Mind Reeling investigates how cinema displays and mirrors psychological disorders, such as bipolar disorder, amnesia, psychotic delusions, obsessive compulsive behavior, trauma, paranoia, and borderline personalities. It explores a range of genres, including biopics, comedies, film noirs, contemporary dramedies, thrillers, Gothic mysteries, and docufictions. The contributors open up critical approaches to audience fascination with film depictions of serious disturbances within the human psyche. Many films examined here have had little scholarly attention and commentary. These essays focus on how cinematic techniques contribute to popular culture's conception of mental dysfunction, trauma, and illness. This book reveals the complex artistic and generic patterns that produce contemporary images of psychopathology in cinema.

List of IllustrationsAcknowledgments1. Introduction: A Very Brief History of Psychopathology in CinemaHomer B. Pettey2. Adèle H., Camille Claudel, and Margot de Valois: Isabelle Adjani's Real "Mad" Women? Costume Drama and the Disruptive FemaleSusan Hayward3. Musical Madness on Hangover SquareMurray Pomerance4. Screening Multiple Personality Disorder in the Age of Kinsey: Lizzie and The Three Faces of EveR. Barton Palmer5. The Cine-Telescopic Psyche: 1950s Serial Killers and Sexual Psychopathology in The Sniper and While the City SleepsRobert Miklitsch6. Pathologies of Pedagogy in Midcentury Melodrama: The Miracle Worker and A Child Is WaitingJennifer L. Jenkins7. Passion and Delirium: Representing Madness in Spider and AsylumJim Leach8. Scorched: Landscape, Trauma, and Embodied Experience in IncendiesTarja Laine9. Ghostly and Ghastly Desires and Disorders in Young Adult: KenTacoHuts in MercuryJulie Grossman10. Criminal Biographies and Visual CultureHomer B. PetteyContributorsIndex