Life teaches us that there is often more than one way to
achieve our dreams. Having worked with many clients over the
years, I have been occasionally surprised to watch as one of them
experienced an amazing “aha!” of recognition and had an inter-
nal shift after watching a movie. These clients were able to iden-
tify with characters who had struggles similar to their own. But
while they identified with the characters, it was also somehow
easier to maintain their distance “outside” the experience. In
other words, they maintained an observer perspective. In some
cases, instead of identifying with a character, the client was
highly critical of them. Either way, the same active principles
seemed to apply, and combining the movie experience with psy-
chological exploration during our sessions had powerful results.
Having observed this almost “alchemical” process many
times, I have come to believe that the key to it lies in two critical
aspects of the movie-viewing experience. Movies, more than any
other storytelling medium, have the power to draw us out of our-
selves and into the experience of their characters. Yet, at the
same time, it is often easier to maintain a healthy distance or per-
spective while watching a movie than it is in a real-life situation.
When psychotherapeutic tools are used to process this
movie-prompted experience, healing and transformation can
happen. Viewing a film with conscious awareness, and prop-
erly digesting the whole experience, together form the core
principles of E-Motion Picture Magic — a particular type of
cinema therapy.
Throughout this book I offer movie suggestions and intro-
duce these therapeutic methods in the form of exercises. I also
include examples of experiences related to me by clients from
my practice. In all such examples, the client’s name has been
changed in order to protect their confidentiality.The Power of Movies
Since the dawn of the movie era more than one hundred years
ago, cinema has had its skeptics and detractors. Even Louis“Movies offer an unusu-
ally safe, enjoyable way to
peek at all we’ve denied
— our dark sides and our
light.”
Marsha Sinetar2 E-Motion Picture Magic