Film Therapy

Practical Applications in a Psychotherapeutic Context

Sayyed Mohsen Fatemi

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429806032
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Psychology
• Categoría: Psychotherapy

Unlike any book on the market, Film Therapy introduces a new paradigm in exploring the subtexts of movies and their potential therapeutic dimensions. The book illuminates how feature films can entail psychological components that can facilitate the therapeutic process. By elaborating the key concepts of each film and their psychological and psychotherapeutic discussions, this book provides a demonstration of the films' practical applications in a therapeutic setting, opening a new world for understanding and exploring the dynamics of films in human interaction. The book powerfully delineates the rarely discussed role of films in psychological realms and argues how films can be educationally inspiring for therapists, psychologists, and educators.

1 Films as Learning Modules

DOI: 10.4324/9780429441431-1

Learning is defined as a change in behavior that may occur in different contexts and through different media. Traditional modes of learning are often associated with the use of books, whereas the new ways of learning have brought about attention toward newer forms of media such as technologically based forums.

Numerous studies indicate that films have served as a significant educational tool for learning in various spheres, including medicine, counseling, education, nursing, and psychology (see, for instance, Alexander, 1995; Alexander & Waxman, 2000; Fleming et al., 1990; Karlinsky, 2003; Nelson, 2002; Raingruber, 2003; Toman & Rak, 2000; Wedding et al., 2010).

Films have been proven to be of great value in offering hope, perspective management, problem solving, relationship management, positive thinking, inspiration, resourcefulness, empathy, well-being, role-modeling, inner journey for self-empowerment, self-efficacy, and self-awareness and understanding the role of values in one’s life (see, for instance, Berg-Cross et al., 1990; Hesley & Hesley, 1998; Schulenberg, 2003; Wedding & Niemiec, 2003).

Some studies, albeit with small groups, have indicated how films may operate as a helpful therapeutic tool for the treatment of depression, self-esteem enhancement, prosocial behavior, coping strategies, emotional awareness, emotional expressiveness, and empathy (Bierman et al., 2003; Marsick, 2010; Powell & Newgent, 2010).

Wedding and Niemiec (2014) argued that watching films with a positive psychological theme can positively impact personal growth, well-being, self-improvement, societal growth, emotional development, and prosocial behaviors.

Long before the studies mentioned above on psychological aspects of films, Bruner (1966) indicated that people’s thinking styles might be influenced by their exposed images. According to Bruner, “Man is seen to grow by the processes of internalizing the ways of acting, imagining, and symbolizing that ‘exist’ in his culture, ways that amplify his powers” (1966, p. 320).

Likewise, Stein et al.’s experiments (1979) corroborated the relationship between exposure to films and learning new skills, new cognitive tools, and thinking styles.

Berg-Cross et al. (1990) were the first who used the term cinema therapy. Cinema therapy was meant as a form of therapy in which a therapist selects films with a focus on his or her client’s areas of concern. The client, in cinema therapy, was encouraged to watch specific films alone or with specified others.

Films can provide an effective tool for learning the connection between the content of the films and the client’s personal life as they can open up or present issues that may not be openly discussed in the therapeutic meetings. Some clients may have difficulty touching upon issues directly and explicitly, and films may help them explore them more safely and securely.

Learning may be pedagogically associated with schooling and forums that develop a formal medium for implementing learning. Nonetheless, the most entertaining activities, including playing, may unfold their rich potential to offer and illuminate various learning levels.

Not surprising, films may be employed as an effective and creative instrument to conduct learning, evoke thinking, promote intellectual engagement, and discuss emotional connectedness.

Learning can be addressed to an individual, a group, a family, or a couple. Movies may also provide opportunities for discussing emotions, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Emotions are represented in films in both verbal and nonverbal forms. Positive emotions, including happiness, joy, and exhilaration, or negative emotions, such as sadness, regret, and anger, are displayed in a wide variety of contexts. Emotions may be triggered through evocative description or provocative elucidation.

Notice the following lines from the movie Titanic (1997) and their demonstration of emotions:

Rose: A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets.

Rose: It was the ship of dreams to everyone else. To me, it was a slave ship, taking me back to America in chains. Outwardly, I was everything a well brought up girl should be. Inside, I was screaming.

Titanic (1997) may be discussed in terms of its polysemic messages and their pedagogical implications. On the one hand, the movie can be explored in connection with the taken-for-granted assumptions, including the invincibility of the ship; those aboard the ship take it for granted that the ship will never sink. It is indefatigably capable of navigating the ocean. In line with similar assumptions, those who see the signs of fire in Titanic from afar cannot believe that the ship has been set on fire; they describe it as a sign of celebration. On the other hand, when it comes to saving the passengers, the rich are given priority. The movie depicts the class struggle and the domineering discourse of power, even in the hardest human conditions.

The movie celebrates the panacea of love in disseminating the walls of differences, divisions, rifts, and discord. It demonstrates how love conquers seemingly insurmountable problems and gives rise to the apex of glory in dealing with human encumbrances.

Titanic (1997) offers a potpourri of emotional power in motivating human behavior. The movie delineates how anxiety and tension may espouse a narrow scope of attention. The movie may suggest scenes and dialogues where the limbic system’s activation takes precedence over human behavior. The movie may serve as a rich resource for displaying emotional expressiveness, emotional manifestations, and contagion of emotions.

Therapists may explain different perspectives of an experience while evoking different aspects of the film. On one level, one may operate from a participant’s perspective and experience the participant’s experience. In the illustration of the movie’s love story, Rose and Jack are deeply involved in the participation model. They are engaged in participating in their exchange of love, both verbally and nonverbally.

On another level, one may operate from an observer-participant perspective where one observes their participation. When coming from an observer-participant perspective, the interplay of observation and participation will develop a dialectics of understanding the interdependence of action and agency. One may see how their action may be embedded within their scope of the agency. Observation will enhance the possibility of inner agency in implementing their action.

The third level takes place where one does not participate and merely plays the role of an observer. Therapists may invite a client to watch the film and see how different parts of the film may provide different levels of experience. By evoking different experiences, clients may relate to themselves and see how they may deal with their experiences on different occasions.

On balance, films may present different perspectives on an experience. Learning the observer’s role may facilitate the process of gaining a broader mode of attention where the insula and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex are activated. The prefrontal cortex, as the most advanced part of the brain, would manifest itself in the act of observation and attention.

For a therapy to be implemented, therapists need to apply techniques to help clients follow through with practice discussions. In their broadest descriptive and illustrative scope, films may entail a wide variety of opportunities that espouse therapeutic dimensions. Films, for instance, may introduce models that help a client see the role of self-efficacy, assertiveness, bravery, benevolence, empowerment, and free will. Clients may be encouraged to watch a movie and embark on discovering, detecting, and examining suggested themes. Films can be generally taken as a text in its broadest sense and can be examined as to both explicit and implicit meanings within the text.

Films may be discussed in terms of form and content, theme and plot, diction, and nonverbal components, including lighting, proxemics, setting, music, décor, mise-en-scène, staging, and costume. The focus can be explicitly or implicitly on a topic of importance. The movie may highlight the effect of a variable, the demonstration of a phenomenon, the process of a happening, and the role of internal and external factors.

Presenting the ingredients of an attitude in the context of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive factors may occur through a face-to-face meeting with a client followed by watching a movie such as the one suggested above.

The client can be encouraged to look for conversations, sentences, statements, interactions, scenes, moments, and episodes in the film that vivify an attitude’s effect or representation. This might be a sentence, a paragraph, a gesture, a nonverbal cue, or the assemblage of all of these.

Movies may provide opportunities to explore the interplay of micro and macro elements in the social and political domains. Clients can be invited to look at a movie and see it as text that may entail a collection of meanings. In the examples mentioned above, therapists may call for a comparison of dialogues to demonstrate how meanings such as inferiority and superiority are linked to a sense of a self. The movies may decipher examples of self-construction and self-constriction through the tyranny of social contexts.

In general, a movie may be actively viewed for specific goals:

1. Films may cover certain problems such as physical or sexual abuse. Bedeviled (2016) and Eden (2016) are examples that move in line with this regard.
2. Films may concentrate on the nature of relationships and intimacy. Movies such as The Notebook (2004), Blue Valentine (2010), and Before Midnight (2013) fall into this category.
3. Films may bear upon physical and mental challenges. Movies such as Silver Linings (2012), Playbook (2012), Girl, Interrupted (1999), Black Swan (2010), Rain Man (1988), A Beautiful Mind (2001), The Breakfast Club (1985), Good Will Hunting (1997), and Still Alice (2014) are subsumed under this category.
4. Films may deal with values and ethics. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Gandhi (1982), An Ideal Husband (1947), and A Man for All Seasons (1966) are representational in this connection.
5. Films may have depicted the phenomena of divorce and its implications. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), It Is Complicated (2009), Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and The Parent Trap (1998) may be classified in this regard.
6. Films may provide examples and presentations of various forms of communication and conflict resolution. Lincoln (2012), Thirteen Days (2000), The Founder (2016), and Big Miracle (2012) may be discussed under this category.
7. Films may portray and display posttraumatic stress disorder and its effects. The Deer Hunter (1978), Coming Home (1978), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Iron Man (2008), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and Mystic River (2003) may be listed in this category.
8. Films may focus on the topic of religion and its manifestation. Miracles Ffrom Heaven (2016), Martin Luther (1953), and Muhammad: The Messenger of God (1976) may be cited in this category.
9. Films may purport the demonstration of tolerance of differences. My Family (1995), Life of Pi (2012), Lost in Translation (2003), and Far and Away (1992) are examples that move in line with this category.
10. Films may delineate eating disorders and their formation. To the Bone (2017), Sharing the Secret (2000), Perfect Body (1997), For the Love of Nancy (1994), and A Secret Between Friends (1996) may be included in this taxonomy.
11. Films may focus on anxiety and depression. Little Miss Sunshine (2006), High Anxiety (1977), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), and The Hours (2002) may be placed in this classification.
12. Films may picture the poignant tragedy of loss and grief. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011), P.S. I Love You (2007), and Truly Madly Deeply (1990) are on this list.
13. Films may point to having affairs in one’s life. Unfaithful (2002), Notes on a Scandal (2006), Little Children (2006), The Pian (1993), and The Seven Year Itch (1955) present examples in line with this list.
14. Films may elucidate the issue of power and control and their effects. Macbeth (2015), Wall Street (1987), The Last Emperor (1987), and ...