Projected Shadows: Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Representations of Loss in European Cinema edited by Andrea Sabbadini East Sussex and New York:  Routledge, 2007;  190 pp. Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out by Slavoj Zizek London and New York:  Routledge, Third Edition, 2008;  280 pp.

The actors who had been cast in the play they had just seen had long since been scattered to the winds; they had watched only phantoms, whose deeds had been reduced to a million photographs brought into focus for the briefest of moments so that, as often as one liked, they could then be given back to the element of time as a series of blinking flashes.

The medium of film has been a subject of study for psychoanalysis in a myriad of forms. What do psychoanalysts talk about when they talk about film? They talk of the similarities between film and psychoanalysis, particularly the method and technique of psychoanalysis with its exploration of the past, its sense of time and history. They talk about the study of dreams and the act of dreaming — and the experience of viewing a film as a kind of dreaming — with the opportunity for both projection and identification, and the representation of human relationships and intrapsychic conflict. Psychoanalysis has applied itself to the narratives and characters that present themselves in a film, and sometimes, to the psychology of the filmmaker as well. The film is a means to further discuss internal conflict, defenses, and object relationships from different theoretical perspectives.

Projected Shadows: Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Representations of