2272 – Art and psychiatry a discourse between psychoanalytic thought and cinema

Abstract

Last five years the Hellenic Psychiatric Association (HPsA) organizes every year a film festival on a psychiatric subject, and we go on. The themes that we have mentioned are psychosis, depression, violence, psychopathology and artistic creation, mass and power, and fear. These presentations gave us the chance to communicate with a big audience and to have a productive discussion after every meeting. During these dialogs we had the opportunity to observe how the art can approach and describe the pathological behavior and the mental illness. We can refer such examples and to share with our colleagues our experiences from those events. A very rich and fruitful experience which offers not only to our scientific knowledge, but also our esthetic development. The screen in the darkened theatre serves as a container for the projection and identification of our most private and often unconscious feelings. As with all forms of art, when we study film, we study ourselves.