Film Theory Courses

In this course, we will look at examples of ‘shrinks on screen’—portrayals of mental health professionals (psychiatrists, social workers, psychoanalysts, etc.) in cinema and TV. We will critically examine ‘head doctors’ tropes, and identify iconic psychotherapy sessions in movies and television that convincingly represent the challenges and effectiveness of the so-called ‘talking cure’.







Mary Wild is a film lecturer and podcaster with an academic background in psychoanalytic theory. Her research interests include cinematic representation of the unconscious, surrealism, mental illness, feminine subjectivity, the horror genre, and auteur studies. In addition to teaching at City Lit, she is a regular speaker at Freud Museum London.

Nowadays there are so many ways to watch film - smart phones, tablets, TVs - just as there are so many different spaces in which we encounter the moving image - cinemas, galleries, our homes, to name but a few. This day-long course will broaden and deepen your critical awareness of the diverse formal and experiential possibilities of cinema, both as they have developed in the past and as they are transforming in the contemporary moment. It will do this by reflecting on two questions: ‘what is cinema?’ and ‘where is cinema?’.