Visible Mind: Movies, modernity and the unconscious

Powerful emotions remain in the shadow and denied to the rest of the personality, initially, out of the fear that they could bring about our complete disintegration.

‘The movies are far more efficient than the theatre: they are less restricted, they are able to produce amazing symbols to show the collective unconscious, since their methods of presentation are so unlimited’

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

In film, as in no other medium, we can actually see the behavior of the archetype; in life, we know her far more indirectly, as moods, impulses, symptoms, and as a shape-shifting personage in our dreams … In film, we can see the anima figure over time, in a more or less stable guise, at her strange task of mediating the fate of a protagonist. (Beeb

The movies are far more efficient than the theatre: they are less restricted, they are able to produce symbols to show the collective unconscious, since their methods of presentation are so unlimited. (Jung 1984: 12)

Myth, Mind, and the Screen: Understanding the Heroes of Our Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

‘Love-Life: Using Films in the Interpretation of Gender Within Analysis’, in C. Hauke and I. Alister (eds) (2001) op. cit.

Film is a surface art and in it whatever is inside is outside.

the experience of film offers a special place where psyche can come alive, be experienced and be commented upon. Often the experiences sought and encountered in therapy can be both intense and painful, and for this reason they are often defended against and avoided in daily life. Popular cultural forms such as cinema can provide the holding necessa