“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does and goes direct to our feelings deep down in the dark rooms of our souls.” (Ingmar Bergmann)
As curator of the Film Gallery of the Virtual Psychoanalytic Museum I feel honored to present the first film; “Lars and the Real Girl.” I view film as a medium for explicating the most profound of human experience both intrapsychically and inter-personally. This includes both pain and joy, despair and hope. I have often turned to film in my work professionally to illustrate many aspects of the psyche.
The film that I have chosen for this exhibit portrays the creative efforts of a young man who had been emotionally abandoned as an infant to make meaningful connections as an adult. I have invited several colleagues to comment on the story from various perspectives: a developmental psychiatrist, and therapist whose primary focus is on couples and families. I eagerly anticipate comments from others.
The first window of the gallery has clips of the film. I would expect that once having seen these clips, you will want to obtain the film and watch it in its entirety. In the second window I have written about the film’s themes and present some clinically relevant vignettes. The next windows have essays written by my colleagues, Noa Ashman, and George Halasz.
Marilyn B. Meyers, Ph.D. is on the faculty of the Washington School of Psychiatry, where she teaches and supervises in the post graduate Clinical Program on Psychotherapy Practice. She is past-chair of the Clinical Program and Chair of Admissions. She is past-president of the Section on Couples and Families of the Division of Psyhoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association. She is co-editor and co-author with Dr. Nancy Goodman of The Power of Witnessing: Reflections, Reverberations and Traces of the Holocaust (Trauma, Psychoanalysis and the Living Mind), (Routledge, 2012). Her other publications include: “When the Holocaust Haunts the Couple: Hope Guilt and Survival in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Couple Work, 2005, and “Am I my Mother’s Keeper?; Certain Vicissitudes in the Mother-Daughter Relationship Concerning Envy” in The Mother-Daughter Relationship (Jason Aronson, 2008). She is particularly interested in the effects of relational trauma on attachment throughout life. In addition she has presented papers inter nationally on the use of film to illustrate the aftermath of massive trauma and the inter-generational transmission of Holocaust trauma. She maintains a private practice in Bethesda, MD.