Psychology also has its place in the seventh art. Of course, Virtually any movie can offer a psychological reading of its characters or the way of thinking of whoever directed it. In fact, not only the big screen offers us plots with high psychological content, but TV series are also achieving it:
And, obviously, documentaries can also provide you with extensive knowledge on the subject:
However, the list of movies about psychology which you will find below is especially recommended for anyone interested in studying and understanding this discipline and the contents it works on:
Let’s start with the compilation of psychological films that you can enjoy while learning concepts and stories related to the world of the mind.
1. The Prince of Tides (1991)
Romantic melodrama directed by Barbra Streisand based on the book of the same name written by Pat Conroy. Although it is a story based on love and forgiveness, it also talks about childhood traumas and the mark they can leave on adult life in the form of PTSD. Highly recommended.
2. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
This is a film that focuses on the psychological consequences of suffering from a physical impairment. The protagonist, former editor-in-chief of the magazine elleis locked in his own body due to the call locked-in syndrome, unable to move anything voluntarily except one eye. From that moment on, this eye will be the only window of communication that will keep him in contact with other people and will allow him to write an autobiographical book, the same one on which this film was based and with which he shares a name.
The film, in addition to containing an important emotional charge, is a reflection on the relationships between the mind (or, rather, consciousness) and one’s own body.
3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
This film starring the famous Jack Nicholson shows essential problems of the tradition on which many mental institutions are based: overdiagnosis the undervaluation of the internal as a responsible agent for one’s own life, the pigeonholing of people using diagnostic labels, and invasive methods to change behavior patterns. It is based on the novel of the same name by Ken Kesey and at the time it won many awards due to its perfect technical finish and the humanistic message it conveys.
It combines a perfect exemplification of what anterograde amnesia (a disorder in which new memories are not formed) with a way of narrating that makes us better understand this type of disorder. The film is composed of two types of scenes, some in black and white and others in color, which move forward and backward in time to leave us at all times with the confusing feeling that we are missing something to understand what is happening. The film also makes us wonder Where is one’s identity when memory is not there to connect all the experiences we live?
5. Take Shelter (2011)
An ordinary father of a family begins to give in to the fear of a possible apocalypse without being subject to any rational explanation. From that moment on, he enters a spiral of hasty decisions without us knowing if he has reasons to act this way or if it is delusions. This film can be included in a list of films about psychology because of the sensations it makes us experience, although what it tries to explain to us is more a metaphor about the American lifestyle, deeply based on private property, than an illustration about mental mechanisms. of the paranoia
A family of vacationers is kidnapped in their own home by a couple of men dressed as golf players. From that premise, Austrian director Michael Haneke spends more than an hour showing us what happens when psychopathy is combined with high doses of bad faith and the desire to eliminate others.
The realistic cut of the film is combined with a component of metafiction in which the viewer is directly questioned by what he is seeing, which does not help to make the film lighter. There are also occasions in which reference is made to the fact that everything that happens is part of a film in which the will of the golfing couple takes precedence, which reinforces the feeling that they have everything under control and that behind In his apparent impulsiveness there is a framework of perverse rationality. Film not recommended for sensitive stomachs.
Much more lyrical than the previous one, I Am a Cyborg is a film set in South Korea in which a young woman is admitted to a psychiatric hospital because of her hallucinations It is a love film in which the suitor, who is also hospitalized, climbs the steps of the parallel reality that the protagonist has created, understanding her hidden logic, to help her. A curious and profound film at the same time.
A list of films about psychology cannot exclude the social aspect of our behavior. The experiment is a film based on the Stanford prison experiment, which was carried out in 1971 under the direction of the psychologist Philip Zimbardo
In it, several people are randomly assigned to two categories: guards of a fictitious prison and prisoners of the same. During this experiment, which ended abruptly when it escaped the control of the experimenters, it was possible to see to what extent social elements as superficial as belonging to a group can completely change people’s morality. If you study psychology, you should see this movie as soon as possible.
9. As good as it gets (1997)
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is portrayed here with humor. Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson again) builds his daily life around small, unbreakable routines and a unique ability to be obnoxious. Udall is letting the compulsions and repetitive patterns of behavior dictate your life until a day comes when something new crosses his path and changes his character for the better.
10. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
One of Stanley Kubrick’s great classics, based on a novel of the same name. The protagonist is accustomed to a life of violence and lack of control due to a probable antisocial personality disorder. When he is imprisoned, a group of technicians decide to try a method on him to suppress violent impulses through a good dose of behavioral psychology.
The film talks about the belief in small invisible springs that activate certain patterns of behavior regardless of the person’s will. This futuristic dystopia It is considered by many people to be the queen of psychology films as it focuses both on psychological mechanisms and a discussion of their existence and the role of modern psychiatry.
Other psychological films
Here are other films related to psychology that may interest you.
11. The Truman Show (1998)
One of the best-known films starring actor Jim Carrey, who on this occasion abandons the comic register that characterizes him to play a man who has lived his entire life on a gigantic television set without knowing it By the way, this work gave its name to a recently discovered type of delirium.
12. The Witch (2015)
A recently released film that has garnered great fame. It tells the life of a family of North American settlers who move to an isolated settlement in the forest to start a new life. The clash between the presence of a witch around his house and The strong religious faith of the family will cause little by little delusional ideas
The story of two brothers skinhead of national socialist ideology that little by little are emerging from the spiral of hatred in which they live. People interested in social psychology will find in this film an interesting story about the formation of boundaries that separate the intragroup, those with whom we identify, from the outgroup those with whom we try to compete.
14. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
An American thriller that has become one of the most remembered cult psychological films Based on the novel of the same name by writer Thomas Harris, it shows a part of the life of Hannibal Lecter, a cannibalistic psychopath with a history as a serial killer.
15. I am Sam (2001)
The story of a mentally disabled man played by Sean Penn who fights by all means to maintain custody of his daughter. To do this, she has the help of a lawyer (Michelle Pfeiffer) who little by little will see in her client an example of her dignity and determination. This film talks about the willpower and motivation that leads a person to break the limits that they believed limited them.
16. The Arrival
An excellent psychological film that uses the resources of the science fiction genre to explore two topics closely related to psychology and psycholinguistics: grief caused by the death of a loved one and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, according to which our thoughts and our way of living experiences depend on the type of language we are accustomed to using.
The excuse to talk about these fascinating topics is the arrival of alien life forms on Earth and the need to establish diplomatic relations with them without knowing how they communicate.
17. The Black Swan (2010)
One of director Darren Aronofsky’s best-known psychological films. The black swan talks about how the need to seek perfection without limit, competitiveness and lack of moments of intimacy They can take over a person until they break their mind.
18. Taxi driver
A cinema classic It tells about a man who, to combat his insomnia and boredom, decides to start working as a taxi driver at night. Little by little he will try to find a relevant role to give meaning to his existence, even if this puts him in danger. and others.
19. Rain Man (988)
If what you are looking for is a psychology film that shows many of the characteristics associated with autism, Rain Man is a very good option. In it Dustin Hoffman plays a man who presents a Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and begins to relate to a brother he barely knows.
20. An almost funny story (2010)
Craig, a teenager with severe depression He is destined for a psychiatric center. There, as the area with people her age is full, she must live with the adults, where she will make friends with a man named Bob (Zack Galifianakis) and Noelle (Emma Roberts), another girl of a similar age.
Do you want more movies?
We propose more films, this time related to the field of Philosophy:
