Filmpsychoanalyse: Das Unbewusste im Kino—das Kino im Unbewussten. (Filmpsychoanalysis: The Unconscious in Cinema—The Cinema in the Unconscious. By Andreas Hamburger. Giessen, Germany:  Psychosozial-Verlag, 2018,  403 pp.

In his new book on film and psychoanalysis, Andreas Hamburger offers nothing less than a methodical and theoretical compendium for a psychoanalytic approach toward film. The author extensively discusses existing theoretical approaches and refers to specific films throughout the book. He offers a thorough evaluation of existing methodology; film examples serve not only to make a theoretical or interpretive point, but also to develop his original methodological approach to the study of film. At first glance, one might be puzzled that in the history of linking psychoanalysis and film—documented in numerous volumes on films, directors, and other cinematic topics—Hamburger's book is the first to feature Filmpsychoanalysis as its title and thus present itself as a systematic methodological work. The author makes clear, however, why his book deserves this title; with his method of collecting and evaluating data, he presents filmpsychoanalysis as a field of scientific research. He transcends monographic contributions on specific aspects of film to arrive at the very foundations of the field. Though he subscribes to no particular psychoanalytic school, it becomes clear that object-relational notions stand in the foreground of his approach.

The book starts with an introduction and a chapter on the lines of development joining psychoanalysis and film. In a veritable prep-course on filmpsychoanalysis, Hamburger discusses various psychoanalytic approaches to film identified by Glen Gabbard (2001): exploration of myths underlying film plots and important to psychoanalysis; film as reflecting the director's subjectivity; film as illustrator of developmental crises; dreamwork in film; aesthetic response to film; psychoanalytic concepts and film; psychoanalytic understanding of filmic characters. The next few chapters are the book's core. Chapter 3 deals with methodological issues. Chapter 4 takes up the practice of filmpsychoanalysis by showing which aspects of a film must be consid