Demons of the Mind: the Interactions of the 'Psy' Sciences and Cinema in the Sixties

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The 1960s was a period of intense struggles over knowledge about the human mind, with psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts in deep conflict. This was the period of professional and public arguments over the use of psychotropic and antipsychotic drugs, electroconvulsive therapy, psychosurgery, as well as issues such as the role of personality and genetics in human behaviour, children's emotional development, obedience and bystander apathy, the relationship between cinema and psychosis, psychology's role in defining sexuality and women's oppression, the popularisation of psychotherapy, and the anti-psychiatry movement. It was also a period in which cinema and audiences became preoccupied with the 'demons of the mind', with horror, science fiction, crime, and thriller films becoming increasingly significant ways in which psychological theories and new research findings were disseminated and debated within the public sphere. British and American cinema invested heavily financially and creatively in exploring child development, attachment and 'mothering', psychogenetics, psychopathy and personality disorders within overlapping cycles of genre films featuring the most celebrated directors and stars (William Wyler, Otto Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Lawrence Olivier, Noel Coward, Audrey Hepburn) and luminaries of New Hollywood and the British New Wave (Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Jack Clayton, Karel Reisz, Terence Stamp). Many of these films were Anglo-American co-productions that integrated national cinematic traditions and talent in appealing to both British and American markets. This project will provide the first comprehensive account of the complex contestations and cross-pollinations of the psy sciences in this defining period as the influence of psychology and allied sciences expanded into everyday political, public and private lives in Britain and America. The project will explore the divergences and intersections of the two national cultures and bodies of medical thought, at a time when, as in cinema culture, there was significant traffic but also marked distinctions. The outputs from this project will therefore provide vital contributions to the history of science and medicine. In addition, the project will trace how key developments in the psy sciences interacted with popular cinema and other media in the 'long Sixties' period of the mid-1950s to early-1970s, when popular culture made an unprecedented intervention into debates regarding human psychology. The project will, therefore, also provide a significant contribution to media and film studies by seeking to understand Sixties cinema culture's fixation with the psychological not as unconscious meanings or subject positions, but rather as conscious and contested intermediations of medical, psychological, and psychiatric discourses and practices; these films were promoted as representing conjoined 'breakthroughs' in science and cinema. Through its research methods, personnel, and dissemination, this project will bring historians of science and medicine, science communication scholars, media and film studies academics, and psy science professionals into productive dialogue. It will also provide vital experience, mentoring, and training for the early career researcher (PI) and postdoctoral researcher in working with leading academics within and outside their fields of expertise. The project will facilitate productive collaboration between the leading Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at University of Manchester and one of UK's longest established centres for Film, Television and Media Studies at University of East Anglia. In addition, the project's partnership with the British Science Association will introduce humanities approaches into the science festival circuit, which is currently dominated by scientific perspectives.