Introduction to “CinematicTechniques and PsychicMechanisms –Psychoanalysis and Film”

BRUCE SKLAREW

In his introduction to his book on psychoanalysis and film, the key papers that heedited for The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Glen Gabbard (2001)reprinted his article on the approaches that psychoanalysts have used to studyfilm. He included the underlying cultural mythology, the filmmaker’s subjectiv-ity, universal developmental moments or crises, the appropriation of psychoana-lytic constructs by the filmmaker, the analysis of a character in the narrative, therelationship of dreamwork to film, and the analysis of spectatorship. This innova-tive paper by Kaufman on “cinematic techniques and psychic mechanisms –psychoanalysis and film” particularly focuses on Gabbard’s last two approachesbut includes some aspects of the analysis of characters in the narrative. Beginningwith a focus on the overdetermined image she aptly explores the relationshipbetween filmmaking techniques and unconscious psychic processes. She includesthe use of sound and music, framing, shot production, montage, symbolism, andthe narrative structure. She also discusses how earlier scenes can be refigured inour minds and how techniques of narration can engage the spectator in ways thatproduce a shattering psychological experience.

She relates dreamwork to what could be called filmwork in an extensivediscussion that includes the work of Christian Metz. Kaufman delineates thevarious aspects of dreamwork and compares viewing film to the dream experienceand the relationship to daydreams.

Kaufman richly applies these ideas to a series of films: Howard’s End, In ColdBlood, The Last Emperor, The Battleship Potemkin, and particularly Chinatown.

She queries why Freud showed no interest in film as compared to all the otherarts except for music wondering if film were too new or too primitive. In 1925 herefused a hundred thousand dollar offer from Samuel Goldwyn to consult on themaking of a film about famous love stories in history. The New York Timesstated “FREUD REBUFFS GOLDWYN: Viennese psychoanalyst is notinterested in motion picture offer.” Also in 1925 he actively dissuaded Abraham

Int. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Studies 8: 364–365 (2011)DOI: 10.1002/apsCopyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic StudiesInt. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Studies 8(4): 364–365 (2011)Published online in Wiley Online Library(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/aps.325

and Sachs from consulting on G. W. Pabst’s Secrets of a Soul, the first psychoana-lytic film. He doubted that psychoanalytic concepts such as the repression of awish could be presented on film, stating that he did not believe pictorial repre-sentation of psychoanalytic abstractions was possible. However the classic filmsof Chaplin, Bunuel and Dali, and Vigo were extant. Other acclaimed films wereMetropolis, Greed, and Sunrise. In 1909 he watched brief films with Jung andFerenzi in New York and was sighted at a double feature of Hollywood filmsin Vienna in 1936 or 1937. His lack of interest in film is remarkable given hisfocus on visual representation as a part of the dreamwork.

Nevertheless Freud may have used knowledge of the diagrams of the cameraand film apparatus distributed throughout the world in December 1896 todevelop his model of the mind that incorporated dreaming in Chapter 7B ofThe Interpretation of Dreams. He said that the only significant prior knowledgeabout dreams he found in Fechner’s statement that the scene of action of dreamsis different from waking ideational life. He wrote that the psychic locality of thedream corresponds to “a point inside the apparatus at which one of thepreliminary stages of an image comes into being,” and he pictures “the instrumentwhich carries out our mental functions as resembling a compound microscope, aphotographic apparatus, or something of the kind” (p. 536). Could his flow ofassociations, which begins with a projected virtual image, and is followed by anapparatus for a form of photography and then by the unusually vague and perhapscovering-over phrase, “something of the kind,” indicate knowledge of theLumiere film apparatus that was well known thoughout the world by 1896? IfFreud had seen diagrams of the film apparatus (camera and projector) or heardabout it, and if he had incorporated these ideas in his model of mental functionand dreaming, it is difficult to imagine that he would have acknowledged suchmass entertainment as his source (Sklarew, 1999). One could speculate that hisantipathy toward film was partly based on avoiding this early appropriation.

REFERENCES

Gabbard, G. (2001). Introduction. In G. Gabbard (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and film (pp. 1–16). NewYork: Karnac.

Sklarew, B. (1999). Freud and film: Encounters in the Weltgeist. Journal of the AmericanPsychoanalytic Association, 47, 1238–1247.

Bruce SklarewBaltimore-Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis

Laurel, MD, USAbrucesklarew@att.net

365Introduction

Int. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Studies 8: 364–365 (2011)DOI: 10.1002/apsCopyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.