ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses Otto Preminger’s 1944 film Laura as a significant contributor to his own early initiation into otherness. Drawing on ideas from Esther Harding, Karen Horney, C.G. Jung, Ann Ulanov, Marie-Louise von Franz and Bernard Williams, among others, Beebe sees the character Laura as an ‘anima woman’ who exists for, and is controlled by, the projections of others until she begins to find herself when she learns that she has mistakenly been believed to be the victim of a murder. Laura’s lack of connection to her own spirit, or animus, is captured in a portrait that depicts her more as a fantasy than as a real woman. Aspects of her shadow are personified in the characters of her rather misfit friends and relations. Beebe applies his eight-function, eight-archetype model of psychological type to help the reader identify the parts of Laura’s personality that begin to take root as the film’s story moves towards its close.
