Analytical psychology and cinema

For a long time, Jung had been an unwelcome name at film and media conferences, short of unmentionable. Seen as conservative, apolitical, antiscientific, bizarre and obscure, Jungian theory has been ignored by cultural studies for decades. Only the idea of the archetype has more or less managed to establish itself as a critical term. As one young (and a little overambitious) film scholar told me recently, with a smile, ‘Jung? To analyse films? Interesting idea; never heard of it’. In a way, using Jung to analyse film narratives is an equivalent to thinking outside the box—to challenge the established norm.