A Jungian Perspective on the Therapist-Patient Relationship in Film: Cinema as Our Therapist

Within this book, Ruth Netzer explores the archetypal components of therapist-patient relations in cinema from the perspective of Jungian archetypal symbolism, and within the context of myth and ritual.

Film is a medium that is attracted to the extremes of this specific relationship, depicting the collapse of the accepted boundaries of therapy; though on the other hand, cinema also loves the fantasy of therapy as intimacy. Through the medium of film, and employing examples from over 45 well-known films, the author analyzes the successes and failures of therapists within film, and reviews the concepts of transference and counter-transference and their therapeutic and redemptive powers, in contrast to their potential for destruction and exploitation within the context of a patient-therapist relationship.

This book will be a fascinating read for Jungian analysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists with an interest in the link between cinema and therapy, as well as filmmakers and students and teachers of film studies.

Ruth Netzer is a clinical psychologist, Jungian analyst (senior lecturer and supervisor), poet and painter, and does research in literature and cinema. She has published 12 non-fiction books on Jungian psychology and 12 books of poetry (which have won 5 literary awards), as well as scores of professional articles. She teaches at the School of Jungian Psychotherapy in Seminar HaKibbutzim College in Israel.