Sonia Winter, a member of the Petits Laboratoires d’Empathie, defended her doctoral thesis in psychoanalysis and psychopathology, supervised by Serge Tisseron, on 14 December 2020 at the Université de Paris. The thesis subject was subjectivation and empathy in filmmaking: how to take ownership of one’s story and rebuild oneself after trauma.
1 – What is distinctive about filmmaking in the therapeutic field?
Many books address the relationship between cinema and the psyche, but few deal with making a film for a therapeutic purpose. This art-therapy practice is still fairly uncommon, despite the omnipresence of video in our daily lives; probably because its development is recent compared with other arts. It is indeed linked to the emergence of new technologies and to a democratisation of these tools, that is, their accessibility and ease of use. The “film mediator”, at the centre of the relationship and of the therapeutic project, calls for specific work: in and on space-time; around different technical functions and stages of development; with the help of a narrative based on an audio-visual language that makes it possible to bypass and then return to the verbal. By facilitating a step back and work on point of view, filmmaking revives an empathic look at one’s own experiences, at others and at the world. Thus making a film oneself promotes, for example, personal reconstruction; a re-identification that is necessary and useful at any age whatever our life stories; or a re-humanisation in the case of social ruptures or dramatic events.
2 – How can this mediator promote self-reconstruction?
Videos on social networks prove the need to tell one’s own story and to feel a resonance between one’s own story and that of others. The construction of the film symbolically echoes the (re)construction of the self, notably with an impression of control over reality. These videos can therefore have a therapeutic effect without that being the aim, or in certain circumstances, on the contrary, they can have a destructive effect, because producing images is not enough to feel better. To be able to take ownership of one’s own discourse and story, or to discover how it is a personal expression, the creative work must be framed and accompanied, notably by a benevolent word and gaze that can offer something back.
3 – How can filmmaking help people suffering from post-trauma?
Work around self-reconstruction is necessary in post-traumatic situations, notably because a part of the self has been wounded. Something has broken or stopped, and narrative weaving helps to rebuild a continuity of identity, history, time, and so on. Filmmaking can thus restart the psychic movement and bring to life what has been frozen. It also invites work over a fairly long period, conducive to reworking, to development and to psychic maturation.
Serge Tisseron is a psychiatrist, doctor of psychology with accreditation to supervise research, member of the Académie des technologies, and associate researcher at Université de Paris (CRPMS).
