change. It is important not to oversimplify Jung’s ideas, and not to use them as tools for the reductive analysis of film texts which could otherwise be amplified – i.e. examined in a ‘respectful’ manner taking into consideration the complexity and independence of unconscious processes behind both filmmaking and film viewing.

For instance, ‘dying-and-rising god’ is an archetype, but Osiris, Dionysus and Jesus are archetypal images.

Here are a few pitfalls to avoid. Jung pioneered the idea of archetypes, so let’s go and find archetypes in films, for example the shadow, the anima and the wise old man.

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.

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

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.

– 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.

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.