My Love Affair with Movies: Understanding Films on the Surface, and Diving Deeper by Anita Weinreb Katz, PhD

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MOVIES: Understanding Films on the Surface and Diving Deeper by Anita Weinreb Katz, PhD © copyright 2021

Author Anita Katz asks: “What’s it all about, Alfie?”
The answer: “Why, it’s about movies, of course.”

Dr. Anita Katz has been passionate about movies since childhood. Her fascination with the stories and characters onscreen led her to frequent the local movie theatre on Saturday afternoons during her young teens. As a youngster, her mother, a concert pianist, provided Anita with dance, piano and elocution lessons. In fact, her childhood dream was to become a dancer or actress.

Dr. Katz’s creatively rich inner life is what led her to choose a career in psychoanalysis.  Dr. Katz became intrigued with the way that psychoanalysis could be applied to movies and began writing and publishing her studies. Some of these analyses have been published as essays in psychoanalytic journals and have been presented as talks by Dr. Katz at various national and international psychoanalytic conferences world-wide. Along the way, she decided to compile her analytic film studies into a book, and “My Love Affair with Movies” was born.

Dr. Katz uses her intricate knowledge of the human psyche to build her comprehensive studies around the main characters in her carefully selected films, and basically psychoanalyzes them. This process has enabled the author to dive deeper into understanding the basic and complex issues of the human condition.

The ten movies written about in the book are: “American Beauty”, “Utz”, “A Woman Under the Influence”, “Proof”, “The Vanishing”, “Lust, Caution”, “Father of the Bride”, “The Piano Teacher”, and “Damage”. In these chapters, including an introductory synopsis of each film, Dr. Katz elucidates the psychological threads, weaving a complex but colorful cloth. Some films are riveting yet disturbing, while others are passionate and political, and some offer a bizarre, unexpected twist. Dr. Katz identifies the main characters’ underlying motivations and psychological demeanor. Her insights are explained using analytical terminology and mainstream language. For psychology professionals, this book is informative and enlightening. For movie buffs, Dr. Katz opens the door to the mind as she demonstrates a new way of looking into films. For general interest, this book offers a fascinating read.

In conclusion, you may want to watch the films again or for the first time. This book will entice you to watch the films Dr. Katz has so delicately described in a way that only she can. So, what are you waiting for? Put some popcorn in the microwave and get comfortable on your favorite sofa or cushiony chair with “MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MOVIES”! (Author’s family photos include pets and therapy dog. Glossary of psychological terms included.)

Dr. Anita Weinreb Katz has been in private practice in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Manhattan for over thirty years. She is also co-editor and contributing writer of “Psychoanalysis In Fashion” with Dr. Arlene Kramer Richards (IPBooks). In addition, many of Dr. Katz’s writings have been published in journals throughout the world.

Special Bonus: Included in this book is a frameable tear-out page of Banksy’s Balloon Girl art.

[Suggested sale price: $36.00

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Advanced Praise for

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH M O V I E S

 

“In My Love Affair with Movies, Dr. Anita Katz allows us to share two of her loves–her passions–of movies and of a psychoanalytic understanding of human relationships. In it, she takes us through a series of films from various parts of the world that she, herself, has found deeply moving through the years, describing them with strong emotion and then bringing them to life again as patients on the couch, or, perhaps more accurately, as pictures of human beings in all their depth and complexity.”

~ Herbert H. Stein, M.D. — Faculty Member of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York (PANY); Author of over 50 essays on psychoanalysis and film published in the PANY Bulletin, many of which were republished in Moving Pictures: Films Through a Psychoanalytic Lens by Herbert H. Stein. (IPBooks 2017) and Double Feature: Discovering Our Hidden Fantasies in Film by Herbert H. Stein (EReads, 2002 and Open Road Media (Kindle Edition), 2014).

 

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“My Love Affair with Movies” is an excellent guidebook for all who are interested in understanding what movies mean to them. Anita Katz, starting with some seminal films which particularly intrigued her, studies them through a solid psychoanalytic perspective as clinical data “in terms of dialogue, events, affect, and behavior, all in the context of the ongoing life situation and historical data available”. Her sensitive, rich and deep commentaries can be enjoyed, not only by professionals, but by teachers and students, and, above all, by ordinary people who would like to enter into the psychic complexity of other worlds grasping “its multitude of feelings and thoughts – crying, laughing, celebrating, mourning, losing, finding”.

~ Franco Borgogno, Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society, Past Full Professor in Clinical Psychology (Turin University), 2010 Sigourney Award Recipient. His most recent book is “One Life Heals Another: Beginnings, Maturity, and Outcomes of a Vocation” published by IPBooks.

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“Films have a lot of layers. When you dig deeper, you can understand more of what the people who create the film intend to convey. With this book, Anita is giving people a crash course. The movie is not finished just because you leave the theater. You are still thinking about it, and there are always new references and things to discover.  The dots are there, you just have to connect them.”                                

~Banksy, Artist, International Graffiti Artist, Film Producer, Writer and Philosopher