You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In his introduction to his book on psychoanalysis and film, the key papers that he edited for The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Glen Gabbard (2001) reprinted his article on the approaches that psychoanalysts have used to study film. He included the underlying cultural mythology, the filmmaker's subjectivity, universal developmental moments or crises, the appropriation of psychoanalytic constructs by the filmmaker, the analysis of a character in the narrative, the relationship of dreamwork to film, and the analysis of spectatorship. This innovative paper by Kaufman on “cinematic techniques and psychic mechanisms -psychoanalysis and film” particularly focuses on Gabbard's last two approaches but includes some aspects of the analysis of characters in the narrative. Beginning with a focus on the overdetermined image she aptly explores the relationship between filmmaking techniques and unconscious psychic processes. She includes the use of sound and music, framing, shot production, montage, symbolism, and the narrative structure. She also discusses how earlier scenes can be refigured in our minds and how techniques of narration can engage the spectator in ways that produce a shattering psychological experience.
She relates dreamwork to what could be called filmwork in an extensive discussion that includes the work of Christian Metz. Kaufman delineates the various aspects of dreamwork and compares viewing film to the dream experience and the relationship to daydreams.
Kaufman richly applies these ideas to a series of films: Howard's End, In Cold Blood, The Last Emperor, The Battleship Potemkin, and particularly Chinatown.
She queries why Freud showed no interest in film as compared to all the other arts except for music wondering if film were too new or too primitive. In 1925 he refused a hundred thousand dollar offer from Samuel Goldwyn to consult on the making of a film about famous love stories in history. The New York Times stated “FREUD REBUFFS GOLDWYN: Vienn