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The [[discipline ]] of [[psychoanalysis ]] and the art of the [[cinema ]] evolved in parallel at the beginning of the twentieth century. [[Psychoanalysts ]] soon began [[interpreting ]] the appeal and [[meaning ]] of movies. As early as 1916 [[Hugo ]] Münsterberg wrote The [[Film]]: A [[Psychological ]] Study, in which he suggested that film transforms the [[external ]] [[world ]] into the mechanisms of the [[mind]], including [[memory]], [[imagination]], attention, and [[emotion]].

Although [[Freud ]] himself had little interest in the cinema, one of his disciples, Hanns Sachs, served as a consultant to George Wilhelm Pabst's 1926 classic, Secrets of a Soul. This [[German ]] expressionist film was the first serious [[treatment ]] of psychoanalysis in film [[history]], [[complete ]] with rather sophisticated use of [[dream ]] [[symbolism]].

Since these early interdisciplinary efforts, a [[whole ]] field of [[psychoanalytic ]] film criticism has evolved. Systematic studies of movies first appeared in the 1950s in the [[French ]] periodical, Cahiers du Cinèma. The Cahiers theorists subsequently appropriated Italian [[semiotics ]] as well as the [[ideas ]] of the deconstructionist Jacques [[Derrida ]] and the French [[psychoanalyst ]] Jacques [[Lacan]]. Film scholars influenced by Lacan and Derrida focus on the "deep [[structures]]" at [[work ]] in movies and how meaning is generated in film. Lacan's most important student in the field of film [[theory ]] has been [[Christian ]] [[Metz]], whose work has become standard [[reading ]] in academic cinema studies programs.

The [[Lacanian ]] approach to film criticism centers on how audiences [[experience ]] movies. The camera creates a "[[gaze]]" or perspective on the events of the film's [[narrative]]. A key aspect of the Lacanian [[discourse ]] is the [[concept ]] of "[[lack]]," both as the phallocentric key to [[sexual ]] [[difference ]] and in the [[symbolic ]] [[sense ]] of viewing external [[reality ]] in [[terms ]] of [[absence ]] and [[presence]]. These ideas have been appropriated by [[feminist ]] semioticians like Laura Mulvey, who suggested that the [[woman]]'s [[body ]] is fetishized because it creates anixiety in men, to whom it represents "lack," i.e., [[castration]]. Moreover, the cinema is viewed as historically serving the interests of [[patriarchy]], privileging the gaze of the [[male ]] hero, while subordinating the [[female ]] characters as the [[object ]] of the gaze.

[[Interpretations ]] of film based on Lacanian ideas have generated a [[good ]] deal of criticism. Many have objected to the semioticians' methodology as top-heavy with [[theoretical ]] formulations and too dismissive of the actual [[content ]] of a film. In addition, a [[number ]] of critics have pointed out that [[masculinity ]] is regularly undermined in [[films ]] and that male viewers often will [[identify ]] with a female [[character]]. Moreover, male bodies are often fetishized in the cinema to the same extent as the female body.

Psychoanalytic film scholars have taken a number of different approaches that part ways with the Lacanian perspective. Bruce Kawin, Marsha Kinder, and Robert Eberwein, for example, have examined films from the perspective of [[Freudian ]] dreamwork. Robert B. Ray and Krin and Glen Gabbard have taken a pluralistic approach to psychoanalytic film criticism, suggesting that Lacanian interpretations are reductionist and limiting, and that broadening one's theoretical perspective may be more useful when studying film.

See also: [[Cinema and psychoanalysis]]; Mannoni, Dominique-Octave; Psyché, revue internationale de [[psychanalyse ]] et des [[sciences ]] de l'[[homme ]] ([[Psyche]], an international review of psychoanalysis and [[human ]] sciences).[[Bibliography]]