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As contemporaries, cinema and [[psychoanalysis ]] both reveal, in their own way, mankind's [[complex ]] [[personality]]. The interior dramas that psychoanalysis brings to light can be experienced within the "[[other ]] [[scene]]" of cinematic [[fiction]]. The similarity of certain [[terms ]] and the occasional [[apparent ]] resemblances between the two techniques encourage spontaneous comparisons: During psychoanalysis the [[subject ]] is confronted with fantasized "representations" and can [[identity ]] with "projected" characters. And we often [[speak ]] of "[[dream ]] screens."Psychoanalysis as perceived by the cinema, especially by Hollywood, has not escaped a degree of confusion. For, while engaging in one [[sense ]] with the "question of lay [[analysis]]," American [[psychoanalytic ]] [[practice ]] is related to [[psychiatry]]. Therefore, in American [[film ]] productions as well as in critical [[analyses ]] of those [[films]], there has not always been a clear [[distinction ]] between psychiatry and psychoanalytic practice. To bring the relation into sharper focus, I will not consider films that depict the [[world ]] of psychiatry, such as <i>Shock Corridor</i> (Sam Fuller, 1963), <i>Lilith</i> (R. Rossen, 1964), or <i>One Flew Over the Cuckoo</i>'<i>s Nest</i> (Milos Forman, 1975). This article will avoid [[discussion ]] of the serial killer films of the nineteen eighties (<i>Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer</i> by J. McNaughton, 1985, released in 1990, <i>The [[Silence ]] of the Lambs</i> by Jonathan Demme, 1991, <i>Seven</i> by D. Fincher, 1995, and [[others]]).The term "psychoanalysis" appeared for the first [[time ]] in Sigmund [[Freud]]'s <i>Heredity and the Aetiology of the [[Neuroses]]</i> (1896). Almost simultaneously, on December 28, 1895, the Lumière brothers, inventors of the cinematograph, organized the first paid movie in [[Paris]]. The show, twenty minutes long, contained the famous <i>Arrivée du train en gare de La Ciotat</i> and <i>La Sortie de l</i>'<i>usine Lumièreà Lyon</i>.It took the cinema more than twenty years to [[present ]] psychoanalytic imagery, even in a rudimentary [[form]]. In 1919, R. Wiene filmed <i>The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari</i>, in which a mad doctor—at least that's what he claims to be—uses [[hypnosis ]] for [[evil ]] purposes, just as the diabolical Dr. Mabuse in the film of the same [[name ]] (Fritz Lang, 1922), released [[three ]] years later, made use of his hypnotic powers for criminal purposes.On the other hand it took psychoanalysis a [[number ]] of years before it approached cinema. Münsterberg did write a 1916 essay, <i>Le Cinéma: étude psychologique</i>, but it was only in 1970 that, for the [[first time]], film analysis made use of the tools of psychoanalysis (<i>Les Cahiers du cinéma</i>, no. 223). The authors dissected <i>Young Abe Lincoln</i> (John Ford, 1939) and [[analyzed ]] the importance of the Law (personified by Henry Fonda as Lincoln) and the [[Oedipus ]] complex it implied.The [[history ]] of the relation between psychoanalysis and cinema can be subdivided into three major periods. In its earliest manifestations (<i>Caligari</i> and <i>Mabuse</i>), psychoanalysis became, during the thirties, a familiar [[figure ]] to cinema, although it often assumed the form of caricatured archetypes, which revealed a [[complete ]] misunderstanding of psychoanalytic [[reality]]. It was superficial and incompetent (<i>Carefree</i>, M. Sandrich, 1938, <i>Bringing up [[Baby]]</i>, Howard Hawks, 1938), disturbing and ambitious (<i>Mr. Deeds Goes to Town</i>, Frank Capra, 1936), or provided effective, although simpleminded, advice (<i>Blind Alley</i>, King Vidor, 1939). It still had little to do with the [[behavior ]] of ordinary [[people]].After the Second World War, the references to psychoanalysis (psychiatrists treating shell-shocked soldiers, for example)—at least in terms of explanatory material—made psychoanalysis seem more serious and sympathetic. Its cinematic [[representation ]] followed this positive evolution. It was the [[seductive ]] Peterson (Ingrid Bergman) who enabled Ballantyne (Gregory Peck) to [[remember ]] the [[traumatic ]] [[childhood ]] scene that, having been [[repressed]], had led him to believe he was [[guilty ]] of [[murder ]] (<i>Spellbound</i>, Alfred [[Hitchcock]], 1945). It is Moss, the G.I. in <i>Home of the Brave</i> (S. Kramer, 1949), who, returning home after the war, is healed of the [[paralysis ]] that resulted from his [[inferiority ]] complex. Psychoanalysis, although not yet fully [[understood]], is here better integrated in [[social ]] [[life ]] and becomes a "serious" reference.More recently we have seen a [[return ]] to a more critical [[position]]. <i>Dressed to Kill</i> (Brian de Palma, 1980) involves an [[analyst ]] who is a serial killer of [[women]]. The grasping [[psychoanalyst ]] in <i>Passageà l</i>'<i>[[acte]]</i> (F. Girod, 1997), manipulated by his [[patient]], becomes his assassin with few second [[thoughts]]. The [[psychoanalysts ]] portrayed by Woody Allen are frequently among the funniest characters in his films. Psychoanalysis, neither caricature nor definitive "[[knowledge]]," becomes a subject for the cinema that can be treated objectively and even ridiculed.Even though he allowed himself to be filmed by his close friends ([[Marie Bonaparte]], Mark Brunswick, René Laforgue, Philip Lehrman, see Mijolla, A. de, 1994), Freud was never very interested in the cinema. Arguing that "he didn't feel that a plastic representation of our abstractions worthy of the name could be made," he disavowed his disciples, Karl [[Abraham ]] and Hanns Sachs, for their collaboration on the script of <i>The Mysteries of a Soul</i> (G. W. Pabst, 1925). He also refused a considerable sum of [[money ]] offered by Samuel Goldwyn to develop a script on "famous [[love ]] affairs." This suspicion of the filmic representation of psychoanalysis continued after the [[death ]] of its founder. It was primarily Freud's daughter who opposed any attempt to make a film [[about ]] Freud. Fearing [[Anna Freud]]'s hostility, John Huston abandoned the [[idea ]] of using Marilyn Monroe to play the part of Cecily in <i>Freud, the [[Secret ]] [[Passion]]</i> (1962).Should we attribute to this suspicion the paucity of films about Freud? The few films that do [[represent ]] Freud show him during the early years of psychoanalysis. <i>The Seven-Percent Solution</i> (H. Ross, 1976) is a [[comedy ]] in which the founder of psychoanalysis attempts to [[cure ]] Sherlock Holmes of his [[cocaine ]] [[addiction]], a wink at Freud's own [[experience]]. <i>Sogni d</i> '<i>oro</i> (Nino Moretti, 1981) involves the making of a film entitled "Freud's [[Mother]]," in which the fictional relations of Sigmund and Amalia are treated comically. In a more serious vein, <i>Nineteen-Nineteen</i> (H. Brody, 1984) evokes Freud in flashback psychoanalyzing two celebrated [[patients]], the Wolfman and the young [[woman ]] described in "a [[case ]] of [[female ]] [[homosexuality]]" (1920a). John Huston's <i>Freud</i> (1962) is the only film that seriously and directly confronts the [[theoretical ]] and [[practical ]] questions of psychoanalysis through a "biographical" fiction.Like Freud leaving the famous 1921 photograph—cigar in hand, without his glasses—to come to life in <i>Lovesick</i> (M. Brickman, 1983), the [[image ]] of the fictional psychoanalyst is often a stereotype or caricature: white beard, tiny pince-nez glasses, maybe a strong foreign accent. He becomes the old doctor Brulov in <i>Spellbound</i> (1945) or the disturbing Caligari (1919) or Mabuse (1922), who make use of their knowledge of hypnosis for evil purposes. Nor are they the only ones. The analyst in <i>[[Nightmare ]] Alley</i> (E. Goulding, 1947) makes use of his patients' confidence to [[blackmail ]] [[them]].Even though the psychoanalyst's image in cinema evolves after the Second World War, becoming more reassuring, it still retains an aura of strangeness. The two doctors—even if they are not, strictly [[speaking]], psychoanalysts—who appear in <i>Seventh Heaven</i> (B. Jacquot, 1997), are oddly different from the other characters in the film. The first, and most important, [[disappears ]] as mysteriously as he appears.In Hollywood films classical [[Freudian ]] [[concepts ]] are used: the [[neurosis ]] of [[anxiety]], the [[Oedipus complex]], the [[repression ]] of an [[infantile ]] [[trauma]]. In most cases, the [[model ]] used, at least implicitly, is based on the <i>Studies on [[Hysteria]]</i>; the spectacular effects of the [[catharsis ]] can be used for the purposes of dramatization. Bringing back a repressed [[memory ]] is sufficient for healing. This occurs in <i>Secret Beyond the Door</i> (Fritz Lang, [[1948]]), in <i>Suddenly, Last Summer</i> (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1959), <i>The Snake Pit</i> (Anatol Litvak, 1949), and even, although it is caricatured, in <i>Marnie</i> ([[Alfred Hitchcock]], 1964). [[Dreams ]] have obviously assumed their [[place ]] as one of the <i>deus ex machina</i> of cinema, beginning with the dream sequence in <i>Spellbound</i>, designed by Salvador [[Dali]]. The analysis of a recurrent dream experienced by one of the characters is used to solve the "enigma" at the heart of the script. Nightmares occur in <i>Pursued</i> (Raoul Walsh, 1949), <i>Lady in the Dark</i> (M. Leisen, 1944), <i>Secret Beyond the Door</i> (1948), and <i>The Three Faces of Eve</i> (N. Johnson, 1957). Then there are the dreams of Freud himself, taken from the <i>[[Interpretation ]] of Dreams</i> (1900a), which are used in <i>Freud: The Secret Passion</i> (1962). Unraveling these oneiric obsessions resolves the [[character]]'s neurosis and the story (the film) comes to an end.For the purposes of dramaturgy, psychoanalysis is used by cinema to cure patients and especially to reveal the neuroses of psychoanalysts, their entourage, and [[society]]. <i>The Cobweb</i> (Vincente Minelli, 1955) is the model for this type of exposition. In the film Richard Widmark, a psychoanalyst [[working ]] in an institution, is impotent with his wife, with whom he disagrees.Should we be surprised then that Hollywood's celluloid psychoanalysts, psychiatrists especially, rarely engage in any [[real ]] psychoanalysis—often confused with hypnosis—and that the framework of the psychoanalytic cure is rarely respected? In <i>Spellbound</i>, Dr. Petersen ([[Ingmar Bergman]]) is seated next to her patient, the so-called Dr. Edwards (Gregory Peck); the psychoanalyst in <i>Sex and the Single [[Girl]]</i> (R. Quine, 1964), played by Natalie Wood, does the same and, as in so many representations, writes down his remarks. In <i>Lady in the Dark</i> (1944), the analyst's seat is placed behind the couch but the patient is seated. This difficulty in displaying the psychoanalytic frame—the [[analysand ]] lying on a couch and the psychoanalyst seated behind him in [[another ]] plane—has been neatly resolved by H. Brody in <i>Nineteen-Nineteen</i> (1984). Here, two of Freud's former patients [[recall ]] their respective psychoanalysis. When the [[therapy ]] is shown on [[screen]], the psychoanalyst (Freud), is not in the picture, only his [[voice ]] is present (Mijolla, A. de, 1994).Even today it seems that cinema continues to insist that psychoanalysis is hypnosis (the dramatic effects of which are evident on screen) or catharsis (which facilitates explanatory shortcuts). Nonetheless, its representation has become more subtle and it is now fully integrated in the film. In <i>Seventh Heaven,</i> psychoanalysis is not only part of the script but present on screen as well. White surfaces are used by the heroine to [[project ]] her traumatic [[memories]]. Similarly, F. Girod makes psychoanalysis the background for <i>Passageà l</i> '<i>acte</i> (1997). Psychoanalysis is given the comic [[treatment ]] in nearly all of Woody Allen's films as well as a few others (<i>A Couch in New York</i> by Chantal Ackerman, 1997). Sometimes the approach is tragicomic, as in <i>Another Woman</i> (Allen, 1988), where a woman begins to question her entire life after eavesdropping on a psychoanalyst at [[work ]] through a vent in her apartment.However, there is no [[need ]] to see an analyst at work or present a [[formal ]] psychoanalytic [[situation ]] for psychoanalysis to be presented on screen. A number of films promote a [[latent ]] psychoanalytic [[statement ]] without [[being ]] [[explicit]]. This is the case, for example, with the melodramas of Douglas Sirk, who presents [[neurotic ]] characters (<i>Written on the Wind</i>, 1956), with many of Ingmar Bergman's films (<i>The Silence</i>, 1963, <i>Persona</i>, 1966, <i>Cries and Whispers</i>, 1973, <i>Autumn Sonata</i>, 1978), with Michael Powell's <i>Peeping Tom</i> (1960), and any of Tex Avery's productions, which use comedy to present neurosis.

It was only [[natural ]] that psychoanalysis should take an interest in film, one of many [[cultural ]] constructs, as Freud did, for example, with drama, beginning with <i>[[Hamlet]]</i>. Nonetheless, the [[theory ]] of cinema did not make use of the tools of psychoanalysis until the early seventies. With reference to the work of [[Lacan]], [[Christian ]] [[Metz ]] provided a careful spectatorial analysis, trying to determine "what contribution Freudian psychoanalysis could . . . provide in the study of the [[imaginary ]] [[signifier]]." Other authors also became interested in the analogy between psychoanalysis and cinema: the importance of [[sight ]] (Jean-Louis Baudry), the different [[meanings ]] of the [[word ]] "screen" (G. Rosolata), the place of the [[spectator ]] in <i>Persona</i> (N. Brown), [[fetishism ]] and film noir (M. Ernet).However, theory shouldn't [[cause ]] us to overlook the many studies of [[individual ]] films and directors. [[Raymond Bellour ]] (1975) provided a psychoanalytic analysis (the murder of the [[father]], the [[castrating ]] mother) of Hitchcock's <i>[[North by Northwest]]</i> (1959), a film said to be frivolous and entertaining. Minutely dissecting the sequence of the airplane attack, he reveals the importance of sight and its [[role ]] in the film. Similarly, T. Kuntzel (1975) made use of the Freudian discovery of the [[presence ]] of the [[unconscious ]] in dreams to analyze <i>The Most Dangerous [[Game]]</i> (E. B. Shoedsack and I. Pichel, 1932). Patrick Lacoste (1990) examines <i>The Mysteries of a Soul</i> (1925) from a strictly [[psychoanalytical ]] point of view and Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor (1994) analyzes the way the "anxiety of fiction" operates on the spectator of Hitchcock's films.Throughout the nineteen-eighties American [[film theory ]] looked at a number of films made between 1945 and 1960 from the point of view of psychoanalysis and [[feminism]]. In several analyses that could be described as "[[feminist ]] psychoanalysis," Laura Mulvey, Janet Walker, and M. A. Doane attempted to show how the role of women in cinema reflected their role in society. The approach taken by E. Ann Kaplan, which was part of this movement—one that was more sociological than psychoanalytical—emphasized issues of [[race ]] in society, which the cinema reflected.But making use of psychoanalytic concepts to examine films from a sociological perspective (feminist or antiracist) was bound to be unsatisfactory as long as these readings involved [[distortion ]] and reduction; the film and its analysis became a pretext to [[defend]], and in a way that was not always rigorous, questionable [[intellectual ]] [[ideas]]. Psychoanalysis is often a pretext in the service of a [[discourse]]; once abandoned, it is seen to be an element inessential to the [[logical ]] [[structure ]] of the argument. Isn't this the reproach made to cinema whenever it represents psychoanalysis, a filmic representation that is generally incomplete and often a form of caricature?If film often "fails at" representation of the psychoanalytic situation, it is no [[doubt ]] because "the unconscious, like the being of [[philosophers]], rarely makes itself [[visible]]" (J.-B. Pontalis). Moreover, "the rhythm of analysis is very different from that of film, and it is quite difficult to provide an accurate representation of the [[sensation]]" (Mijolla, 1994).A film cannot be judged on the accuracy of its portrayal of psychoanalytic notions—within certain limits, of course—but on the relevance of the use of those notions for the dramatic presentation of its themes. "From this point of view—[the use of [[language ]] and the language of [[images ]] as fundamental Freudian reference points] between psychoanalysis and cinema—is formed a variant of the situation of the analyst as always being between two [[languages]]" (Lacoste, 1990).More work [[needs ]] to be done on the complex relationships that are created between psychoanalysis and cinema, beyond the application of psychoanalytic concepts to the art of film.

# Metz, Christian. (1979). [[The imaginary ]] signifier: Psychoanalysis and the cinema (C. Britton et al., Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana [[University ]] Press.