This morning BanterFlix’s Editor-in-Chief Jim McClean sat down with Psychoanalyst Dr Eve Watson (APPI) at the Strand Arts Centre to chat about her presentation at a special event organized by The Northern Ireland Institute of Human Relations’ Psychoanalytic Film Club.
We’ve transcribed some of this morning’s Q&A session.
Hi Eve before we chat especially about this year’s presentation could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and what made you start to use the medium of cinema as a platform for discussing complex psychoanalytic issues?
Hi Jim, I have long been interested in and passionate about film from the time I was a child. I got that passion from my Dad and his mother, my grandmother. Later I studied film in college in the USA where I encountered the work of Freud and Lacan for the first time film and media studies, where I learned about psychoanalysis. In the USA, the work of Lacan, in particular, is used in film theory and cinema studies.
This will be fifth-year presenting a presentation for the Northern Ireland Institute of Human Relations, last year you used Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris as a platform for a presentation on grief and the mourning process, now that nearly 12 months have passed how have you reflected on that event and the topics raised?
I have and continue to ponder the film Solaris and argue that in general its key themes of mourning and loss are inadequately worked over for people and are deeply affecting. Experiences of loss are personal tragedies and surviving them is, well, life. I think that’s a key message of Solaris. Surviving an overwhelming loss. Even if that means entering a madness.
This year you’ve picked John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place, can you tell our readers why you’ve picked this film and what topics you’ll be seeking to address throughout your presentation?
This film is extraordinary. It is representative of the existential crises of our times and puts them centre stage. We may have arrived at the most technological and scientifically advanced period in human history but this film shows we have never felt so vulnerable, so lonely, so desirous of family and community, so powerless, and so resourceful in ways of managing our imperfections.
Krasinski’s film was a huge box-office success when you use such a widely-known and well-received film do you feel that helps make the topics you seek to explore within these presentations more accessible for the non-academics (like myself)?
I do, I hope so. I think that people like the depth of analysis into the condition of being human that psychoanalysis offers. A psychoanalysis of almost anything is possible. But this film is ripe for the picking!
From a professional point of view how useful a tool is the medium of cinema in creating a better understanding of the topics you deal with and making them much more accessible to someone (like me) who might feel daunted by some of the highbrow concepts within Psychology?
I think film can work like a case study and can be useful in highlighting many aspects of the human condition. I’m not saying a film and a case study are the same but film can be a good medium of representation for all kinds of problems, issues, challenges, successes and traits that make human beings so profoundly complex.
We love the visual field us humans, and film is a good medium for conveying psychological drama and conflict. It puts it right into visual connection and causes us to be interested in it.
What advice would you offer your peers who might never have considered using cinema as a reference point for exploring/discussing psychoanalytic issues within their profession?
In psychoanalysis, the case study rules but all forms of art – literature, film, visual and performance art – can convey a range and depth of human emotion and tell a story, or circumscribe a void or loss or absence. That is psychodrama. These can be evoked in a viewer or reader. Haven’t we always needed art forms to help us find and express our emotions?
Generally speaking what are the films so far within 2019 that you’re itching to sink your psychoanalytic teeth into for possible presentations in the future?
So far…The Dead Don’t Die (love it!), Pain and Glory and Ad Astra…
For my last question, what films would you recommend for further viewing beyond A Quiet Place for anyone interested in the topics your presentation will explore?
Solaris, The Shape of Water, Birdman, Melancholia, Blade Runner 2049, Black Mirror, most David Lynch films, Elysium.
You’ll be able to hear more of Dr Watson on a future episode of the BanterFlix Movie Review Podcast.