Using Movies for Healing and Growth
Cinema Therapy
“Why Cinema Therapy Works”
One aspect of most movies is that they serve as allegories, in much the same way as do stories, myths, jokes, fables, or dreams which can all be utilized in therapy.
The cognitive effect of cinema therapy can be explained through recent theories of learning and creativity, which suggest that we have seven "intelligence’s". The more of these intelligence’s we access, the faster we learn because they employ different methods of information processing.
Watching movies can engage all seven of them: the logical (plot), the linguistic (dialogs), the visual-spatial (pictures, colors, symbols), the musical (sounds and music), the interpersonal (storytelling), the kin-esthetic (moving), and the intra-psychic (inner guidance).
Mythic stories explain the purpose and place of humans in the grand design. Many films contain a mythical message that reminds us of our virtue and our authentic self.
"Mining the gold" in movies means uncovering our hidden finest attributes by understanding how we project these virtues on film heroes and heroines. Identifying with a character can help us to develop inner strength as we recall forgotten inner resources and become aware of the right opportunity for those resources to be applied.
Like dream work, cinema therapy allows us to gain awareness of our deeper layers of consciousness to help us move toward new perspectives or behavior as well as healing and integration of the total self.
This inner work is a form of "modern-day shamanism", where we find a way to our soul that makes sense to our mind. Just as in poems, music, and literature, studying film's symbolic and deeper meanings empowers us by helping to integrate emotions, intuition and logic, and therefore blend our rational and "irrational" processes.
Understanding reactions to characters, who are "different" and unlikable can guide us to discover in the "shadow" of your own psyche our true self and our potential.
As observing helps us to "step back", the bigger picture becomes more obvious. This way, watching screen movies helps us learn to understand ourselves and others more deeply in the "big movie" of our life. We develop a skill to see our self and the world more objectively — with less of our habitual rigid, judgmental, or emotional filtering.
Birgit Wolz, Ph.D., MFT
Movie Quotes
Professor X from X-MEN, “Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn’t mean they’re lost forever.” There is so much truth to this. Don’t we all lose our path at some point in our lives?
Who can forget Ferris Bueller, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (if your old enough to know who that is) “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Got to have a conversation about mindfulness with this one.
Our comic rebel, “Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough, sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded”-Batman, The Dark Knight. In a film emphasizing doing good because it’s our duty as humans, no other line summarizes the importance of taking initiative quite like this one.”
The one and only Rocky Balboa -Rocky, “Nobody is gonna hit as hard as life, but it ain’t how hard you can hit. It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. It’s how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.”
Even Spongebob makes good sense of things he can’t control. “I’m ugly and I’m proud.”
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