ABSTRACT
This chapter is framed as a conversation between Carol Owens and Eve Watson, originally presented in this way at the Irish Psychoanalysis and Film Festival event “Psychoanalysing Shifting Screens – The Year the Cinemas Closed” conducted on Zoom in March 2021. The conversation picks up two separate but interwoven threads of reference to the title of the event. One line of discussion pertains to the whole business of the representation and representability of psychoanalysis on film which Owens and Watson find to be troubled and troublesome in so far as a certain absurdity prevails. They then go on to explore how the portrayal of psychoanalysis on the big screen is carried through to the small screen (on TV for example), and ultimately into the actual work of psychoanalytic practice in forms of CMA (computer mediated analysis). They reflect and comment on fundamental aspects of psychoanalysis such as “the gaze”, transference, technique, and ethics in connection with film (Secrets of the Soul, Duck Soup, Sibyl) and TV series (The Sopranos, Normal People).
