Psychoanalytic Film Theory: A Contemporary Introduction

In Psychoanalytic Film Theory: A Contemporary Introduction, Ben Tyrer presents an overview of psychoanalytic approaches to screen media, offering a reconsideration of psychoanalytic film theory while making the case for new forms of psychoanalytic film thinking.

Tyrer takes a series of key psychoanalytic concepts - including dream, identification, difference, object, and ideology - and charts their development in, and impact on, film theory. Considering foundational essays by Jean-Louis Baudry, Christian Metz, Laura Mulvey, and Jacqueline Rose, and contemporary conversations on cinema in the work of Joan Copjec, Slavoj Zizek, Alenka Zupančič, and Todd McGowan, the book considers the major insights and accomplishments of psychoanalytic film theory in contemporary context while offering a view of the intellectual life of psychoanalysis outside the clinic. Paying close attention to filmmakers such as Andrea Arnold, Joanna Hogg, Boots Riley, Celine Sciamma, and Wong Kar Wai, Tyrer demonstrates the continued importance of psychoanalysis when thinking about film and the pertinence of psychoanalytic film theory beyond its historical focus on classical Hollywood cinema.

Articulating complex ideas in an accessible way, this book is a vital starting point for students and scholars approaching psychoanalytic film theory for the first time, as well as scholars and analysts wishing to expand their knowledge and enhance their practice.

Ben Tyrer is a Lecturer in Film Theory at Middlesex University in London, UK. He is the co-editor of Femininity and Psychoanalysis: Cinema, Culture, Theory (2019) and Psychoanalysis and the Unrepresentable: From culture to the clinic (2016).