Stories we see, stories we hear
Presenting Problems is a group of films that take up various experiential aspects of psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy including the impact and trouble of contact (or failed contact).
They are not educational, explanatory or experimental in the more traditional sense. They are not meant to teach moral lessons or illustrate theoretical concepts or explicate diagnostic categories. Instead, they tell different kinds of stories about intra-psychic dynamics — aspects of the self that may or may not wish to change, may or may not know what they know, may or may not know about other aspects of self.
These films are intended for discussion since they hope to highlight different paradoxical challenges to change, and as such attempt to find new forms of story telling to communicate different aspects of clinical experience.
The films of Presenting Problems have been shown in screening rooms, classrooms, auditoriums, art schools, colleges, psychiatric in-patient training programs, low-fee clinics, psychoanalytic training programs and social work and counseling training programs primarily along the West Coast. We also have had showings in the UK and in India. Several of the films have been translated into various languages (Spanish, Greek) and we hope to continue to have vibrant conversations about unconscious dynamics and analytic therapy.
Although these shorts are not available online, a second volume of Presenting Problems is now part of the conversation and includes films on listening, free association, identity, unconscious beliefs, sexuality, trauma and the reception of another person’s internal experience and the trouble that entails.
A longer film about analytic treatment entitled, “Threesomes,” will be released in the Spring of 2028.