ABSTRACT
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. In the movie theatre they do not need to defend themselves against other unwanted emotions such as the shameful feeling of exposure that they might have to contend with when revealing them in a real relationship. Within the affect-charged psychological realm that cinema sustains, self-reflection may occur and the meaningfulness of the experience evolve. In the cinema spectators are more open to being moved emotionally than in their daily lives.
