Psychoanalysis and the rules of the game

193 Pages·2015·0.571 MB·English

by  Todd McGowan, Todd McGowan

Psychoanalytic
Film Theory
and The Rules
of the Game
Film Theory in PracTice
Series Editor: Todd McGowan
editorial Board
Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Joan Copjec, Brown University, USA
Hilary Neroni, University of Vermont, USA
Jennifer Friedlander, Pomona College, USA
Fabio Vighi, Cardiff University, UK
Hugh Manon, Clark University, USA
Paul Eisenstein, Otterbein University, USA
Hyon Joo Yoo, University of Vermont, USA
Louis-Paul Willis, University of Québec, Canada
Psychoanalytic
Film Theory
and The Rules
of the Game
Todd mcGowan
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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Bloomsbury Academic
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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks
of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2015
© Todd McGowan, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization
acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this
publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN: HB: 978-1-6289-2084-0
PB: 978-1-6289-2082-6
ePub: 978-1-6289-2086-4
ePDF: 978-1-6289-2085-7
Series: Film Theory in Practice
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
For Quentin Martin
who taught me the rules of the game
while breaking them
vi
conTenTs
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
1 Psychoanalytic film theory 17
2 Psychoanalysis and The Rules of the Game 91
Conclusion: Psychoanalytic film theory
today 163
Further Reading 171
Index 173
acknowledGmenTs
Thanks to Katie Gallof at Bloomsbury for pursuing this series
of books and for trusting me with the weight of directing it.
She has been a constant source of support and an enthusiastic
partner.
My colleagues in film and television at the University of
Vermont have been vitally important for my thinking about the
cinema. Thanks to Deb Ellis, Dave Jenemann, Hilary Neroni,
Sarah Nilsen, and Hyon Joo Yoo.
I am indebted theoretically to many fellow travelers,
including Slavoj Žižek, Sheila Kunkle, Jennifer Friedlander,
Henry Krips, Fabio Vighi, Rick Boothby, Frances Restuccia,
Anna Kornbluh, Quentin Martin, Jean Wyatt, Ryan Engley,
Jonathan Mulrooney, Louis-Paul Willis, Adam Cottrel, Hugh
Manon, Danny Cho, Robyn Warhol, and Ken Reinhard.
Thanks especially to Walter Davis, Paul Eisenstein, and
Hilary Neroni, who simply establish the rules for me.
Introduction
The intrinsic conjunction
It is surprising that psychoanalysis took as long as it did
to gain a foothold in film theory. The connection between
psychoanalytic thought and the cinema is readily apparent.
It is not purely coincidental that both originated in the same
year. In 1895, Freud and Joseph Breuer published Studies on
Hysteria, and Louis and Auguste Lumière screened their first
films in the Grand Café in Paris. Film theorists have often
noted this historical connection, but it is not just the year of
their origin that psychoanalysis and cinema have in common.
Psychoanalysis makes its most important discoveries through
the analysis of dreams, and to this day, the cinema remains a
dream factory, a form of public dreaming.
Even though Studies on Hysteria marked the discovery of
psychoanalysis as a talking cure for neurosis, the most important
book in the development of psychoanalysis as a theory rather
than just a therapeutic practice was The Interpretation of
Dreams, which Freud alone published in 1900.1 When he
wrote a preface to the third English edition of the book, Freud
reflected on his career to that point and claimed that this was
his masterpiece. He said, “It contains, even according to my
present-day judgment, the most valuable of all the discoveries
it has been my good fortune to make. Insight such as this falls
to one’s lot but once in a lifetime.”2 Freud places such high
regard on The Interpretation of Dreams because the book lays
out the psychoanalytic theory of the structure of the psyche,
and it does so through the analysis of dreams.