Film, therapy and ethos
Presenting Problems is a group of films that take up various experiential aspects of psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy including the impact and trouble of contact (or failed contact).
They are not explanatory. They do not tell stories to demonstrate good or bad therapy. They do not portray specific people with specific problems. They are not meant to teach moral lessons or illustrate theoretical concepts or explicate diagnostic categories. They tell the story of different dimensions of intrapsychic dynamics from the perspective of aspects of the self— aspects of the self that may or may not wish to change, may or may not need to change, may or may not be able to change.
These films are not intended to endorse, condemn, support or cast doubt upon any modality of therapy. They are intended to consider how representations of internal life (specifically, unconscious dynamics) require new forms of story telling, new forms of representation and new forms of communicating the clinical experience.
The films of Presenting Problems have been shown in screening rooms, classrooms, auditoriums, art schools, colleges, psychiatric in-patient training programs, low-fee clinics, psychoanalytic training programs and social work and counseling training programs across America. We also have had showings in the UK and in India. Several of the films have been translated into various languages (Spanish, Greek) and we hope to continue to have vibrant conversations about unconscious dynamics and analytic therapy.
Although the films included in the first volume are not available online as they have been in the past, a second volume of Presenting Problems is forthcoming that explores the various experiences of listening. These films are interested in a different aspect of intrapsychic and inter-personal dynamics, namely the reception of another person’s internal experience and the trouble that entails.
In the distance, Volume 3: On Being Alone (in groups, couples or by oneself) and Volume 4: A Zoology are both slowly taking shape and there is a longer film entitled, “Threesomes” that should find a home somewhere. The ambition to have some sort of psychoanalytic film festival. So we shall see! Please stay tuned.