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Psychoanalytic film theory is a school of academic thought that evokes of the concepts of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. The theory is closely tied to Critical theory, Marxist film theory, and Apparatus theory. The theory is separated into two waves. The First wave occurred in the 1960s and 70s. The second wave became popular in the 1980s and 90s.

History
At the end of the nineteenth century, Film and Psychoanalysis were created. André Breton, the founder of the Surrealist movement, saw film as a means of engaging the unconscious. Since films had the ablity to tell a story using techniques such as superimposition, and slow motion, to the Surrealists as mimicking dreams.

Freud's concepts of the Oedipus complex, narcissism, castration, the unconscious, the return, and hysteria are all utilized in film theory. The 'unconscious' of a film are examined; this is known as subtext.

First wave
During the first wave of Psychoanalytic film theory, theorists such as Jean-Louis Baudry, Laura Mulvey, and Christian Metz were the main figures.

Baudry

Mulvey

Metz

Christian Metz, in his reading of cinema in context of Psychoanalysis, argues that film is an imaginary signifier which is like a fetish. Spectators participate with film by fetishizing it. One is allowed to fetishize film because it is regarded as real. The Spectator disregards the film as just being an image.

Second wave
The second wave has focused on the works of philosophers Slavoj Žižek and Joan Copjec.