Psychonalysis notes

Primarily the work of Sigmund Freud - Oedipus / Electra complex etc

Created through infancy to protect our conscious selves from events, ideas and thoughts that are not acceptable to consciousness.

Continues to affect our conscious selves in some ways.

The unconscious is chaotic, without order and without language.

Makes itself present through ticks, slips and symptoms (e.g. Freudian slip)

Freud’s hysteria patients developed debilitating symptoms as a result of experiences or feelings that had become repressed

In the 60s and 70s Jacques Lacan presented his own brand of psychoanalysis claiming a ‘return to Freud’.

He reconceptualised Freud’s findings through the theoretical model of structural linguistics. Signification.

Lacan posited that the development of the psyche is entwined within the structures of language…language molds us as much as we mold it

Psychoanalysis provides us with a definition of the unconscious

A definition of subjecthood outside of logic and rationality

A tool to help understand motivations and meanings of art works.

A tool to help us understand how art & design affects us and why.

All in all I feel there is very little relevance to psychoanalysis in films games and animation, except for perhaps in film where subtle morals or messages are expressed, but it is done less and less in modern popular cinema.