Freud still
Isn't it useful to distinguish between Freudian psychoanalysis as a now-discredited (or outmoded) approach to treating mental illness and as a heuristic device that still offers a lot as a way of understanding films (and other narratives) as cultural products? As long as it continues to provide useful insights, it doesn't matter that it is based on shaky foundations (as, with its emphasis on unconscious processes, it is destined ever to be). As a tool for analysing films and relating them to broader questions such as gender, ideology, and their relation to pleasure, it in itself harms nobody; as a means of policing what should be "normal" in human behaviour it is clearly very dangerous.
Nigel
New book: The Cinema of Steven Spielberg, Wallflower Press, 2007 (www.wallflowerpress.co.uk)
*
*
Film-Philosophy Email Discussion Salon.
After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to.
To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask]
For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon.
**
|