Routledge Mental Health

About the Book

Projected Shadows presents a new collection of essays exploring films from a psychoanalytic perspective, focusing specifically on the representation of loss in European cinema. This theme is discussed in its many aspects, including: loss of hope and innocence, of youth, of consciousness, of freedom and loss through death. Many other themes familiar to psychoanalytic discourse are explored in the process, such as:

• Establishment and resolution of Oedipal conflicts
• Representation of pathological characters on the screen
• Use of unconscious defence mechanisms
• The interplay of dreams, reality and fantasy

Projected Shadows aims to deepen the ongoing constructive dialogue between psychoanalysis and film. Andrea Sabbadini has assembled a remarkable number of internationally renowned contributors, both academic film scholars and psychoanalysts from a variety of cultural backgrounds, who use an array of contemporary methodologies to apply psychoanalytic thinking to film.

This original collection will appeal to anyone passionate about film, as well as professionals, academics and students interested in the relationship between psychoanalysis and the arts.