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The standard term for psychoanalytic discussion of a non-clinical subject such as film is applied psychoanalysis This is a somewhat misleading term It suggests that psychoanalysis is something preformulated and discrete, like an ointment
The editorial philosophy of Elective Affinities is that psychoanalysis is implied rather than applied, it is already deeply embedded in our cultural experience. Indeed, psychoanalysis and modern culture grew up together they are part of the same skin Implied psychoanalysis suggests the idea of teasing out the psychoanalytic implications of a cultural artifact—or thecultural implications of a psychoanalytic idea.
All we can do is try to think psychoanalytically, which means not only to use psychoanalytic concepts and categories, but to let the “material” work us over first. If we can choose to think psychoanalytically in the clinical setting, we can also choose to think psychoanalytically about society, culture, or cinema The fact that only patients, and not films, can respond to our interpretations and provide associations is not as great an epistemological problem as it is sometimes made out to be A film also creates a transference environment and, as we hope the papers collected here will demonstrate, a receptive psychoanalytic stance can transform the experience of a film Moreover, psychoanalysis is constantly rediscovering itself in the products of modern culture; the latter produced psychoanalysis in the first place and is still in the process of reinventing it So, when psychoanalysts explore the cinema, for example, what they find is that the