The Educator as Neurotic: A Rankean Analysis of Impotent Teachers in Film

Authors

  • Daniel Sullivan University of Arizona

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1234/fa.v0i73.223

Keywords:

psychoanalysis, Rank, education, cinema

Abstract

Otto Rank argued that, in the modern individualistic and child-focused era, the transmission of collective beliefs is no longer valued and the figure of the educator becomes obsolete. This analysis illuminates the significance of a common theme in films, namely the teacher who, though serviced with the task of training children, is himself impotent or childless. The protagonists of Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939), The Browning Version (1951), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), and Waterland (1992) are variously portrayed as unable to produce their own offspring and trapped by an overly ruminative approach to life. Rank’s analysis suggests that the educator protagonists in these films are incarnations of the modern neurotic personality, whom he described as a “failed artist.” These impotent teachers also serve as symbols of the breakdown of cultural transmission in amnesic modernity.

Author Biography

Daniel Sullivan, University of Arizona

Assistant professor of Social Psychology, University of Arizona

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Published

2018-12-23

How to Cite

Sullivan, D. (2018). The Educator as Neurotic: A Rankean Analysis of Impotent Teachers in Film. Free Associations, (73), 41–63. https://doi.org/10.1234/fa.v0i73.223

Issue

No. 73 (2018)

Section

Cinema On The Couch

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