PROJECTIONS: Neurosis On Film

All registrants will receive their link to join via Zoom. All attendees will also receive access to the recording, available to watch back for 1 month.

Scottish physician William Cullen coined the term ‘neurosis’ in 1769 to summarise “disorders of sense and motion caused by a general affection of the nervous system” that could not be explained physiologically. Sigmund Freud redefined and popularised the neurosis diagnosis in the 20th century, developing it as a central construct in psychoanalytic theory and practice.

Freud believed that when a person is unable to consciously process trauma from the past, they repress the agonising feelings related to the event. Over time, the individual does not recall the original incident; instead they exhibit a series of nervous symptoms such as anxiety, sadness, perfectionism, irritability, low self-worth, phobic avoidance, and obsessive thoughts. In his case study of Ernst Lanzer (the ‘Rat Man’), Freud referred to the neurotic subject as being unable to accept change in their surroundings, with pronounced difficulties in managing life patterns, and a resistance in the pursuit of satisfying experiences.

Whilst neurosis was eliminated from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980 as an official psychiatric category, it remains interesting as a theoretical concept, and cinema supplies a uniquely effective medium for conveying this network of symptoms. In this course we will look at neurosis on film and identify inhibited ‘anally retentive’ film characters – the overthinking, retreating, commitment-shy, self-punitive types – who seem to be preoccupied with the question: “what is the meaning of life?”

Advance viewing is optional, select scenes and montages will be shown during weekly sessions (see filmography below).

SCHEDULE

Session 1 [22 July]

• • Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) Blake Edwards
  • The Birds (1963) Alfred Hitchcock
  • Harold and Maude (1971) Hal Ashby
  • Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) Nagisa Ōshima
  • Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) Woody Allen
  • Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) Mike Newell

Session 2 [23 July]

• • Les Amours Imaginaires (2010) Xavier Dolan
  • Adaptation (2002) Spike Jonze
  • Into the Wild (2007) Sean Penn
  • Synecdoche, New York (2008) Charlie Kaufman
  • The Duke of Burgundy (2014) Peter Strickland
  • Knight Of Cups (2015) Terrence Malick

PROJECTIONS is psychoanalysis for film interpretation. PROJECTIONS empowers film spectators to express subjective associations they consider to be meaningful. Expertise in psychoanalytic theory is not necessary – the only prerequisite is the desire to enter and inhabit the imaginary world of film, which is itself a psychoanalytic act. MARY WILD (@psycstar), a Freudian cinephile from Montreal, is the creator of PROJECTIONS.

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