ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that there are direct parallels between how the analyst and the analysand experience the psychoanalytic situation and how a member of the audience experiences a movie. Humans, are animals also, so that there is much in nonhuman animals with which we can identify, and into which we can therefore project many of our issues. In some movies, nonhuman animals are simply treated as humans and engage in human activities, including speech and the wearing of clothes. The chapter proposes the psychological change occurs in psychoanalysis as the result of work done on the painful affects that is associated with psychogenetically significant past events, painful affects that require certain defensive measures be instituted. D. Cronenberg makes use of the science-fiction horror format to make a complex psychological statement about the tragic potential within human nature.
