Role of Cinema and Psychoanalysis in Affective Experience

Abstract

This paper focuses on a peculiar aspect of film viewing, specifically the way in which—interacting with the viewer and their own story—visual images create identifications that can make the viewing a more or less disturbing affective experience. Psychoanalysis and cinema have an indissoluble connection. In particular, the language of cinema comes very close to that of psychoanalysis, given that movies are made according to our psychism. On the basis of this relationship, filmic narration often becomes part of patients’ session, especially teenagers, allowing us to explore areas of the mind hitherto silent.

Keywords

• cinema
• psychoanalysis
• horror
• adolescence
• affective experience