ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author looks at a number of puzzle films from a psychoanalytic perspective that is post-classical and relational in its intent, centrally concerned with trauma and dissociation, and based on the work of Ronald Fairbairn. He outlines an approach to film based on Fairbairn's object relations theory. Fairbairn's theory was centrally concerned with understanding trauma, multiplicity and dissociation and provides a model for creativity and psychic growth as restitution through his writings on art and creativity. In Fairbairn's original diagram, upon which this is based, although he described the ego-ideal as being in the preconscious he didn't represent it on the diagram. The author describes a psychoanalytic approach to understanding some puzzle films grounded in Fairbairn's psychology of dynamic structure view of unconscious phantasy, dream, endopsychic structure, trauma, and dissociation.
