Film Studies: Psychological Orthodoxies and the Unconscious ViewerFilm
                        Studies: Psychological Orthodoxies and the Unconscious Viewer

This book examines graphic novels to illustrate that in form and function they inform readers on how they ought to be read. The book's arguments result in an innovative analysis of the various knowledges that comics produce and the methods artists and writers employ to convey them. Theoretically eclectic, this study attends to the lessons taught by both the form and content of today's most celebrated graphic novels. The book analyzes the embedded lessons in comics and graphic novels through the form's central tropes: the iconic child storyteller and the inherent childishness of comics in American culture; the use of mirrors and masks as ciphers of the unconscious; embedded puzzles and games in otherwise story-driven comic narratives; and the form's self-reflexive propensity for showing its work. Comics reveal the labor that goes into producing them, embedding lessons on how to read the “work” as a whole. Throughout, the book draws from a range of theoretical insights from psychoanalysis and semiotics to theories of reception and production from film studies, art history, and media studies. Some of the major texts examined include Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis; Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth; Joe Sacco's Palestine; David B.'s Epileptic; and Kyle Baker's Nat Turner. As the examples show, graphic novels teach us even as they create meaning in their infinite relay between words and pictures.

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On Film Studies and the Unconscious

Camera Obscura Feminism Culture and Media Studies ◽

10.1215/02705346-1727455 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

pp. 39-67

Author(s):

Chris Dumas

Keyword(s):

Film Studies ◽

The Unconscious

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Distortion in lattice-resolution scanned-probe microscope images

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100148447 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 51 ◽

pp. 522-523

Author(s):

L. Fei

Keyword(s):

Film Studies ◽

Lattice Structure ◽

Substrate Material ◽

Repulsive Force ◽

Instrument Calibration ◽

Microscope Images ◽

Probe Microscope ◽

Electron Microscopes ◽

Diffraction Patterns ◽

Lattice Resolution

Scanned probe microscopes (SPM) have been widely used for studying the structure of a variety material surfaces and thin films. Interpretation of SPM images, however, remains a debatable subject at best. Unlike electron microscopes (EMs) where diffraction patterns and images regularly provide data on lattice spacings and angles within 1-2% and ∽1° accuracy, our experience indicates that lattice distances and angles in raw SPM images can be off by as much as 10% and ∽6°, respectively. Because SPM images can be affected by processes like the coupling between fast and slow scan direction, hysteresis of piezoelectric scanner, thermal drift, anisotropic tip and sample interaction, etc., the causes for such a large discrepancy maybe complex even though manufacturers suggest that the correction can be done through only instrument calibration.We show here that scanning repulsive force microscope (SFM or AFM) images of freshly cleaved mica, a substrate material used for thin film studies as well as for SFM instrument calibration, are distorted compared with the lattice structure expected for mica.

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Behavior in the Brain

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803/a000016 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 76-82 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Martin M. Monti ◽

Adrian M. Owen

Keyword(s):

Motor Behavior ◽

Functional Neuroimaging ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Motor Output ◽

The Unconscious ◽

Ethical Implications ◽

Brain Responses ◽

Minimally Conscious ◽

Brain Insults ◽

Brain Behavior

Recent evidence has suggested that functional neuroimaging may play a crucial role in assessing residual cognition and awareness in brain injury survivors. In particular, brain insults that compromise the patient’s ability to produce motor output may render standard clinical testing ineffective. Indeed, if patients were aware but unable to signal so via motor behavior, they would be impossible to distinguish, at the bedside, from vegetative patients. Considering the alarming rate with which minimally conscious patients are misdiagnosed as vegetative, and the severe medical, legal, and ethical implications of such decisions, novel tools are urgently required to complement current clinical-assessment protocols. Functional neuroimaging may be particularly suited to this aim by providing a window on brain function without requiring patients to produce any motor output. Specifically, the possibility of detecting signs of willful behavior by directly observing brain activity (i.e., “brain behavior”), rather than motoric output, allows this approach to reach beyond what is observable at the bedside with standard clinical assessments. In addition, several neuroimaging studies have already highlighted neuroimaging protocols that can distinguish automatic brain responses from willful brain activity, making it possible to employ willful brain activations as an index of awareness. Certainly, neuroimaging in patient populations faces some theoretical and experimental difficulties, but willful, task-dependent, brain activation may be the only way to discriminate the conscious, but immobile, patient from the unconscious one.

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“The Unconscious” in Current Psychology

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040/a000017 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 193-201 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Elisabeth Norman

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Psychology ◽

Verbal Report ◽

Psychological Research ◽

Operational Definition ◽

The Unconscious ◽

Apparent Lack ◽

Unconscious Processing ◽

Unconscious Processes ◽

Intermediate States ◽

Definition Of

A series of vignette examples taken from psychological research on motivation, emotion, decision making, and attitudes illustrates how the influence of unconscious processes is often measured in a range of different behaviors. However, the selected studies share an apparent lack of explicit operational definition of what is meant by consciousness, and there seems to be substantial disagreement about the properties of conscious versus unconscious processing: Consciousness is sometimes equated with attention, sometimes with verbal report ability, and sometimes operationalized in terms of behavioral dissociations between different performance measures. Moreover, the examples all seem to share a dichotomous view of conscious and unconscious processes as being qualitatively different. It is suggested that cognitive research on consciousness can help resolve the apparent disagreement about how to define and measure unconscious processing, as is illustrated by a selection of operational definitions and empirical findings from modern cognitive psychology. These empirical findings also point to the existence of intermediate states of conscious awareness, not easily classifiable as either purely conscious or purely unconscious. Recent hypotheses from cognitive psychology, supplemented with models from social, developmental, and clinical psychology, are then presented all of which are compatible with the view of consciousness as a graded rather than an all-or-none phenomenon. Such a view of consciousness would open up for explorations of intermediate states of awareness in addition to more purely conscious or purely unconscious states and thereby increase our understanding of the seemingly “unconscious” aspects of mental life.

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