Editor's Introduction—Nature's Mirror: Film and Theatre Reviews for Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies

Film and theatre are venues for the expression of dramatic art. Psychoanalysis and dramatic art, although distinct, have much in common. They both involve explorations of human psychological conflict, and both achieve emotional catharsis through techniques of empathy and alienation. Psychoanalysts have long borrowed from dramatic art to illustrate the nature of human desire. Freud's use of Oedipus Rex is prototypical. Yet clinical psychoanalytic work is for individual consumption; artistic creations are for collective consumption. Psychoanalysis, in practice, is in the service of healing. Films and plays, in practice, are all too often solely in the service of entertainment. To the extent that a film or a play provokes or instructs, it contributes to the moral and intellectual climate of a culture. At their best, both psychoanalysis and dramatic art strive to change things for the better. Today, psychoanalysts use theatrical metaphors so frequently in describing their work that one begins to wonder whether psychoanalysis is itself a dramatic art. Conversely, the trend in dramatic art toward biography, autobiography, and personal performance art gives many plays and films the feel of a psychoanalytic enterprise. Psychoanalysis and dramatic art are separate disciplines, yet their concerns converge. Their deep links demand our consideration.

The section for film and theatre reviews in the Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies will explore the links between dramatic art and psychoanalysis through discussions of individual plays and films. Shakespeare, through Hamlet, proffered this purpose for drama:

To hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

Submissions on dramatic art, concerning either a contemporary or classic play or film, should examine nature's reflections through the mirror