ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Film and the Mind Sciences at the Margins: Research, Diagnosis, Popularisation

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

This panel examines the film medium’s contribution to scientific understandings of marginal psychologies. Considering the plurality of ways in which film has been deployed in psychological research, diagnosis and knowledge dissemination in the twentieth century, the panellists explore how cinema facilitated the expression of marginal voices – from children with autism, to blind children and traumatised psychiatric patients. Bonnie Evans explores the significance of film to British and Swiss child psychology prior to the 1960s. Katie Joice considers the new ways of thinking about childhood blindness that emerged in the films of British and American psychoanalysts in the 1960s. Anna Toropova examines the role of popular scientific film in articulating a ‘Soviet’ conception of psychological trauma between the 1920s and 1950s.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Hugo Soares

Commentator

• Sarah Marks, Birkbeck, University of London

Individual Presentations

• Film and the Translation of Psychological Concepts of Child Development: from Switzerland to Britain and Beyond - Bonnie Evans, University of Manchester

• Soviet Scientific Film and Conceptions of Trauma, 1920s-1950s - Anna Toropova, University of Warwick

• Growing Up Without Sight: Child Psychoanalysis, Observational Film and the Blind Child in Postwar America and Britain - Katie Joice, Birkbeck College London