Cinema as Therapy: Grief and transformational film

237 Pages·2015·0.964 MB·English

by  John Izod, Joanna Dovalis

CINEMA AS THERAPY
Loss is an inescapable reality of life, and individuals need to develop a capacity to grieve in
order to mature and live life to the full. Yet most western movie audiences live in cultures
that do not value this necessary process and filmgoers finding themselves deeply moved by a
particular film are often left wondering why. In Cinema as Therapy, John Izod and Joanna
Dovalis set out to fill a gap in work on the conjunction of grief, therapy and cinema.
Looking at films including M illion Dollar Baby, The Son’s Room, Birth and T he Tree of Life,
Cinema as Therapy offers an understanding of how deeply emotional life can be stirred at the
movies. Izod and Dovalis note that cinema is a medium that engages people in a virtual
dialogue with their own and their culture’s unconscious, more deeply than is commonly
thought. By analysing the meaning of each film and the root cause of the particular losses
featured, the authors demonstrate how our experiences in the movie theatre create an
opportunity to prepare psychologically for the inevitable losses we must all eventually face.
In recognising that the movie theatre shares symbolic features with both the church and the
therapy room, the reader sees how it becomes a sacred space where people can encounter
the archetypal and ease personal suffering through laughter or tears, without inhibition or
fear, to reach a deeper understanding of themselves.
Cinema as Therapy will be essential reading for therapists, students and academics working
in film studies and looking to engage with psychological studies in depth as well as filmgoers
who want to explore their relationship with the screen. The book includes a glossary of
Jungian and Freudian terms, which enhances the clarity of the text and the understanding of
the reader.
John Izod is Emeritus Professor of screen analysis at the University of Stirling. He has
published several books, including Screen, Culture, Psyche: A Post-Jungian Approach to Working
with the Audience (Routledge).
Joanna Dovalis is a marriage and family therapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology,
specialising in grief work. She works in private practice in southern California, USA.
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CINEMA AS
THERAPY
Grief and transformational fi lm
John Izod and Joanna Dovalis
First published 2015
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 John Izod and Joanna Dovalis
The rights of John Izod and Joanna Dovalis to be identified as authors of
this work have been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Izod, John, 1940-
Cinema as therapy : grief and transformational film / John Izod and Joanna
Dovalis.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Loss (Psychology) in motion pictures. 2. Grief in motion pictures.
3. Bereavement–Psychological aspects. I. Dovalis, Joanna. II. Title.
PN1995.9.L59I95 2015
791.43’653–dc23
2014030158
ISBN: 978-0-415-71867-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-71868-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73158-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Cenveo Publisher Services
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements v ii
1 I ntroduction 1
PART 1
Encountering phases of grief 11
2 B irth (2004): Eternal grieving of the spotless mind 13
3 T sotsi (2005) 34
4 M illion Dollar Baby (2004) 46
PART 2
Transitions to wholeness 61
5 T rois Couleurs: Bleu (1993) 63
6 T rois Couleurs: Blanc (1994) 79
7 T rois Couleurs: Rouge (1994) 95
vi Contents
PART 3
Transcending the personal 117
8 T he Son’s Room (2001) 119
9 S pring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring (2003) 131
10 M orvern Callar (2002) 148
11 A pproaching The Tree of Life 168
12 T he Tree of Life (2011) 175
13 E nvoi 2 02
Glossary 204
References 215
Index 222
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We gratefully recognise the generous advice we received from Jana Branch, Isabelle
Gourdin-Sangouard, Katharina Lindner, Nadin Mai, Kathleen Morison and George
Rosch.
Earlier versions of certain chapters were published previously. We acknowledge
with thanks their editors’ permission to republish them here. ‘ Birth: Eternal Grieving
of the Spotless Mind’ in Jung and Film II: The Return ed. Christopher Hauke and Luke
Hockley (London: Routledge, July 2011) 66–91. ‘T sotsi’, S pring 76 (Fall 2006) 2,
317–24. ‘M illion Dollar Baby: Boxing Grief’, Kinema 24 (Fall 2005) 5–22. ‘Grieving,
Therapy, Cinema and Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs: Bleu’ , T he San Francisco Jung Institute
Library Journal 25, 3 (Summer 2006) 49–73. ‘Grieving, Therapy, Cinema and Kieslowski’s
Trois Couleurs: Blanc’, Jung Journal, 2, 3 (Summer 2008) 39–57. ‘Grieving, Therapy,
Cinema and Kieslowski’s T rois Couleurs: Rouge’ , Jung Journal, 2, 4, (Fall 2008) 70–94.
‘Physician, Heal Thyself: T he Son’s Room’ , Kinema 37 (Spring 2012) 5–20.
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1
INTRODUCTION
Cinema is pre-eminently the medium that engages people in a virtual dialogue with
their own and their culture’s unconscious, more deeply than is commonly taken for
granted. The movie theatre shares symbolic features with both the church and
the therapy room: all are sacred spaces where people can encounter the archetypal
and ease personal suffering, in the case of the cinema whether through laughter or
tears, without inhibition or fear. Yet bizarrely, there is a dearth of writing from a
psychological perspective on the conjunction of grief, therapy and cinema. The
present authors propose to occupy that gap.
We focus on grief for several reasons. Inescapable in life, it frequently comprises
the core element of feature films, both popular and artistic. This is not accidental.
Individuals need to develop the capacity to grieve in order to mature fully. Yet
most Western movie audiences live in cultures that do not teach people how to
engage in this necessary process. Personal growth becomes stunted, choices limited
by what has been left behind. For that reason, depth therapists find that much of
their work becomes devoted to clients’ unresolved grief.
Archetypal symbols penetrate the emotions at a deep level and give the cinema
its power to bypass the conscious state and go into the unconscious. Immersion in
film viewing distracts the ego so that it disengages from its usual function as the
primary filter of awareness. In fact the ego is busy anchoring itself in and assembling
the story from the film’s plot (the stream of shocks provided by images, dialogue
and sounds). Meanwhile, the unconscious, stimulated by symbols in the film,
releases archetypal energies in the spectator’s psyche. Through their involvement
in this process, spectators are freed from their usual inhibitions, which allows them
to connect to their emotional lives. In identifying certain characters or familiar
situations with aspects of their own lives, they project disowned parts of the self
onto the screen. That enables them to receive what the screen presents them with
as it reflects their own projections back at them. Cinema is thus, as we shall see, an