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Film, Television and the Psychology of the Social Dream

  • Book
  • © 2014

Overview

Authors:
  1. Robert W. Rieber

    1. New York, USA

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  2. Robert J. Kelly

    1. Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, USA

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  • Concise review of key ideas on the social meaning of cinema

  • Unique historical narrative traces analyses of film content

  • Exploration of major mythic themes such as the lone hero, apocalyptic visions, redemption, chaos, war

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vii
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  2. The Cultural Psychology of Motion Pictures: Dreams that Money Can Buy

    • Robert W. Rieber, Robert J. Kelly
    Pages 1-29

  3. The Aliens in Us and the Aliens Out There: Science Fiction in the Movies

    • Robert W. Rieber, Robert J. Kelly
    Pages 31-44

  4. The Role of Movies and Mental Health

    • Robert W Rieber, Robert J Kelly
    Pages 45-77

  5. Bedlam in Spyland: Is Bourne Bond?

    • Robert W. Rieber, Robert J. Kelly
    Pages 79-101

  6. The Cult of Celebrity: How Hollywood Conquered Reality

    • Robert W. Rieber, Robert J. Kelly
    Pages 103-115

  7. Life Imitating Art: Organized Crime on Screen

    • Robert W. Rieber, Robert J. Kelly
    Pages 117-141

  8. Media and Film Influences on Popular Culture

    • Robert W. Rieber, Robert J. Kelly
    Pages 143-163

  9. Conclusions: The Inventor, the Detective, and the Warrior

    • Robert W. Rieber, Robert J. Kelly
    Pages 165-171

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 173-181
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Keywords

About this book

​This book demonstrates how social distress or anxiety is reflected, modified, and evolves through the medium of the motion picture.  Tracing cinema from its earliest forms, the authors show how film is a perfect medium for generating and projecting dreams, fantasies, and nightmares, on the individual as well as the societal level. Arising at the same time as Freud’s influential ideas, cinema has been intertwined with the wishes and fears of the greater culture and has served as a means of experiencing those feelings in a communal and taming environment. From Munsterberg’s original pronouncements in the early 20th century about the psychology of cinema, through the pioneering films of Melies, the works of the German expressionists, to James Bond and today’s superheroes this book weaves a narrative highlighting the importance of the social dream. It develops the idea that no art form goes beyond the ordinary process of consciousness in the same way as film, reflecting, as it does, the cognitive, emotional, and volitional aspects of human nature.​

Reviews

From the reviews:

"...any treatise on film or television themes is necessarily psychological. This is true of the book Film, Television and the Psychology of the Social Dream by Robert W. Rieber and Robert J. Kelly, and its title appears to emphasize the social psychology of film and television as shared experiences."
Lauren S. Seifert
PsycCRITIQUES
September 8, 2014, Vol. 59, No. 36, Article 6

Authors and Affiliations

  • New York, USA

    Robert W. Rieber

  • Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, USA

    Robert J. Kelly

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Film, Television and the Psychology of the Social Dream

  • Authors: Robert W. Rieber, Robert J. Kelly

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7175-2

  • Publisher: Springer New York, NY

  • eBook Packages: Behavioral Science, Behavioral Science and Psychology (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4614-7174-5Published: 17 November 2013

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4939-4770-6Published: 17 September 2016

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-4614-7175-2Published: 18 November 2013

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: VII, 181

  • Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: History of Psychology, Cultural Studies, Psychology Research

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