Sociology of film : studies and documents (1946)

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APPENDIX 3 in a 'picture' or a 'show'. The realm of fantasy — far from actuality — is the field of her longed-for satisfaction, desired by her 'polygamy' complex. This is consequently a satisfaction, but not a compensation for what is being wished in concrete actuality, consciously wished but not entirely attained. People under psycho-analysis not infrequently dream about particular scenes they have seen in the 'pictures'. They naturally refuse at first to submit such a dream to analysis, stating that it is simply a reproduction. But, in fact, one can frequently find that the part of the film picked out by the dream-process has an intrinsic bearing on the deepest problems, mostly difficult conflicts, of the dreamer. A young man suffers much from jealousy because of his fiancee's behaviour, but because of his passionate attachment to her he cannot decide to break off the engagement. He sees the picture Pittsburgh, and in his dream of the following night he finds himself in a merry company at a dance. He recognises the origin of this dream-motive from the picture of the previous night, where there were two scenes of a dance. Pie realises, however, only with the help of the analyst, who happened to know the picture, what is being hinted at by this dream. One hero of the play is an energetic but not quite reliable man, who because of financial ambitions, marries the daughter of a steel magnate, but thinks that he can keep up his intimate friendship with a girl whom he loves; the latter, being of a good character, refuses to agree. There are two scenes of a dance at which the fiancee, and later wife, of the unscrupulous young man meets the other girl. No doubt the dreamfragment expresses the secret wish of the dreamer to be also unscrupulous enough to marry a 'decent woman of social position' and somehow to keep up simultaneously the passionate relationship with the girl he irrationally likes but intellectually despises. But, as has been said, visiting the cinema means to most people on frequent occasions, at least a substantial satisfaction. And implicitly a poisonous factor. Because 'pictures' mostly present solutions that are far from being real possibilities. The acting figures of plays are mostly unmarried, or else without children or dependent relatives to care for. They can wish, and aim at, almost anything; and even if in the play they meet with handicaps, they do many things, and attain things, which are entirely out of reach for the average human being. 'Pictures', whilst satisfying the psyche for two hours, operating after the fashion of alcohol or a sedative drug, may drop into the mind the additional seed of the desire for the unattainable, instead of solving the difficulty. 299