Routledge Mental Health

Just thought I would add my own introduction to this blog before my own blogging activity commences proper.

Who Am I?

Well, I’m an academic, musician and (now) author working in the field of film studies. Having served as Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Bucks New University in the UK for several years under somewhat tumultuous conditions, I left to pursue a more specialised career in film studies and to complete my PhD thesis at the University of Reading. I’m now (gulp) in the final stages of completing my thesis, titled Cinephilia, Meaningfulness and Commodity-Identity: Encounters with Popular Cinema Narrative Across Media Forms. The title is designed to say it all really I suppose, but for those out there mindful of the implications of such an investigation, you’ll have already twigged that there are some obvious elements that relate to psychological thinking in the title, and some that (on the face of it) just aren’t a part of the Jungian world at all.

Let me explain… As stated in the very first line of my book Film After Jung: Post-Jungian Approaches to Film Theory (Routledge, 2009), I am not a Jungian. I’m something of a sceptic when it comes to Jungianism – any ‘ism’ actually – because it implies an internal set of rules and regulations that one is compelled to follow. It is true that clinical psychology relies to an extent on regulations, and for very good reasons. However, ‘isms’ require a different sort of regulation, a partisan way of thinking that can be counterproductive. I’m not the only one who feels this way. As Marie Von Franz once said (and I paraphrase here) it would be wrong to become a Jungian. To do so would be to miss the whole point of his psychology. So what is the point of his psychology, and how is it useful to the study of film?

To get an answer to that from me, I’m afraid you’ll just have to read my book, but in short I think that it illuminates appearances. Things which are apparent to us on the surface of things, images we find meaningful, experiences and encounters that engage our imagination – all have a psychological element. Exploring that psychology enables a better understanding of the apparent, of our experiences and encounters with others, what we find meaningful in life and how this is expressed in cultural production.

Deep stuff, yes, and rightly so we should turn to a deep psychology for a deep understanding, or at least a movement towards an understanding. This was one of the aims of the book, and is an aim that I take with me through all of my academic work to a certain extent. My intention in Film After Jung was to begin a dialogue between the often confounding images and practices conjured through psychological theory, and the equally challenging accounts of cinema as a signifying practice, an institution, an industry and an artistic form within the traditions of film theory. I’m still working within the paradigm of dialogue – and for Jungian and post-Jungian thought, dialogue is of course one of the principle concerns. We may err and waver, make false starts and misunderstand certain premises, but in seeking a dialogue between very different academic grounds (in my case, film theory, depth psychology and continental philosophy) we might move towards an accommodation of those very different ways of articulating what I feel is ostensibly the same thing: the expression of meaningfulness.

This developing of dialogue was, in fact, the subject of more focused discussion in my contribution to Chris and Luke’s edited collection Jung and Film 2 (Routledge, forthcoming 2010)  called ‘Cinephilia; Or, Looking for Meaningfulness in Encounters with Cinema’. There I elaborated on how very (apparently) different versions of the term ‘archetype’ actually address similar phenomena in the history of popular cinema and how these phenomena are relevant for a post-theatrical film viewing culture.

Where To Now?

After the PhD, I will be completing work on a second monograph for Routledge on the idea of ‘feeling’ in popular cinema. Again, this obviously involves psychological elements, but also the more material attachments that engage consumer and viewer attention. It brings together several strands of my research both in film-philosophy and the phenomenology of film, my interest in post-Jungian concepts, as well as the more overtly political aspects of my PhD research into commodity-identity. I’ll say more on this, as well as other Jungian-oriented projects in future posts.

One last point: this blog has been brought into existence as a platform for dialogue across boundaries (both international and disciplinary) and is therefore a most welcome one. If post-Jungian film studies is a movement (and I think that it is), what we will eventually be able to access on this blog is an archive of ideas, discussions, debates and position statements that will give a vista for future critics and theorists into a very exciting time in film studies. It is a very rare privilege to be a part of such a movement, and for that I am very grateful.

ttfn,

Greg