Participants: Harvey Roy Greenberg, George Makari, Brigitte Peucker (moderator), Dana Polan, Daphne Merkin
"In the 1920s, film studios around the world sought to capitalize on the public's curiosity about the newborn science of psychoanalysis. In 1925, Hans Neumann (of Ufa's Kulturfilm office) contacted members of Sigmund Freud's inner circle with a plan to make a dramatic film that explores the mystifying process of the interpretation of dreams. With the help of noted psychologists Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs, and under the direction of G.W. Pabst (Pandora's Box), Secrets of a Soul was completed.
"Werner Krauss, who had played the deranged Dr. Caligari six years earlier, stars as a scientist who is tormented by an irrational fear of knives and the irresistible compulsion to murder his wife. Driven to the brink of madness by fantastic nightmares (designed by Erno Metzner and photographed by Guido Seeber in a brilliant mix of expressionism and surrealism), he encounters a psychoanalyst who offers to treat the perplexing malady."
-From the Kino International website
Since their respective debuts in 1895, the careers of psychoanalysis and cinema have entwined and inspired one another, and played an essential role in the ethos of modernism. Pabst's film marks the first open encounter between the two disciplines, and highlights both the affinities and the mistranslations latent between them. The screening will be followed by a roundtable discussion that, using Pabst's film as touchstone, will explore the intricate relationship between film and psychoanalysis, and how they have come together to influence how we view ourselves and the world around us.
Harvey Roy Greenberg practices adult and adolescent psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and psychopharmocology in Manhattan. Dr. Greenberg writes frequently on the psychoanalytic study of cinema, media, and popular culture. His reviews and essays on film and popular culture have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Arts and Leisure Section, Film Quarterly, The Psychoanalytic Review, Camera Obscura, The Journal of Popular Film and Television, Cineaste, Film and Philosophy, Projections, and Forward. He is the author of The Movies On Your Mind: Film Classics On The Couch From Fellini to Frankenstein and Screen Memories: Hollywood Cinema On The Psychoanalytic Couch. Dr. Greenberg has also published widely on general and adolescent psychiatry, authoring a series of books on mental health topics for adolescents.
George Makari is the author of Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis, an acclaimed, groundbreaking history of psychoanalysis from its inception to the collapse of Europe during World War II. He is Director of Cornell's Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Medical College, Adjunct Associate Professor at Rockefeller University, and a faculty member of Columbia University's Psychoanalytic Center. His writings on the history of psychoanalysis have won numerous awards.
Daphne Merkin is a critic and novelist and has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The New York Times Book Review. She is currently a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and has a regular column in Elle called "Provocateur." She is the author of the novel Enchantment and Dreaming of Hitler, a collection of essays.
Brigitte Peucker (moderator) is the Elias Leavenworth Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Professor of Film Studies at Yale University. Her books include Lyric Descent in the German Romantic Tradition, Incorporating Images: Film and The Rival Arts and The Material Image: Art and the Real in Film. She is currently working on a book on Fassbinder.
Dana Polan is Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University. He is the author of several film books including, most recently, Pulp Fiction and Jane Campion, both from the British Film Institute. He has two books forthcoming in Duke University Press's new series, Spin-offs, about individual televsion shows: The Sopranos and The French Chef (about Julia Childs). He is a former President of the Society for Cinema Studies and a former editor of its publication, Cinema Journal. Polan holds a Doctorat d'Etat in Letters from the Sorbonne Nouvelle and a Ph.D. in Modern Thought from Stanford, and was knighted by the French Ministry of Culture for contributions to cross-cultural exchange. In 2003 he was selected as one of two Academy Foundation Scholars by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.