Jungian Film Studies: The essential guide (Jung: The Essential Guides)

Once the characters are categorised as ‘shadows’, ‘animas’, ‘animuses’, ‘old wise men’ and ‘representations of the self’, it becomes difficult to see the bigger picture beyond this reductionist description.

the screen also represents the absence of all barriers between fantasy and reality as it ‘becomes’ the site of projection; it ‘comes to life’, so to say.

Put simply, the meaning of an image is not fixed.

In this sense, the cinema is one way that contemporary society keeps the symbolic life and mythological world alive.

As a place where the unconscious and conscious meet, cinema offers the potential for imagery that is psychologically potent, meaningful and that plays a role in our personal psychological development. It is not at all unusual for people to have strong attachments to individual films, or for films to crop up in personal therapy to good psychological

He refers to this as the ‘third image’ – not the image on the screen, nor the image that arises from the work of interpretative activity, but a third image that exists in the space between viewer and screen – analogous to the intersubjective space between client and therapist.

– it is polysemic in orientation and regards

Adventure films and stories are always popular because they offer a less risky way to experience death and rebirth, through heroes we can identify with.

Moreover ‘the real problem with applying the monomyth to a female hero’s journey is that her “return” is particularly problematic. There is no leadership role for her to step into. There is no kingdom (queendom) for her to rule