Visible Mind: Movies, modernity and the unconscious

Shadow may be defined as that with which we do not identify, that which is rejected as ‘not me’.

One analyst told me of a client who grew up in a family where no one was allowed to watch anything except cartoons. It was as if the whole family had not grown up. When she was depressed, the client watched cartoons all day. She eventually confessed how she would be terrified to watch a romantic comedy; the idea of going to the video store and watc

another said, it was about a daughter's relationship with her father; and a third person said, it is a story about a little boy!

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

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

When bad things happened to me in real life, I didn't react. I seemed cool or indifferent. Yet in the dark and relative safety of the movie theatre, I would weep over fictional tragedies, over someone else's suffering.

‘Without balance you transgress your limits without noticing

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)

I see cinematography as the final and last medium left in this society, artistically speaking, that can be enjoyed by many people. Painting, sculpture etc., have limited audiences … People should make a big effort to keep it as an art medium. I like to paint on the screen. I like to create a mood and treat it as an art form, the last art form. I ha