Like the subject of last month’s post, The Horse Whisperer, Basic Instinct plays on male fantasies about women’s genitalia and castration, but with a very different approach. Continue reading Castration anxiety and feminine masochism in “Basic Instinct”
Category: Movies
Mortensen replaces Waltz as Freud
Roadkill, Review of Three Films about Aileen Wourmos, reviewed by Harvey Roy Greenberg
Click Here To Read: Roadkill, Review of Two Films about Aileen Wourmos, reviewed by Harvey Roy Greenberg. Monster, Aileen Wourmos: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer, and the Selling of Aileen Wourmos, and most of the other films cited in Dr. Greenberg’s reviews are available either through Netflix, Ebay, or Amazon.com, as well as special internet sites. Dr. Harvey Roy Greenberg, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, publishes widely on cinema, media, and popular culture. Other reviews and essays can be found at his website, http://www.doctorgreenberg.net. Dr. Greenberg welcomes comment, criticism, and further discussion, of his reviews.
“The Horse Whisperer”: Soothing the Wounds of Horses and Women
by Herbert H. Stein
The Horse Whisperer begins with trauma for both the film’s protagonists and for its audience, which is forced to watch a particularly disturbing accident. The rest of the film is devoted to healing that trauma and the traumata of the unconscious fantasies it represents. Continue reading “The Horse Whisperer”: Soothing the Wounds of Horses and Women
The Summer of Aviya
Living With Strangers: “The Matrix”
This was published in the PANY Bulletin, Spring, 2002. Obviously it was influenced by 9/11. It also refers to a spate of films at that time spurred by virtual reality, a theme that has been taken up again with the release of Avatar. It links with last month’s “Christmas post” in the reference to Anna Freud’s The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense.
“The suspicion and asceticism of the ego are primarily directed against the subject’s fixation to all the love objects of his childhood. The result of this is … that the young person tends to isolate himself; from this time on, he will live with the members of his family as though with strangers.” (A. Freud, 1936 p. 166)
“… you look around, what do you see—businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, the very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy.” (The Matrix) Continue reading Living With Strangers: “The Matrix”
The Blank Page
Click Here To Read: The Blank Page: The Institute Of Psychoanalysis’ 2010 Screening Conditions Programme Launches With Exploration of Literature in Film World Press Release Websiste on the January 9th, 2010.
Click Here to Read: Sally Ann Howes singing in “Send in the Clowns” from the New York Opera’s TV special of A Little Night Music.
Reel or real?
The Movies On My Mind: Devilish Appeal, Review by Harvey Roy Greenberg
Click Here To Read: The Movies On My Mind: Devilish Appeal: Review of Reversal of Fortune, directed by Barbet Schroeder, Reviewed by Harvey Roy Greenberg. Reversal of Fortune and most of the other films cited in Dr. Greenberg’s review are available either through Netflix, Ebay, or Amazon.com, as well as special internet sites. Dr. Harvey Roy Greenberg, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, publishes widely on cinema, media, and popular culture. Other reviews and essays can be found at his website, http://www.doctorgreenberg.net. Dr. Greenberg welcomes comment, criticism, and further discussion, of his reviews.
