Abstract:

Since their inception, psychoanalysis and cinema have shared a very particular relationship, in which tension between sympathy and aversion has been the common denominator. Between the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, psychoanalysis and cinema had their origin, rise, consolidation, and boom in the Western cultural scene, where they have influenced it in such a way that culture without one or the other is inconceivable and inexplicable: psychoanalysis and cinema are inseparable elements of our cultural heritage. Based on documentary research, which includes a review of letters and theoretical texts by Freud and other authors, as well as audiovisual documents, this paper proposes a brief itinerary of the paths of agreement and disagreement between cinema and psychoanalysis in Freud’s time, his attempts at rapprochement, the discrepancies within the psychoanalytic organization regarding this rapprochement, Freud’s own positions on cinema, the characterizations and appearances of Freud himself on the big screen after his death, ending with a reference to a failed encounter between Freud and Chaplin that perhaps implies the closest and most friendly approach of the father of psychoanalysis to cinema.

Keywords: Psychoanalysis | Cinema | Freud | Chaplin