Singh, G. (2009) Film After Jung. London and New York: Routledge.

One analyst reported a variety of views of the film On Golden Pond (Rydell, 1981) starring Katherine Hepburn, and with Jane Fonda playing the daughter of her real life father, Henry. One person said it was about an older couple at the end of their life;

By looking into the cinema screen, viewers also look into themselves and in the midway point between their bodies and the screen they experience the third image. As a result it is quite possible for viewers to suddenly have an intensely personal … reaction to a film that others in the audience do not have.

‘If you can identify with characters trapped in their circumstances, and share their disappointments as well as their unsteady steps towards liberation, you may find optimism in your own situation’ (Wyke 2004: 12).

Film uses disorder to create order of another sort … Film's response to modernity a century ago was to bind its chaos into form by crafting it. Our response a century later is identical. Like film, we create reality by framing life's events, focusing on its particulars. Our angles, values, interactions construct the world in which we live. We are m

‘the image on the screen; the image that arises from the act of interpretation; and the third image that comes about as the result of an individual's largely unconscious relationship with a film’

Movies can be surprising in their ability to stir and transport thoughts and emotions and move the viewer to change or transcend their lives.

In films it is possible to find archetypes projected as characters and themes, so we can, in turn, project ourselves into these stories and know more of our human potential through participation.

‘The loss I could not acknowledge in my own life I could recognise and react to onscreen’