Psychoanalytic Takes on Cinema 2012–2013

“Where they love, they have no desire; where they desire they cannot love.”

Sigmund Freud, 1912

The 2012–2013 film series examines the theme of desire.

• Course coordinator: Cindy Bollman, PhD
• Location: 6912 Ayr Lane, Bethesda, Maryland
• Time: 7:30 p.m.
• Cost: $300 with continuing education credit; $250 member rate; or $175 for the general audience without continuing education credit

Film Schedule

September 21: The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste)

2001 · 130 minutes

Erika, a highly respected but severe piano instructor at a Vienna conservatory, lives with her domineering mother and has neither a husband nor a lover. When gifted student Walter becomes attracted to her, he remains undeterred by her icy personality. The film explores discipline, intimacy, repression, and the extremes of desire.

The film competed at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Magimel received acting awards and writer-director Michael Haneke received the Grand Prix.

Discussant: Tarpley Long, MSW

October 19: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon)

2007 · 114 minutes

Jean-Dominique Bauby, the real-life editor of the French edition of Elle, suffered a stroke at age 43 that left him with locked-in syndrome. Based on the memoir he dictated through eye blinks, Julian Schnabel’s film contrasts the bodily prison of the “diving bell” with the freedom of imagination and memory represented by the “butterfly.” It considers desire, mental life, and the limits of realization.

Discussant: Robert Winer, MD

November 16: 500 Days of Summer

2009 · 95 minutes

Tom, an aspiring architect working as a greeting-card writer, falls deeply in love with his employer’s new secretary, Summer. Tom believes in soul mates, while Summer rejects conventional ideas of romance. The nonlinear comedy follows his effort to reconcile idealized love with the reality of their relationship.

Discussant: Angela Martin, MSN, CS-P

January 18: The Man Who Loved Women

1977 · 104 minutes

Bertrand Morane spends his evenings pursuing women and his early mornings writing about those encounters. François Truffaut’s film develops its seemingly simple story into a portrait of a complex man driven by an intractable compulsion. It is neither an indictment nor a defense of his behavior, but an examination of desire and its consequences.

Discussant: Marcario Giraldo, PhD

February 15: The Night Porter

1974 · 118 minutes

In 1957 Vienna, hotel porter Max encounters Lucia, a former concentration-camp prisoner whom he abused while serving as an SS officer. Their reunion revives a destructive relationship as Max’s former comrades attempt to eliminate witnesses to their crimes. The film examines trauma, power, complicity, and compulsive repetition.

Discussant: Bruce Sklarew, MD

March 15: That Obscure Object of Desire

1977 · 100 minutes

Adapted from Pierre Louÿs’s novel La Femme et le Pantin, Luis Buñuel’s final film recounts the relationship between Mathieu, a wealthy middle-aged Frenchman, and Conchita, his 19-year-old former chambermaid. Their surreal contest of attraction, refusal, and manipulation becomes a struggle for control.

Discussant: Richard Waugaman, MD

April 5: Elegy

2008

David Kepesh, a detached cultural critic and professor, begins a relationship with a 24-year-old graduate student that unsettles his carefully controlled life. Adapted from Philip Roth’s novel The Dying Animal, Isabel Coixet’s drama explores obsession, aging, beauty, vulnerability, and the challenge desire presents to the professor’s ego.

Discussant: Julio Szmuilowicz, MD

Educational Objectives

1. Identify selected psychoanalytic concepts and issues related to film characters and relationships.
2. Use psychoanalytic theory to interpret the text, subtexts, and narrative devices of films.

The program is intended for Washington Center for Psychoanalysis members, graduate and trainee mental health professionals who use psychoanalytic therapy, and others interested in applying psychoanalytic principles to film.

Continuing Education

The live activity offered a maximum of 21 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits. Physicians were instructed to claim credit only in proportion to their participation.

The Washington Center for Psychoanalysis offered psychologists a maximum of 21 continuing education credit hours and designated each meeting for three social-work credit hours, up to 21 hours for the complete series.

The program stated that none of its planners or presenters had relevant financial relationships to disclose.