Viewing Philosophy Through Film, Conestoga College, Fall 2012

Psychoanalytic Film Theory

Psychoanalytic film theory, despite its relatively late development, has become one of the most widely
practiced theoretical approaches to cinema studies today. This is largely owing to the fact that
psychoanalysis and film technology were born in the same era, and essentially grew up together. Thus, as
cinema quickly came to focus on ways of rendering subjective experiences--the innermost psychological
depths of the characters it portrayed--it naturally drew upon the newest conception of subjectivity
offered in the field of psychology, namely the psychoanalytic conception of it. A great many films from
the first half of the 20th Century accordingly drew upon such psychoanalytic concepts as: the
unconscious (see Keaton's Sherlock Jr.), Dreamwork (see Cavalcanti's Dead of Night), the Oedipus
complex (see Olivier's Hamlet), and psychoanalysis itself (see Hitchcock's Spellbound).

What exactly is psychoanalytic film theory? It is an approach that focuses on unmasking the ways in
which the phenomenon of cinema in general, and the elements of specific films in particular, are both
shaped by the unconscious. Whose unconscious? This is where things get a little tricky. The unconscious
studied by psychoanalytic film theory has been attributed to four different agencies: the filmmaker, the
characters of a film, the film's audience, and the discourse of a given film.

1. The Filmmaker's Unconscious. In its earliest stages, psychoanalytic film theory compared films to such
manifestations of the unconscious as dreams, slips of the tongue, and neurotic symptoms. Just as these
are considered to be manifestations of a patient's unconscious, films were considered to be
manifestations of a filmmaker's unconscious. This kind of psychoanalytic film theory is somewhat out of
fashion today.

2. The Character's Unconscious. Another application of psychoanalysis to cinema studies--one still

occasionally seen today--focuses on the characters of a given film and analyzes their behavior and
dialogue in an attempt to interpret traces of their unconscious. This approach, when it first appeared,
was immediately attacked by skeptical film critics who pointed out that fictional characters, insofar as
they are not real people, have neither a conscious nor an unconscious mind to speak of. However, the
psychoanalysis of film characters quickly found new credibility with the next stage in the development of
psychoanalytic film theory--the analysis of the audience's unconscious as it is prompted and shaped
during a film viewing.

3. The Audience's Unconscious. The audience-focused approach will often focus on the way in which the
behavior and dialogue of certain characters can be interpreted as manifestations of our unconscious,
insofar as we come to identify ourselves with them when we visit the cinema. Thus, as we sit quietly in
the dark and forge our psychic bonds with this or that character, we unconsciously project our own
fantasies, phobias, and fixations onto these shimmering alter-egos. Whenever they inevitably say or do
something that even tangentially touches upon one of these fantasies, phobias, or fixations, we derive
unconscious satisfaction or dissatisfaction accordingly.
4. The Unconscious of Cinematic Discourse. Finally, the most recent version of psychoanalytic film theory
more or less abandons the character-centered approach altogether, focusing instead on how the form of
films replicates or mimics the formal model of the conscious/unconscious mind posited by
psychoanalysis. Thus, for example, the psychoanalytic film theorist might focus on the way in which the
formal procedure of editing will sometimes function similarly to the mechanism of repression by cutting
out a crucial, emotionally charged moment which, though unseen, will continue to resonate throughout
the film (as in the markedly absent moment of actual cannibalism in Mankiewicz's Suddenly Last
Summer). Here the unconscious that is unveiled belongs neither to the filmmaker, nor to a character, nor
to an audience of viewers, but rather to the film's own discourse. The unconscious is thus conceived as
an organization of hints and traces of meaning residing within the audio-visual language of the cinema.
(Of course this unconscious can always become appropriated by the film-viewer--apropos the third form
of psychoanalytic film theory--to the extent that he or she internalizes this language during the film-
viewing situation).

So psychoanalytic film theory unmasks the psychic mechanisms functioning in the unconscious of:
filmmakers, characters, viewing audiences, and specific instances of cinematic discourse