The Beguiled is a 2017 American drama film written and directed by Sofia Coppola, based on a novel by Thomas P. Cullinan. It provides an in-depth intellectual exploration of how the unconscious manifests itself. The film, set in the middle of the Civil War, showcases the unconscious fear of castration, vagina dentate, and the fear of being led into the rocks to be crushed by Muses. MEN:  Beware! Especially men who beguile, and then succumb to an even more dangerous beguiling. All this and more will be discussed in the context of the current social movements, the Women's Marches ("Pussy Bites Back") and the #Metoo movement.

Learning Objectives

As a result of attending this course, participants should be able to:

• Explain the Jungian ideas of Collective Unconscious, fear of groups of beautiful women, or of beauty and woman, singularly, and apply it to their clinical practice
• Describe unconscious castration anxiety, from both the male and female perspectives. This will include a review of what can go wrong during the resolution of the Oedipal Complex, from a Freudian perspective
• Delineate how this movie fits into the zeitgeist, giving examples of two other major films of 2017 (Lady Macbeth and Phantom Thread) depicting men being poisoned by mushrooms, prepared by women, and of current social movements, #Metoo and #TimesUp.

Elena Balashova-Shamis, PsyD, is an advanced psychoanalytic candidate at the New Center for Psychoanalysis (NCP) in both the adult and child programs. She maintains a private practice in West Los Angeles. She is on the  faculty at NCP, LAISPS, UCLA, Ryokan College, and also works as a dissertation advisor. She presents seminars and workshops on various topics in psychoanalysis, sexuality, and child development. She has been recently published in JAPA (October, 2017)

Deborah Lynn, MD, is a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist and general psychiatrist, and a psychoanalytic candidate at the New Center for Psychoanalysis. She is in private practice in Westwood as well as a member of the volunteer clinical faculty at UCLA, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 

Pricing & CE Credits

• $20 with 2.5 CE Credits
• $10 without CE Credit