The Cine Technician (1943 - 1945)

March— April, 1943 THE CINETECHNICIAN 29 for the psychoanalytic findings to which we must now refer. They are not very easy to comprehend, perhaps less so to present in brief. For a theoretical detour, as for a certain dogmatism in presentation, your indulgence will be needed. It is possible to regard the human infant as a behavioural system largely organised for the physical processes of taking in by the mouth, and for expelling. Its earliest emotions are developed in relation to these two functions which determine the form of its earliest psychological mechanisms. The psychic mechanism of projection* corresponds to the physical mechanism of expulsion. A man who violently condemned short skirts as ' ' immoral ' ' was projecting his own repressed desires. The physical process of taking in forms the pattern for the psychological process of assimilation, to which the technical term of introjection is applied. The psychological assimilation, or introjection, results in an identification. In Southern Italy the son of a fisherman is made to devour a big fish, in the stomach of which a smaller fish has been found. In this way he becomes a strong swimmer and a successful fisherman. He has established an identification with the big fish, whose flesh he has incorporated, whose psychological attributes he has introjected. Now, a considerable portion of our pleasure as cinemagoers rests upon our (partial) identification with the characters of a screen play. On some of the prerequisites for an identification it is not necessary to enlarge. The success of a Cinderella story needs no subtle explanation. But the psychological mechanism through which we achieve identification is introjection : and this, as I have tried to show, is to be related to a physical process of taking in. If I wheel my six months old daughter along a certain path overhung by foliage, it is as though she were seeing a contiuously moving background. Here and there, where a branch hangs very low, she will open her mouth and smile. It is as though she were being shown a close-up. I have used this little observation to illustrate that there is a fundamental link in behaviour between the eye and the mouth. The eye is in everyday as well as in poetic speech considered as a means of taking in. This rests upon sounder argument than metaphor. For research upon certain mental disorders suggests that to the infant, only partially aware as yet of the environment as a system of experience outside itself, an object which approaches the eye is conceived of as actually entering it. My daughter's behaviour is probably to be in part explained in (Concluded on next page) " Projection " is used throughout in the psychoanalytical, not the cinematic, sense of course. A QUARTER OF EVERY CONTRIBUTION GOES TO HELP RUSSIA A quarter of the weekly pennies subscribed to the Red Cross Penny-a-Week Fund goes to help Russia. Your pennies are helping to bind Russian wounds, to ease Russian suffering. Will you give an extra penny a week and help the Red Cross & St. John to continue its humane work ? Your pennies help our own wounded, sick and prisoners, and send the increased medical aid the gallant Russians so sorely need. An extra penny every week will do so much. Give an extra Penny lo the RED CROSS PENNY-A-WEEK FUND Red Cross & St. John Fund registered under the War Chanties Act. 1940