Psychoanalysis and Life: Mythology and Cinema

Abstract

This paper addresses the relation between myth and search for knowledge through artistic and scientific creative endeavours. Starting from Freud’s biographical sketches, the importance he conferred to applied psychoanalysis and the references he made to Classical Antiquity myths in his body of work, two contemporary cinematic productions of science fiction are analysed: "Star Wars" and "Back to the Future" trilogies. These analyses allow to illustrate how the mythological field (in particular, the Oedipus myth) is reupdated in cinematographic narratives. Cinema can thus be seen as a prime stage for the "rediscovery" of myths by the spectator, just as Sophocles' theatre and tragedy allowed Freud to revisit the Oedipus myth and propose an innovative theory of human developmental processes. The psychoanalytic analysis of cinematographic works, as well as the inquiry into Freud’s creative activity when confronted with the inescapable transience of life, provide additional empirical support for the intimate connection between myths and links of knowledge proposed by Wilfred Bion. Myths seem to constitute, then as today, "generators" of art and science.