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Hitchcock & Psychoanalysis, 1
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| Sigmund Freud Psychiatrists in Hitchcock Movies Freudian theories: - repressed memory - repetition compulsion - Oedipal complex, Momism, family romance - stages of psychosexual development - Ego, Superego, and Id - dream analysis - split personality |
Related concepts: - Doppelgangers, doubles, exchange of guilt - scopophilia, the gaze, fetishism - mothers in Hitchcock's movies - homosexuality in Hitchcock movies |
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| During Hitchcock's career, the main 'scientific' explanations for human behavior derived from the theories of the Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is both a therapeutic method and a theory of the mind and its effect on behavior. Psychoanalysis permeated American popular culture during the 1920s, and its notions were widespread in books and movies for the next half century.
Hitchcock was skeptical of psychoanalysis, as he was of all attempts to explain human behavior. Nevertheless, he drew upon psychoanalysis in many movies, most notably Spellbound (where the main characters are psychoanalysts), Psycho (which has a long psychiatrist's speech at the end), and Marnie. Psychoanalytical notions are also important in Shadow of a Doubt, Rope, Rear Window, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, and Frenzy. |
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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) holding a phallic symbol)
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| Werner Klemperer as the psychiatrist in The Wrong Man. Hitchcock rarely shoots his psychiatrist characters in closeups, keeping them distanced from the audience. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Michael Chekhov as the kindly Dr. Brulov (clearly resembling Freud) in Spellbound. The heroine, played by Ingrid Bergman, is also a psychoanalyst. |
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| Raymond Bailey as the psychiatrist in Vertigo. "He's suffering from acute melancholia complicated by a guilt commplex." | Simon Oakland as the pompous psychiatrist in Psycho. (This is a detail of a wider shot.) "A psychiatrist . . . merely tries to explain." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Freudian theories: |
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