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Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Fictions on the Big and Small Screens

Psychanalyse et fictions contemporaines sur petit et grand écran

Revue « Transcr(é)ation » - Hiver 2026

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Published on Monday, February 17, 2025

Abstract

Français English

Transcr(é)ation is a specialty journal dedicated to intermediality and the dialogues between texts and films, without prioritizing either. This term has been borrowed from translation studies in order to shed some light on the benefits of such a dialogue between the media. We welcome any theoretical or analytical works, interviews, and thematic dossiers on the questions of intermediality, transposition between media, dialogue between and through the arts, or any other foray into related subjects. For our 7th dossier, we are calling for papers in either English or French dealing with psychoanalysis and contemporary fictions from cinema and TV series.

Announcement

Français English

Argument

Psychoanalytic reflection, known for the importance of the notion of “representation,” has a clear connection with the mobility of images. From this, arises the possibility of linking psychoanalytic thought with that of cinema, a privileged domain of moving representations. This connection is, of course, not new, and manifests itself through the publication of articles, studies, and collective works dedicated to the exchanges between psychoanalysis and cinema. However, this interdisciplinary field is dominated by either an exclusively psychoanalytic approach or a sociological orientation. This issue of Transcr(é)ation aims to revitalize this fruitful dialogue by focusing primarily on contemporary cinematic and television productions, and beyond canonical examples.

In this perspective, it would be interesting to understand how, in the era of the #MeToo movement, the liberation of speech, and the desire to break taboos (Les Chatouilles [Andréa Bescond and Éric Métayer, 2018]; Le Consentement [Vanessa Filho, 2023]; Je verrai toujours vos visages [Jeanne Herry, 2023]), in the face of an increasingly aware audience regarding the symbolic and ideological weight of the representations surrounding them, cinematic narratives keep on adopting psychoanalytic concepts that now belong to a collective cultural imagery. While Gender Studies seek to establish the presence of those narrative obsessions that reveal the signs of an ideological discourse advancing masked, we can revisit how some contemporary films and series consciously infuse their narratives with a psychoanalytic vein.

If genres (from thrillers to horror) have always emphasized characters’ psychological characterization, mental pathology has become central to their plots (from The Silence of the Lambs [Jonathan Demme, 1991] to Joker [Todd Phillips, 2019] or The Babadook [Jennifer Kent, 2014] and Hereditary [Ari Aster, 2018]). This openly psychoanalytic trend has also influenced formats not traditionally associated with such issues—animated films such as Mary and Max (Adam Elliot, 2009); Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009); Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015); The Night of Orion (Sean Charmatz, 2024) or genres (romantic comedies, biopics, gangster films).

Psychoanalytic values also permeate the entire oeuvre of contemporary directors or showrunners (such as Yórgos Lánthimos, Paul Verhoeven, Spike Jonze, David Chase, or Nic Pizzolatto), or extend beyond the codified framework of genre cinema and are found in narratives characterized by a “psychoanalytic atmosphere” (Shame [Steve McQueen, 2011], May December [Todd Haynes, 2023], Nine [Barbara Gibbs, 2021]). It is therefore crucial to understand how some major Freudian concepts (transference, narcissistic injury, castration complex, acting out) are renewed within contemporary film fiction where such symptoms, risks, and possible healing are transferred. It is also interesting to examine the literal representation of these concepts, whether through the portraying of famous psychoanalysts (such as Freud and / or Jung in A Dangerous Method [David Cronenberg, 2011], Freud’s Last Session [Matt Brown, 2023], or the Netflix series Freud [Marvin Kern, 2020]) or the concrete translation of psychoanalytic theories (Jung’s theory on dreams in Dream Scenario [Kristoffer Borgli, 2023]).

Our focus is also to go beyond cinema and to question TV series, which have profoundly redefined the relationship to psychoanalysis in contemporary fiction. While the therapeutic duo formed by Tony Soprano and Dr. Melfi in David Chase’s The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007) provides necessary impetus for a renewal in representation at the dawn of the third millennium, it is BeTipul by Hagai Levi, Nir Bergman, and Ori Sivan (Hot 3, 2005-2008) that has left a lasting and diffuse mark. Each episode lasts the real-time duration of a session (20 to 30 minutes), and this simple format intensifies the psychoanalytic method, spilling over into reality. Even more so than cinema, TV series become the ideal medium to represent the stakes of analysis. Adapted in nearly 20 countries, BeTipul functions as a national therapy where singular traumas become those of a country: the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, followed by COVID in In Treatment (HBO, 2008-2010; 2021), and the Bataclan attack and COVID in En Thérapie (Arte, 2021-2022). Some series, such as Gypsy by Lisa Rubin (Netflix, 2017) and Shrinking by Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel, and Brett Goldstein (Apple TV+, 2023—), under the guise of comedy, invent practitioners who play with ethics to apply their own unique methods of analysis. Finally, the question of alienation in contemporary society has been widely addressed in recent years: Maniac by Patrick Sommerville (Netflix, 2018) and Severance by Dan Erickson (Apple TV+, 2021) are prime examples. Thus, television becomes both a space for reflection on the evolution of the practice of analysis and a critique of the effects of contemporary society on our mental health.

This issue will also aim to understand how the dialogue between psychoanalysis and cinema can relate to questions regarding the plastic figurability of the cinematic image. The incursion of figuration or iconological approaches within film studies clearly aligns with this trend, based on the idea of the autonomy of images and figures that recalls Freud’s comments on pulsion. Nevertheless, while this relationship to psychoanalytic theory (mixed with a phenomenological approach) has been highlighted by Jean-François Lyotard, Georges Didi-Huberman, Louis Marin or Hubert Damisch regarding the plastic arts, film studies make only discreet use of the Freudian legacy or psychoanalytic reflections.

Following the example of Luc Vancheri, who, in Pensées figurales de l’image (2011), chose to undertake a “return to Freud,” one could indeed reconsider the use of psychoanalytic language to comment on the recent (r)evolutions in the plasticity of the cinematic image (digitization and virtualization of film opening to regimes of simulation and immersion, democratization of a synthetic imagery undermining the indexical and, consequently, memorial value of the filmic image, or, conversely, preservation of film stock more capable of conveying something of the flesh of images). In other terms, how cinematic language, through its own means, can resensitize – that is, offer a regime of sensations – major questions and theoretical pathways posed by psychoanalysis (disconnection or negativity in André Green, absence in Pierre Fédida, transitional object in Donald Winnicott, the machinic unconscious in Félix Guattari))? In this regard, cinema could take inspiration from literary theory, which, after the attempts of psychocriticism, was able to renew the stylistic study of texts through the use of psychoanalytic concepts.

This relationship is not unique but operates in a bidirectional manner, and we will thus welcome articles from psychoanalysts, psychologists, or psychiatrists using the filmic image and, more broadly, cinema not merely as a simple illustration but as an authentic working medium serving their theory or practice. We are interested in exploring how concepts developed by psychoanalysis find a means of renewal, but also how psychoanalysis and cinema, as disciplines, can meet and engage in dialogue (particularly in relation to neuroscience).

Timeline

Deadline for submitting proposals (title, 500-word abstract, address, affiliation, and 150-word biographical note) to jacques.demange@univ-tlse2.fr and antoine.guegan@univ-tlse2.fr: 

June 15, 2025.

  • Response by the end of June 2025
  • Deadline for articles (6,000 – 8,000 words) formatted according to the journal’s guidelines: October 15, 2025
  • Publication of the issue is planned for March 2026

Guest editors

  • M. Jacques Demange (Université de Strasbourg/Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès)
  • M. Antoine Guégan (Université Paris-Est-Marne-la-Vallée/Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès)

Works cited 

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André, Emmanuelle, Durafour Jean-Michel et Vancheri Luc (dir.), Dictionnaire d’iconologie filmique, Presses Universitaires de Lyon, coll. « Le vif du sujet », Lyon, 2022.

Baudry, Jean-Louis, L’effet-cinéma, Albatros, Paris, 1978.

Bayard, Pierre, Peut-on appliquer la littérature à la psychanalyse ?, Les Éditions de Minuit, coll. « Paradoxe », Paris, 2004.

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Clouard, Chantal ; Leibovici, Myriam (dir.), Psychanalyse et cinéma, Hermann, Paris, 2019.

De Lauretis, Teresa, Pulsions freudiennes. Psychanalyse, littérature et cinéma (trad. Brunel-Georget Jacques), Presses Universitaires de France, coll. « Pratiques théoriques », Paris, 2010.

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Damisch, Hubert, Le jugement de Pâris. Iconologie analytique I, Flammarion, coll. « Champs/Arts », Paris, 2011 (1992). 

Didi-Huberman, Georges, Devant l’image. Questions posées aux fins d’une histoire de l’art, Les Éditions de Minuit, coll. « Critique », Paris, 1990.

---, « La plus simple image », Nouvelles Revue de Psychanalyse, n°44, automne 1991.

Djénati, Geneviève, Psychanalyse des dessins animés. Ce que voient les tout-petits et leurs aînés, Pocket, coll. « Pocket Évolution », Paris, 2004.

Dhote, Alain (dir.), Cinéma et psychanalyse, CinémAction, n°50, 2000.

Dubois, Philippe, Photographie & Cinéma. De la différence à l’indistinction, Éditions Mimésis, coll. « Images, Médiums », Milan, 2021.  

Fédida, Pierre, L’absence, Gallimard, coll. « Folio/Essais », Paris, 2004.

Freud, Sigmund, « Le Moïse de Michel-Ange » (1914), repris in Essais de Psychanalyse appliquée (trad. Bonaparte Marie et Marty E.), Éditions Gallimard, coll. « Idées/Gallimard », 1975 [1933].

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Gagnebin, Murielle, Du divan à l’écran. Montages cinématographiques, montages interprétatifs, Presses Universitaires de France, coll. « Le Fil rouge », Paris, 1999.

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Landa, Éva (dir.), Cinéma et psychanalyse, Le Coq-héron, n°211, 2012.

Lyotard, Jean-François, Discours, figure, Klincksieck, Paris, 1971.

Maïdini, Gérard Jean-Pierre, Léonard de Vinci. Mythologie ou théologie ?, Presses Universitaires de France, coll. « Voix nouvelles en psychanalyse », Paris, 1994.

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Micheli-Rechtman, Vannina ; Moscovitz, Jean-Jacques (dir.), Du cinéma à la psychanalyse, le féminin interrogé, Éditions Érès, coll. « Le regard qui bat », Toulouse, 2013.

Tisseron, Serge, Comment Hitchcock m’a guéri, Albin Michel, Paris, 2003.

Vancheri, Luc, Les pensées figurales de l’image, Armand Colin, Paris, 2011.

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Date(s)

  • Sunday, June 15, 2025

Keywords

  • psychanalyse, cinéma, série télévisée

Contact(s)

  • Jacques Demange
    courriel : jacques [dot] demange [at] univ-tlse2 [dot] fr

Reference Urls

Information source

  • Jacques Demange
    courriel : jacques [dot] demange [at] univ-tlse2 [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Fictions on the Big and Small Screens », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Monday, February 17, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/13brm

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