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Film References: Cinema, Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Mental Distress

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In the Film References we included interesting films under a psychological perspective and from a more general point of view of mental distress. The selection of films has followed different criteria: the explicit content; the multidimensional deepening of the psychology of characters or of an atmosphere; the possible usage of the film as a tool in a clinical or educational context; apparent group dynamics. As to the explicit content, it can refer to the presence of characters affected by a mental distress, to the presence of a professional of mental health, the setting in a mental health institution. Clearly, some of these categories overlap, but not always; in some cases the mental health professional is absent even when the film set is a mental asylum, as in The Escaped Lunatic. Often, both a patient and a mental health professional are present when the relationship matters in the film, but it can happen that only a mental distressed character plays a role, or that a mental health professional is portrayed in his private life. It can even happen that they are the same person, rather often indeed when the film is a thriller. Read more

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Cinema, Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Mental Distress: General Bibliography

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In the General Bibliography there are works that are related in several ways to the wide field of studies devoted to the relationship between film, psychoanalysis and mental distress. This collection, even if substantial, is not intended to be either exhaustive or judgemental. Items are listed alphabetically; any thematic classification is left to the curiosity of the reader. There are works written not only by psychoanalysts, but also by philosophers, film critics, semiologists, men of letters. Indeed, after an initial period in which this topic has been developed mainly through psychoanalysts’ publications in specialized journals, by the end of the ‘60s many disciplines were dealing with the subject and a large number of journals, film ones as well, were publishing these works: let us mention the special monographic issue of the French Journal Communications – a French journal focused on semiology – , released in1975 with the title Psychanalyse et Cinéma, hosting articles by Barthes, Baudry, Guattari, Metz and others. Other items belongs to semiology and film theory, that use psychoanalytic concepts Read more

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“The Lunatics” (Le systeme du docteur Goudron et du professeur Plume): An Early Encounter Between Cinema, literature and Mental Distress

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Abstract

In this work, our main aim has been to catch the early moments when film, psychology, psychoanalysis and mental distress came in contact in filmmaking. We have identified Poe’s 1845 tale The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether as an interesting starting point of this connection, and the film adaptation by Maurice Tourneur as a fundamental crossing, upon which we have drawn the title of this article. These early films of the silent short-movie stage of film history, have been important as they already contained issues that would have fully resounded through the cinema of the following decades: the reversal of roles between “insane” patients and sound minded professionals; the association between horror and mental Read more

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Group, psychoanalysis and cinema. Notes about a formative group and cinema experience

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Abstract

In this essay we are willing to bring out some remarks on the usage of movies within experiential groups. As it is already widely acknowledged, there exists a strong relationship between cinema and psychoanalysis, especially between Freud’s theory of dreams and the cinematographic language. It is indeed interesting to highlight that they both are born close to each other: the first projection of Lumière brothers’ La sortie de l’usine Lumière in 1895, and the publication of Freud’s The interpretation of dreams, in 1899. The connection between cinema and psychoanalysis can be analyzed under different perspectives: the way psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts are represented in movies (Gabbard, 1999), the psychoanalytic elements nested into movies and their narratives, the effects of movies on the spectator (Musatti, 1961, Elsaeser e Hagener, 2007 et al.), or, the usage of psychoanalysis in semiotic studies of the diegetic device (Metz, 1977). A further perspective is proposed in our work, that is the effect of a movie on a group of spectators, emphasizing the relationship between what is represented in the movie and the mental reality of group members who watched the movie altogether.  The rest of the essay is structured as follow: the next section preliminary introduces the meanings that a movie might have in a psychoanalytic model; the second section will focus on cinema and dreams; the third section, after a brief introduction on the relationship between cinema and group, describes the Read more