Paper short abstract:

Looking at the archive of the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, this paper explores the use of moving images as a therapeutic technique during the 1960s. In particular, it attends to the specific uses of two technologies—film and video—examining the distinct ideas and affects they inspired.

Paper long abstract:

In the 1960s, American psychiatric clinics began to experiment with the therapeutic potential of the moving image. This paper looks at the archive of the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, examining the way the moving image was experienced by doctors and patients. In considering this, it focuses on the use of two technologies—film and video—each of which were deployed with distinct therapeutic intentions. While the difference between these two mediums may now seem pedantic, the distinction then felt tangible and urgent: images on celluloid strips and cathode tubes had distinct functions, and each was understood to have unique properties that could be harnessed for radical psychological transformation. Proximity and distance, simultaneity and lag, spontaneity and discipline, play and art: these categories came to organize the use of these technologies, and by following their implications, we can excavate both the historically specific meanings of these technologies, as well as the particular manner through which the self was configured and treated within the clinic.