A Filmmaker's Guide to: The Psychoanalytical

In this chapter of ‘the filmmaker’s guide’ we’re actually going to be learning about literature and film together. I understand that many of you are sitting in university during difficult times and finding it increasingly hard to study and I understand that many of you who are not at university or not planning on it are possibly stuck of what to do, need a break or even need to catch up on learning film before you get to the next level. This guide will be brief but will also contain: new vocabulary, concepts and theories, films to watch and we will be exploring something taboo until now in the ‘filmmaker’s guide’ - academia (abyss opens). Each article will explore a different concept of film, philosophy, literature or bibliography/filmography etc. in order to give you something new to learn each time we see each other. You can use some of the words amongst family and friends to sound clever or you can get back to me (email in bio) and tell me how you’re doing. So, strap in and prepare for the filmmaker’s guide to film studies because it is going to be one wild ride.

The Psychoanalytical

What is it?

Set out by Sigmund Freud, it deals with the 'unconscious' and 'subconscious'. These desires that are not fully part and parcel of our absolute 'conscious' are therefore, the true desires we have, especially the ones within the 'unconscious'. These are not only the things we desire most, but paradoxically, we are completely unaware of them until they are persuaded out of us, apparently.

In literature, it is easier to recognise as we can enter the unconscious mind of the character through an external, third person narrator. "The Death of the Heart" by Elizabeth Bowen, "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf, "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham and "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann are all very different examples of the psychoanalytical novel.

Some more examples include: "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh (which is one of the few written in first person) and "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers. If you read the latter then you will find out the many different ways apart from sexuality that this theory can be used in practice.

What about in film?

Psychoanalysis in film is something that is very difficult to depict since it deals mostly with the unconscious and therefore, cannot be acted upon until it is actually addressed by a character (either themselves or another main character). Thus, the story must revolve around somewhat leading to this point or it is kind of going to look like some awkward non sequitur just placed in the middle there. A film which depicts psychoanalysis really well in our modern times in "Midsommar" (2019) by Ari Aster. The requirement for belonging and the animalistic need to feel like you are a 'part' of something is displayed from the very beginning and then built upon throughout the film, only really being 'realised' by the conscious mind in the very end.

A watchlist for psychoanalysis in film includes but is not limited to the following:

- The Third Man (1949)

- Psycho (1960)

- The Exorcist (1973)

- The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

- The Others (2001)

- Shutter Island (2005)

- Get Out (2017)

Apart from viewing it from an outer POV with some external narrator, many of these movies demonstrate how one of the supporting cast views the psychoanalytical, except for "Get Out" (2017) in which the supporting cast realise their own psychoanalytical desires and inflict them upon the main character. Many of these films also deal with a key supporting character who has a psychoanalytical problem to hide such as Father Karras and his issues regarding his mother in "The Exorcist" and the stolen money on the person of Marion Crane in "Psycho".

On the whole, you have to look at the motives and desires of every character and see how they are addressed and played out as a part of the storyline.

Do they have any impact on the storyline and if they do, then how does addressing them change the storyline and which characters are now in jeopardy because of it?

Further Reading:

• Freud, S (2005). On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia. UK: Penguin.
• Freud, S. (2006). The Penguin Freud Reader. UK: Penguin
• Freud, S (2002). The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious. UK: Penguin
• Freud, S (2005). The Unconscious. UK: Penguin
• Jung, C (2002). The Undiscovered Self. UK: Routledge.
• Pick, D (2015). Psychoanalysis: A Very Short Introduction. UK: Oxford University Press.