Film, Theatre, and Psychoanalysis
Early in the history of cinema, psychiatrists studied the movies to understand their appeal and power. Meanwhile, filmmakers have long been intrigued by psychiatry and frequently portray this mysterious world in film. Both movies and psychiatry focus on human thought, emotions, behavior, and motivation—making a link between the two subjects inevitable.
Psychiatry and the Cinema explores this complementary relationship from two angles, psychiatrists who have studied the movies and movies that have depicted psychiatry. This second edition looks at:
- Over 400 theatrically-released American films that feature psychiatrists or other mental health professionals at work
- The stereotypical characters and conventions dominating the presentation of movie psychiatrists and the historical rise and fall of the psychotherapist image in the movies
- New trends in psychoanalytically oriented film theory
- State-of-the-art understanding of psychoanalytic film criticism and illustrative examples of the use of that methodology with films such as Casablanca, Alien, Three Women, Sea of Love, Working Girl, Good Will Hunting, and many more
- Clinical implications of the film representations of psychotherapy for the mental health practitioner
... a vitally new understanding that takes us from the terms of the representation of sexual difference to an anatomy of female subjectivity which will be widely influential." — Stephen Heath
"An original work likely to have significant impact on all those with an interest in the vibrant intersection of feminism, film theory, and psychoanalysis... " — Naomi Schor
"... powerfully argued study... impressive... " — Choice
"... important because of its innovative work on Hollywood's ideologically-charged construction of subjectivity.... what is exciting about The Acoustic Mirror is that it inspires one to reevaluate a number of now classical theoretical texts, and to see films with an eye to how authorship is constructed and subjectivity is generated." — Literature and Psychology
"As evocative as it is shrewdly systematic, the pioneering theory of female subjectivity formulated in the final three chapters will have wide impact as a major contribution to feminist theory." — SubStance
The Acoustic Mirror attempts to do for the sound-track what feminist film theory of the past decade has done for the image-track — to locate the points at which it is productive of sexual difference. The specific focus is the female voice understood not merely as spoken dialogue, narration, and commentary, but as a fantasmatic projection, and as a metaphor for authorship.
by Todd Mcgowan, Frances L. Restuccia (Editor), Sheila Kunkle (Editor), Sheila Kunkle (Editor)
Although Lacan's ideas have long been applied to film theory, McGowan (English, U. of Vermont) and Kunkle (social sciences, Vermont College of the Union Institute and U.) argue that they have been applied too narrowly through placing an undue importance on the role of the mirror stage and the category of the imaginary in Lacanian theory. In presenting these nine essays, they seek to refocus Lacanian film theory on Lacan's later idea of the Real as the central category of experience, thus suggesting that "the ideological dimension of film lies in its ability to offer a fantasy scenario that delivers us from a traumatic Real" while simultaneously, "film's radicality stems from its ability to involve us in an encounter with the Real." The essays explore filmic texts (rather than the experience of spectatorship) such as Eyes Wide Shut, Memento, Breaking the Waves, and Holy Smoke.
From the Back Cover
Consisting of contributions from psychoanalysts and therapists, as well as authors in such fields as literature and cinema studies, Celluloid Couches, Cinematic Clients explores how therapy and therapists have been portrayed in the movies over the last seventy-five years. From the 1926 silent film Secrets of a Soul, to Hitchcock's 1946 classic Spellbound, to the recent Girl, Interrupted, the contributors look at how moviemakers view therapy and the "talking cure" and examine important themes and controversies in the process. Very often, cinematic efforts to portray the treatment process in psychoanalysis or psychotherapy are idiosyncratic, misleading, distorted, or even pathological. Yet this collection is not nearly as interested in denouncing such portrayals as in examining those films that offer us the opportunity to explore themes and issues from a vantage point outside our usual reference frame. Rather than focusing on what screenwriters and directors got wrong, each contributor asks instead what might be learned from the movies about professional selves and the nature of the therapeutic endeavor.
Film and Cinema Spectatorship provides a clear and wide-ranging introduction to different debates and traditions of viewing cinema. In this new book, Jan Campbell offers a comprehensive account of the different theoretical perspectives on film and cinema spectatorship, situating these in their cultural and historical contexts. Among the perspectives covered are those of feminism, modernism and cultural studies, with chapters dedicated to important topics such as early film, stars and film aesthetics. Campbell also provides accessible explorations of the importance of key themes to film and cinema spectatorship, such as mimesis, melodrama, performance and time. The timely and comprehensive text will be essential reading for anyone interested in debates on film theory, psychoanalysis and film, and the history of cinema. This book will be of special interest to students of film studies, media studies and cultural studies.
When Freud revised his view of the drives, he was living under the shadow of death and the threat of biological and cultural genocide. Like the early twentieth century, our times are marked by massive geopolitical trauma and shifts in technological, epistemic and sexual-representational practices. This book argues for the renewed relevance of the Freudian theory of drives through a variety of works ranging from cinema and literature to metapsychology and cultural theory. After presenting Freud's successive configurations of the drive in the form of a guide, 'illustrated' with reference to popular films, Teresa De Lauretis discusses two instances of philosophical-political contestation: Foucault's critique of Freud's 'stubborn drive', which served as foundation for the notion of social construction, and Laplanche's critique of Freud's biologism. The last two chapters trace the figural inscription of the death drive through close readings of Djuna Barnes's high-modernist novel Nightwood (1936) and David Cronenberg's postmodern film eXistenZ (1999).
The notion of identification, especially in the discourse of feminist theory, has come sharply and dramatically into focus with the recent interest in such topics as queer performativity, cross-dressing, and racial passing. Identification Papers is the first book to track the evolution of identification's emergence in psychoanalytic theory. Diana Fuss seeks to understand where this notion of identification has come from, and why it has emerged as one of the most difficult problems in contemporary theory and politics.
Identification Papers situates the recent critical interest in identification in the intellectual tradition that first gave the idea its theoretical relevance: psychoanalysis. Fuss begins from the assumption that identification has a history, and that the term carries with it a host of theoretical problems, conceptual difficulties, and ideological complications. By tracking the evolution of identification in Freud's work over a forty year period, Fuss demonstrates how the concept of identification is neither a theoretically neutral notion nor a politically innocent one.
Identification Papers closely examines the three principal figures -- gravity, ingestion, and infection -- that psychoanalysis invokes to theorize identification. Fuss then deconstructs the psychoanalytic theory of identification in order to open up the possibility of more innovative rethinkings of the political.
Drawing on literature, film, and Freud's own case histories, and engaging with a wide range of disciplines -- including critical theory, philosophy, film theory, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, and feminism -- Identification Papers will be a necessary starting point in any future theoretical project that seeks to mobilize the concept of identification for a feminist politics.
In full acknowledgment of the important cultural significance of film, this outstanding collection of psychoanalytic essays brings a methodological and theoretical sophistication to an absorbing range of film material. From Wild Strawberries and Vertigo to Titanic and Being John Malkovich, this intelligent and enjoyable collection succeedes in combining clarity and accessibility with a deeply informed scholarship.
Vicki Lebeau examines the long and uneven history of developments in modern art, science, and technology that brought pychoanalysis and the cinema together towards the end of the nineteenth century. She explores the subsequent encounters between the two: the seductions of psychoanalysis and cinema as converging, though distinct, ways of talking about dream and desire, image and illusion, shock, and sexuality. Beginning with Freud's encounter with the spectacle of hysteria on display in fin-de-siècle Paris, this study offers a detailed reading of the texts and concepts which generated the field of psychoanalytic film theory.
