FS4021: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CINEMA B (2015-2016)

Course Aims

1. Introduce psychoanalytic film theory.
2. Analyse films with emphasis on psychologies of character, spectator and space. 
3. Focus on psychoanalysis as rubric for studying the history of film and film criticism.

Main Learning Outcomes

Students will develop knowledge and understanding of:

1. theories and key issues relating to the study of film and visual culture;
2. film’s relationship to other forms of visual media; and
3. significant works and movements in film and visual culture from around the world and across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and key critical frameworks and a precise rigorous language for discussing questions of film and visual culture.

Students will develop the ability to:

1. engage in critical thinking, through the evaluation and challenging of abstract ideas, using appropriate research methodologies and synthesising ideas drawn from a variety of sources to enable reflection upon key questions relating to film and visual culture;
2. read film closely, identifying patterns (repetitions, developments, sites of difference and disunity);
3. engage with the process of learning in a constructive and self-motivated fashion, by following research interests beyond seminar discussion and developing arguments independently;
4. in seminar situations articulate views and engage in reflective discussion, responding with evidence to other points of view; and
5. write clearly and construct coherent arguments.

Course Content

Having emerged as contemporaries during the fin-de-siècle, psychoanalysis and cinema have a complex history of both attraction and estrangement. Whether deploying photography to capture the spasms and symptoms of hysteria or using the cinema to reveal the subjective desires at work in dreams, thinkers from Charcot to Freud, Lacan to Zizek have found in film a powerful means of reflecting, translating and shaping the unconscious. This seminar will first examine the history of psychoanalysis and cinema’s clinical, philosophical and filmic interactions before approaching film works as case studies of specific pathologies and concepts (psychosis, perversion, trauma etc.). Films by Pabst, Powell, Hitchcock, Haneke, Lynch, Svankmajer, Huston, Olivier, Winocour, Cronenberg and others will be considered.

This course cannot be taken as part of a graduating curriculum with the level 3 version, Psychoanalysis and Cinema A.

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

View FS4021 Timetable

More Information about Week Numbers

1st Attempt

100% Continuous assessment: 1 short essay, 1500-2500 words (35%); 1 research essay 3000-4000 words (45%); Discussion Posts & Portfolio (20%); Seminar Assessment (10%)

Resit

1 research essay, 4000 words (100%)

Students are expected to complete Blackboard submissions each week, on which feedback is provided.

The essay is completed during the course. Feedback on this work will be provided to the students, thus helping them to prepare for the research essay.

Formal feedback will be provided on both essays in the form of written comments provided through Turn-it-In on MyAberdeen. Students will also be encouraged to discuss their performance on a one-to-one basis with the course co-ordinator. Written feedback will be offered on short written responses. Informal feedback on contributions to seminars will be offered on an on-going basis and students will also receive feedback in the form of a seminar assessment mark and written comments.

None.