While films could viscerally depict people wrestling with
psychological demons, grand and petty, as a medium, film was
unwieldy for purposes of using the issues it dramatized as grist
for another mill, the mill of psychotherapy. What was it about
the life on screen that touched the life of the viewer off screen?
How do you easily explore it? A book or poem that moved you,
a painting that touched you, a musical passage that transported
you — they could be reread, re-viewed, or replayed to recap-
ture the emotional lightning. But how could the 35mm motion
picture, an expensive, non-portable medium, be used to aid
psychotherapy? Not well and not easily.
Then, in the late 70s the VCR and the video cassette revo-
lutionized film duplication, and the door to cinema therapy was
opened wide. Easy, inexpensive access to emotionally provoca-
tive film stories became a convenient reality. Freed of screen-
ing constraints, film could now easily be recruited to aid the
therapeutic process.
Today, the value of film to the process of self-awareness
and self-improvement has never been more exquisitely appre-
ciated, by both academics and laypersons. Self-help books
designed around recommended and categorized film titles have
appeared. I have read many of them, and some are quite good.
Few, however, are written by therapists who have devoted
much of their practice to the use of film as a central therapeu-
tic adjunct. Birgit Wolz is such a therapist and author. Her
extensive hands-on professional experience in the field brings
a greater sensitivity to the intricacies and nuances of film as an
emotional experience and source of identification and self-dis-
covery. E-Motion Picture Magic: A Movie Lover’s Guide to
Healing and Transformation comes with guidance, advice,
insights, and recommendations that reflect her experiences
with the emerging field of cinema therapy.
It is clear that Wolz understands the dynamics of why
movies are such a rich source of personal insight and self-dis-
covery. Movies constitute the premier popular culture form of
the day. This is due, in no small way, to the psychophysiologi-viii E-Motion Picture Magicemotion book final 8/30/04 10:11 AM Page viii