From Strange Bedfellows to Soulmates: Psychoanalysis as an Allegory of Weimar Cinema
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Essay from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Comparative Literature, grade: A, University of Paderborn, language: English, abstract: application of the science of psychology to the study of culture. The screening of themovie Secrets of a Soul on the birthday of the founding father of psychoanalysis SigmundFreud in Berlin demonstrated the initial point of convergence between one of the mostimportant and influential psychological theories of the 20th century and film production.Although Freud did not consider the cinematic medium as appropriate to fully expla...
Essay from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Comparative Literature, grade: A, University of Paderborn, language: English, abstract: application of the science of psychology to the study of culture. The screening of themovie Secrets of a Soul on the birthday of the founding father of psychoanalysis SigmundFreud in Berlin demonstrated the initial point of convergence between one of the mostimportant and influential psychological theories of the 20th century and film production.Although Freud did not consider the cinematic medium as appropriate to fully explain theabstract concepts of psychoanalysis, which the film attempts by means of a case studyconcerning a patient's treatment, there apparently occurred some sort of transference processbetween the analyst and the artists. Thus, by mutually reinforcing each other, both discoursesgained legitimacy making it worthwhile to further examine this relationship.G.W. Pabst's 1926 film, Secrets of a Soul (Geheimnisse einer Seele), is onesuch encounter, a chapter in the still unwritten and untheorized metahistoryof psychoanalysis and cinema.This paper aims to make a contribution to that metahistorical text, proposing a combinationof abstract analytical thought and popular entertainment during the Weimar Cinema period.In agreement with the notion, that "the ready appeal of cinema as an analogy for mentalprocesses brings about the danger of the loss of the specificity of psychoanalyticunderstanding"3, I will not try to equate the two discourses, but rather follow two objectives:First, utilize psychoanalytic theory as an instrument for strategic interpretation of the story /plot of a particular film and second, attempt to crystallize out the way it corresponds withcinematic representation. In regards to the latter aspect I operate under the assumption, thatthe creative process of film making entails a big part of the unconscious and thus lends itselfto psychoanalytic interpretation.Although in contrast to Secrets of a Soul it does not dealwith the method of psychoanalysis directly, I chose the movie The Cabinet of Dr Caligari forthis paper, because I suppose that it contains various elements of the conceptual frameworkof the theory which comes about in narrative and visual terms. Primarily leaning onto a coretext in the history of German film, written by the Marxian representative Krakauer, I willthus treat the movie as an allegory of psychoanalysis in general and try to see to what extentit can be considered a reflection of the so called collective unconscious. [...]
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