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Join us for an exploration of the archetypal and collective mythologies that defined classic cinema. Looking at film through the lens of Jungian theory provides a valuable map and language that the intrepid film maker, critic, or aficionado may use to orient themselves within the imaginal landscape of the motion picture art. As we begin to understand our collective myths through the language of classic films so too can we begin to understand ourselves.
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Programme

Chinatown (Polanski, 1974) / presented by Christopher Hauke

Chinatown is seen as the last Hollywood film led by a producer, writer, director and star working together, and not by executives trying to justify their existence. Playing J. J. Gittes this was Jack Nicholson’s first role as a leading man. Yet he spends half the time with a huge bandage on his nose. The wound is not only on his face, but on the face of Los Angeles where corruption holds the city to ransom over its water supply. That’s the collective level. At the personal, where the waters run deep, corruption is shoved in Gittes face when he is confronted by incest.

The name of the perpetrator (played by John Huston, in a rare moment that side of the camera) is Noah Cross. What a name. Flood, sacrifice and tension between opposites? Or simply the Old and New testament? Talking of names, why Chinatown? The writer Robert Towne quotes a cop, “You don’t know who’s a crook and who isn’t a crook. So in Chinatown they say: just don’t do a goddamned thing.” Chinatown is not a place it’s a state of mind.These are some of the things I will be talking about.

Bladerunner (Scott, 1982) / presented by Toby Reynolds

Ridley Scott’s landmark 1982 science fiction film, Blade Runner, has been lauded as one of the key films of both its genre, and of the 1980s. Despite a troubled production history and an initial lukewarm box office take, the groundbreaking production design and highly influential visuals ensured that the film successfully transcended its initial cult status, and it soon came to be regarded as a genre classic.

With a number of highly ambiguous onscreen individuative journeys present, there are rich rewards in analysing the film from a post-Jungian perspective. This talk will discuss and explore the various themes, discourses, archetypes and symbols that abound within the film, and map out how they are still relevant today. Finally, the film’s legacy in terms of the sequel Blade Runner 2049, (Villeneuve, 2017) will be explored in reference to the contemporaneous advance of AI and robotics and their potential cultural, social and societal impact.

It's A Wonderful Life (Capra, 1947) / presented by Christina Alvarez Lopez

The Angel’s Message: It’s Wonderful Life’ begins at a critical juncture in the protagonist’s life: on Christmas Eve 1945, in Bedford Falls (NY), George Bailey is contemplating suicide. From this moment on – and with the help of George’s guardian angel – we will travel backwards, becoming witnesses of this man’s adventures: from his early years as an audacious child to his present as a husband and father of four. What has gone so wrong in George’s life? What darkness hovers over him? ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ talks to us about the struggles of the individual – while painting a larger portrait of a place and a time in American history. The film has become a beloved Christmas movie for how it conveys Christian values and delivers its message of redemption and hope. In this talk, however, I will offer a Jungian reading centered on the process of individuation. In particular, I will focus on themes regarding midlife crisis (and the feelings of frustration, disorientation and despair that often accompany it); the role of the daimon/angel as guide and protector; and the difficult relation between the ego and the Self. All of this while looking at the elements that make of this film such a rewarding and enduring cinematic achievement.

The Godfather Trilogy (Coppolla, 1972-1990) / presented by Kevin Lu

The Godfather Trilogy– widely regarded as one of the greatest achievements in cinematic history – resonates with audiences because of its ability, it will be suggested, to capture the complexities, phantoms, and invisible loyalties governing family life. The films are a springboard to exploring both Jung’s thinking on the psychology of the family and the powerful role of the family unconscious in shaping individual development.

The trilogy not only stages the emotional consequences of, and psychology behind, how we interact with family members, but it also expresses, when read from a depth psychological perspective, why we may be compelled to do so. Crucially, not only are we responsible for the family bonds we may cultivate, break and repair, we are equally accountable for the relationships we foster with an internal cast or ‘family’ of archetypal figures, which we ignore at our peril.

Gaslight (Cukor, 1944) / presented by Judith Cooper

The term Gaslighting gained traction, becoming ubiquitous, after the 2016 U.S. election; by 2022 it was named “word of the year.” This 1944 film, Gaslight, based on the 1938 play, is the source of the term. In the film, the image of the gaslight is a potent living symbol representing her ego consciousness as it is overtaken, possessed by his manipulative control of her and her own identification with the negative animus figure of her husband.  The film then becomes a critique of romantic love, of pressures society places on women to commit themselves to men without question, without discernment, of suppressing a connection to their own body-knowing intelligence when it conflicts with a romantic ideal in intimate relationships. We will explore how the film reveals the embodied movement and unfolding of the archetypal energies of the trickster and the animus, in both their negative and positive poles. This classic, award-winning film, resonant of a Bluebeard fairy-tale, continues to illuminate relational dynamics in our patriarchal culture.

Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964) / presented by Ronnie Landau

Hitchcock, a rather mercurial character, struck me as an excellent choice for a Jungian approach to films. His themes so often deal with the shadowy aspects of the human psyche. We are revolted, captivated, terrified, disgusted, and fascinated by his frank and mysterious approach to the complexities of the human spirit. The movie “Marnie” released in 1964 was Hitchcock’s 49th film. The film circumambulates around an innocent looking, beautiful, mysterious dark female protagonist called Marnie. Is she a thief, a seductress, a young woman suffering from a severe neurotic condition, an anima projection of the male protagonist Mark? What does she illicit in the viewer? This controversial film presents sexual and dark erotic themes as well as it amplifies themes of personal and collective aspects of Carl Jung’s notion Shadow. In many ways it painfully reveals attitudes towards the feminine, paternity and patriarchal violence that continues to plague humanity. How do we relate to feminine aspects of ourselves? What needs greater healing and integration? What does it evoke in you? 

               Time
Requirements

You will need a total of 11 hours for the webinar content. 


Programme
      Faculty

CRISTINA 
ALVAREZ LOPEZ

Cristina Álvarez López is a film critic, writer, filmmaker, occasional teacher, and general practitioner of image sorcery. During childhood, she became fascinated by the power of words and images; most of her adult life has been spent pursuing different ways of approaching and combining them. She started to write professionally about film in 2009. She has contributed chapters to a dozen books, her texts and audiovisual essays have regularly appeared in print and online magazines, and she has lectured at different schools and universities. She has been steadily reading, wrestling with and incorporating Jungian and post-Jungian psychology to her work and life (with special interest in tracking and elucidating the meaning and value of crisis, depression and “the dark night of the soul”). In 2020, she began making little films and experimenting with different kinds of image-work. 

KEVIN
LU

Kevin Lu, PhD, is Professor of Applied Psychoanalysis and Head of Department (Practice) at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. He is the former Head of the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies (University of Essex), was Director of the MA Jungian and Post-Jungian Studies between 2009 and 2022, and is now an Honorary Professor in PPS.He has served on the Executive Committee of the International Association for Jungian Studies and is a member of the Adjunct Faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute. His publications include articles and chapters on Jung’s relationship to the discipline of history, Arnold J. Toynbee’s use of analytical psychology, critical assessments of the theory of cultural complexes, sibling relationships in the Chinese/Vietnamese Diaspora, Jungian perspectives on graphic novels and popular culture, and therapeutic, arts-based approaches to archival research. His papers on racial hybridity and archetypal thematic analysis (the latter co-authored with Ann Yeoman) were awarded the scholarship prize for best article published in the IJJS (2019 and 2023 respectively). 

JUDITH
COOPER

Judith Cooper, PsyD is a clinical psychologist and diplomate Jungian Analyst in private practice in Chicago. A graduate and member of the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago, she teaches and supervises in the Institute’s Analyst Training Program, the two-year certificate Jungian Psychotherapy and Studies Program, and has lectured widely on the anima/animus and the use of film in clinical treatment.Dr. Cooper served as a clinical supervisor and director of training at an APA-accredited psychology doctoral internship program at a community mental health center. She taught a year-long course in the Institute’s Analyst Training Program on Eros in Analysis in 2016, and more recently a class on love and sexuality, Seeking Embodiment. She presented at the Art and Psyche Conference in Sicily, Italy in 2015 on Jung and Barthes, When Art Wounds. A book chapter, co-authored with Gus Cwik, Psy.D., “Numinous images of a New Ethic: A Jungian view of Kieslowski’s The Decalogue” has been published in The Routledge International Handbook of Jungian Film Studies, 2018.

RONNIE

LANDAU


Ronnie Landau MA, LPC, is a Certified Jungian Psychoanalyst and senior training analyst and supervisor with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts. Her private practice is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ms. Landau has served the Jungian community in her previous roles as President and Director of Training for the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts. She is currently President Elect for CNAJSA. (Council of North American Jungian Societies) Ms. Landau lectures widely throughout the U.S and Zurich, Switzerland. She is the author of The Queen of Sheba and Her Hairy Legs, The Exile and Redemption of the Erotic Feminine in Western Monotheism and Jungian Process. Ms. Landau is currently interested in cultural trauma, genocide, and the impact of these forces on the psyche and the collective.

CHRISTOPHER 

HAUKE



Christopher Hauke is a Jungian analyst in private practice and Senior Lecturer emeritus at Goldsmiths, University of London interested in the applications of depth psychology to a wide range of social and cultural phenomena including film. His books include Jung and the Postmodern: The Interpretation of Realities, (2000); Human Being Human. Culture and the Soul (2005) Visible Mind. Movies, Modernity and the Unconscious.(2013). He has co-edited two collections of Jungian film writing: Jung and Film. Post-Jungian Takes on the Moving Image (2001) and Jung and Film II – The Return (2011).His short films, documentaries One Colour Red and Green Ray and the psychological drama Again premiered in London venues and at congresses in Barcelona, Zurich and Montreal. In addition to new film projects he is now researching the limits of rationality, and the place of the irrational in our lives. http://christopherhauke.com/

TOBY  

REYNOLDS



Toby Reynolds is an independent film scholar specialising in gender, auteurs, film history, and post-Jungian screen perspectives. His first book, The American Father Onscreen is now available from Routledge, and he has also had chapters published on American Beauty for The Routledge International Handbook of Jungian Film Studies, and on the Jason Bourne franchise for Gender and Action Films (Emerald Press). His cinema podcast on under-rated and under-appreciated films, Dr Kino’s Film Emporium, is available from a number of major streaming sites. He also likes good coffee, a nice Shiraz, and vintage leather jackets. Preferably black.
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