Mind Reeling

Across a variety of genres, shows how mental disorders are depicted in cinema.
Mind Reeling investigates how cinema displays and mirrors psychological disorders, such as bipolar disorder, amnesia, psychotic delusions, obsessive compulsive behavior, trauma, paranoia, and borderline personalities. It explores a range of genres, including biopics, comedies, film noirs, contemporary dramedies, thrillers, Gothic mysteries, and docufictions. The contributors open up critical approaches to audience fascination with film depictions of serious disturbances within the human psyche. Many films examined here have had little scholarly attention and commentary. These essays focus on how cinematic techniques contribute to popular culture’s conception of mental dysfunction, trauma, and illness. This book reveals the complex artistic and generic patterns that produce contemporary images of psychopathology in cinema.
Homer B. Pettey is Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at the University of Arizona. He is the editor of several books, including Hitchcock’s Moral Gaze (with R. Barton Palmer and Steven M. Sanders) and Rule Brittannia! The Biopic and British National Identity (with R. Barton Palmer), both also published by SUNY Press.