ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to offer a fresh way through which to conceptualise the cinematic experience in a Jungian manner. In doing so it draws on clinical theory derived from Jung’s writing about ‘image’, although in terms of both practice and its application to the cinema this takes the discussion some distance from his original formulation. The chapter starts by considering viewers’ knowing – or, to use a more psychological term, conscious engagement with – films, and it reflects on the need to interpret and find meaning in what unfolds on the screen. Here Jung’s theorisation about ‘image’ offers a productive way through which to conceptualise this process. It proceeds by suggesting that actually there are three images that need to be considered, namely: the image on the screen; the image that arises from the act of interpretation; and the third image that comes about as the result of an individual’s largely unconscious relationship with a film.
