Mind Altering Cinematography

Drawing on Stanislav Grof's decades of LSD research, this article argues that cinema should be understood not as a conscious or ideological representation of the world but as part of the vast realm of the unconscious. It proposes a psychedelic reorientation of the cinematographic unconscious, suggesting that media culture itself enables strange encounters that raise profound questions about being human in a transforming world in crisis.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In this time of the so-called psychedelic renaissance, it is “mind-revealing” to rediscover the body of work on LSD therapy by Stanislav Grof. As researcher of the transformative potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness, his observations from over fifty years of LSD research offer a holistic and deeply philosophical approach towards the realms of the human unconscious. Reading his work, one cannot help but make connections to (certain genres in) cinema. While in the mid-twentieth century film theory developed from and in relation to psychoanalytic conceptions of the unconscious, this article proposes to look at the lessons from research in psychedelics, to propose a psychedelic re-orientation of the cinematographic unconsciousness. Rather than a conscious or unconscious and ideological representation of the world, this article argues that our media culture itself belongs to the vast realm of the unconscious where we have strange encounters that lead to profound questions about what it means to be human in a transforming world in crisis.