Birth of cinema and psychology
In the beginning, those who invented cinema were simply intrigued by the idea of representing the reality in motion. Who started the success of psychology He ignored the intertwining that he would have the cinema with the theme of psychic distress.
The two routes were born together and independent from each other: it was 1895 when the brothers Lumiere created cinema and Freud, together with Breuer, wrote his studies on hysteria.
Today the relationship between the two areas seems obvious to us – who, at least once, did not mention Psychological nuances of a film launch the first stone. We also start from the assumption that there is however a constant mental cinema, in our thoughts and emotions, present even before the invention of cinema (Italo Calvino said it).
The psychologist Hugo Mürstelberg believed that cinema and mind had mutual analogies: many cinema techniques in fact simulate the way of working the mind. He believed that the film was able to make visible psychic phenomena such as attention, memory, imaginative flow, emotional coloring. A film refers to the viewer what is in the end is not atro that one’s perceptual process.
The director and the therapist
Analogies can also be found between the work of a director and that of a therapist: both try to repeat stories. In this regard, the Moving techniquea tool conceptualized by Vittorio Guidano, employed in Pcognitive sicotherapy.
The forms of psychic discomfort and care processes become a tank from which cinema draws from the dawn: from the short film “the system of DR Gondron and prof. Plume ”by Maurice Tourneur (1913) to the narrative procedure of the analessi that opens the film” The cabinet of Dr. Caligari “by Robert Wiene (1920).
The problems concerning the mental sphere, due to their dramatic and scenic structure, contribute to enriching the fabula. The scene of a patient obliged to a psychiatric hospitalization arouses compassion for the patient and grudge towards the healthcare who uses coercive means (neglecting that what is done is in the patient’s interest). But a patient who “escapes” from a psychiatric hospital induces terror.
The dark side of the discomfort, of the unrequiet or devitalization arouses interestsurprises, moves, scares, makes us ask questions. Sometimes it reassures us thinking that what we observe is something else and does not concern us, thus feeling sheltered.
The role of cinema in the stigma on mental health
Seen by the eyes of a professional, the representation of the psychic discomfort in the cinema, most of the time, is a rather marked caricature that can be informed that strengthen the stigma.
It is true that the task of a director is not to educate the public but rather to succeed in reaching as many people as possible, which then translates into the greatest economic profit.
However, reflections to do remain. For some time, health bodies have enhanced mental health education trying to reduce obstacles to care paths. Try to inform about the care tools and to improve the awareness and acceptance of the frequency of psychic discomfort at a social level.
Cinema can influence the attitude of the public towards the different forms of mental discomfort much more than contact with real situations. The spectator’s eye coincides with that of the camera and so we make ourselves brought where the director leads us, distracted and absorbed by the narrative events.
There Cinema power It is well higher than the other means of communication in the construction of an idea and it is not easy for the viewer to identify the limit between a caricature and an understanding of the real phenomenon.
The projected images have the privilege of making us grasped the point of view of those who have a mental discomfort but also run the risk of being able to induce, with the exasperation of expressive drama, distortions that concern patients and careful.
Psychic discomfort in patients
There are films in which the main purpose is to describe a specific disorder, others in which a mental problem is perceived which, however, is on the sidelines of the story, without needing to deepen it.
In others the mental discomfort is mentioned to increase the state of tension In the viewer and becomes only a pretext to insert themes ranging from eroticism, violence or supernatural phenomena.
In all types, the viewer’s attentive process can be directed towards pitistic or alarm feelings, regardless of the situation examined.
The cinematographic representations of the psychic distress Over the years they have been influenced by the spirit of time and then contributed to modifying it. The guilty conception of pre-enlightenment mental disorder represents it not as a disease but as something magical, sinful or index of a moral weakness.
A subsequent approach, which we could consider illuminating, represents mental discomfort as a consequence of a body disease. This, as such, should be treated, giving little space to the psychological components and existential or interpersonal difficulties.
Over the years, this representative mode is also overcome by inserting elements they make perceive the suffering subject no different from the normal subjectwith which he shares many intrapsychic dynamics. With sociological shades in which the conflict rather than being intrapsychic arises from relational conflicts with the other or with the social system.
The cinematographic representation: adherence to reality or fiction
It has been observed that the more serious the clinical picture represented is the more reduced adherence to what is observed in reality.
The cinema, mainly American, has produced many stereotypes far from the real life of patients, family or careful. The Topos It becomes the free and rebellious spirit, the murderous maniac, the serial seductive, the enlightened, the sadistic. All themes interpreted on the basis of imaginative causes contaminated with romantic spirit and without ever mentioning scientific references and evidence based.
The various disorders represented
It has been observed that, when we try to describe a specific disorder, the best represented disorders concern mood disorders, both in the depressive and maniacal polarity. Anxiety disorders are described in a rather reliable way even if the emphasis is placed more on behavioral components rather than mental processes.
We find a wide description of personality disorders – the most represented are the narcissistic, employee, paranoid and borderline disorder – giving prominence to the styles of poorly adaptive conduct rather than the constitutive elements of the structure or to define the disorders with its name.
Psychotic disorders are the most difficult to represent, the directors give in to the temptation of scenic dramatization, deviating so much from the disorder that is observed in clinical practice. Among the films to be saved in this area I would certainly insert “Toto le Hèros” by Jaco Van Dormael (1991) for his sobriety and analysis of the internal dialogue.
When the issue dealt with concerning substances dependencies Stereotypes abound: The hero tragically beautiful and damned appears, the free spirit that opposes the hyperconformist society, the sadistic and murderous drug addict or the humorous comedy speck.
An interesting reflection is that when they showed samples of patients films representing the disorder from which very few were affected were recognized in it. Confirming the distance between the story and the facts.
The carers
Even the representations of the carers are affected by the descriptive fashions that distinguish them in good or bad.
From the origins of silent cinema until the mid -twentieth century Psychologists and Psychiatrists They are represented as the synthesis between an oracle and a charlatan.
At the beginning of the early 60s, the carers assume a more positive nuance through which the therapeutic role that played and the difficulties in the exercise of him began to emerge. Sixty -eight ferments cover the psychologists and psychiatrists of a negative aura lasting all the 70s.
Gradually in the following decades the figure of the psychiatrist or psychologist is demytized But not enough. The caring careful appears that helps without scientific references, in a simplistic way. This happens in particular where a trauma is represented, resolved by the simple cathartic re -enactment and the feeling of love.
Over time, the constitutive heterogeneous elements of the professionalism of the therapist Which begins to take more human traits and, as humans, sometimes even with disturbances, personal crises or difficult choices to be made in a demanding work and full of responsibilities.
In conclusion
We take it for granted that what is written should not be generalized, recognizing that there are works that differ from the average trend.
The theme of mental health in movies It will still be present for a long time because the theme offers the starting point for a good story, helps to create settings and emotional states that attract the viewer who, by nature, is led to consider what he sees true.
The reality we see in a film is always filtered – but it is a transversal question present in all communicative forms – and the spectator remains the ability to always observe with a critical eye, never neglecting the border between stereotypes and information.
