Introduction to the Special Issue on the Cultural Therapeutics of Film

Abstract

This interdisciplinary special issue explores the synergy between psychotherapy and filmmaking—particularly how film can serve as a powerful healing function by bringing voice, representation, and light to the all-too-often overlooked and shadowed aspects of psychological and cultural life, similar to the work of psychotherapy. To understand the culturally therapeutic aspects of filmmaking, this issue features psychological and cinematic insights from two fields of experts and their crafts: scholars and their writing and filmmakers and their films. The unique approach of this special issue provides new possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration between psychologists and filmmakers to explore the therapeutic function of film for society as well as avenues for film to address, heal, and transform the pressing cultural issues of our times.