from the PSSC, watch Frames of Reference.

A magical mystery trip through the complex connections in women’s bodies

‘Girls are weird. Babies are weird. Bodies are extra weird,’ says the Spanish animator Ana Pérez López. In Las del Diente, she uses excerpts from candid conversations with three women as a canvas for a refreshingly honest and unapologetic meditation on modern womanhood. The anecdotes are enriched with hallucinatory animated sequences and percussive interludes, transforming their conversations about social pressure and biological anomalies into a surreal celebration of being female, in all its multitudes – from having your body treated like a business to contending with deeply conflicted feelings about having children.