The Implications of Lacanian Psychoanalysis for Films

For Lacan, as for Freud, psychoanalysis is a project of interpretation that has nothing to do with empirical research and positivist investigation. Just as clinical psychoanalytic interpretation must concentrate on the psychic text, filmic psychoanalytic interpretation must focus on the filmic text and explore and find the spectator inherent within—rather than external to—this text. Language, psychoanalysis and film constitute an interrelated potpourri whose hermeneutical implications would unfold praxis with profound underlying semiotics and semantics.