CHAPTER EIGHT Psychoanalytic Film Theory Richard Allen In this chapter I shall outline some of the main contours of psychoanalytic film theory in the Anglo-American context since the late 1960s. I shall begin with a number of methodological remarks. First, since a vast amount of words have been expended on the subject, my account will necessarily be selective. Second, since the field is so wide and varied, I have, where possible, focussed on the elucidation of key concepts, positions, and arguments that cut across the writings of different authors. Third, psychoanalytic film theory is a notoriously opaque discourse and often assumes a large amount of prior knowledge on the part of the vexed and taxed reader. In order to remain intelligible, I have employed the strategy of trying to reconstruct the arguments of psychoanalytic theorists in my own words. Fourth, the history of psychoanalytic film theory is one that often displays an arbitrary selection and deployment of psychoanalytic ideas and manifests a blurred or distorted self-understanding by film theorists of the status of the concepts they are using. This chapter seeks to diagnose some of the conceptual confusions and misunderstandings that are manifested in psychoanalytic film theory, as well as to plot a history of ideas. The result, I hope, is an account of psychoanalytic film theory that will provide impetus for reflection and reconsid- eration, rather than simply regurgitate a seemingly obscure and arguably mor- ibund set of doctrines. In the first section I shall sketch the reasons why psychoanalysis has occupied such a prominent place in thinking about cinema and lay out a series of distinc- tions that will serve as a framework for subsequent discussion. In section 2, I shall sketch in more detail the ways in which Freudian and Lacanian theories have been used to explain the affinities of cinema with the irrational and the nature of the spectator’s identification with the cinematic image and with visual fictions. In section 3 I shall explore how, by using psychoanalysis to diagnose the hypnotic power of mass culture, cultural theorists in the Marxist tradition sought to explain the seemingly irrational allegiance of the masses to a system that perpe- tuated their own subordination, and how Freud’s dream analysis became a model for decoding and thereby exposing the ideological character of specific films. 123 A Companion to Film Theory Edited by Toby Miller, Robert Stam Copyright © 1999, 2004 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd