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.
As a practising analyst, when I approach a book or a film, I am hoping to find a text that will help me with the ethical and existential questions that emerge every day in my analytic encounters with the other. Jung & Film II: The Return responds to this desire - but sometimes in an uneven way, given its great diversity.
This book is a ‘sequel’ to Hauke & Alister's Jung & Film: Post-Jungian Takes on the Moving Image . It consists of an introduction by the editors plus 20 independently written chapters. The chapters in Part I—written by clinicians, film makers and academics—engage films through the lens of psychological themes including grief, loss, individuation and psyche's relationship to world. In Part II, film theorists pursue new ways of imagining the ‘nascent discipline’ (p. 2) of Jungian film studies. Here we encounter topics ranging from the feminine gaze through cinephilia to discourse theory and the role of the individual in society. Part III is dedicated to applying the concepts of ‘archetype’ and ‘psychological types’ to individual movies, directors, and other topics within film studies. There is a glossary of Jungian terms to orient ‘the newly initiated’ (p. 2) to definitions of alchemy, archetype, individuation, and syzygy, to name but a few. Other concepts (e.g., semiosis, sign, gaze) from film and cultural studies are not included in the glossary. The reader must orientate to these cross-disciplinary terms in each chapter, depending on the author's particular understanding of the idea.
The introduction to the book identifies ‘the archetypal perspective’ as ‘the unique tool of Jungian cultural and psychological analysis’ (p. 2). However, the words ‘Jungian’ and ‘archetypal’ have both become floating signifiers and do not point to any singular meaning whether in analytic or academic work. As a clinician, I would have felt more welcomed into the world of Jungian film studies if the introduction had provided a substantive discussion about the relationship