Filmic Therapeutic Encounters and Resistance: Silence, Forgetting, and Guilt in the Face of Historical Violence

Abstract

Mental disorder and therapeutic encounters are central aspects of three films that were groundbreaking in addressing collective trauma in the aftermath of slavery, colonialism, or genocide: Peele’s GET OUT (USA), Ruhorahoza’s GREY MATTER (Rwanda) and Mhando and Mulvihill’s MAANGAMIZI—THE ANCIENT ONE (Tanzania/USA). Recurring to theories of collective memory and trauma, the article assumes that asymmetric historical violence causes a crisis of reason among the victims, and that the affective dream-like technique of film has the potential to make unutterable mental conditions explicit and relatable without trivializing their complexities. Oppression is usually perpetuated by an alliance of domination with forgetting, silencing, and a sense of guilt, inflicted on the victims who are thereupon labeled as overly sensitive, moronic, or insane. The films depict mental conditions caused by collective trauma which are expressed by haunting memories, ancestral visions, or victims being possessed by their oppressors. A central element is the depiction of problematic therapeutic encounters which may be abusive, manipulative or turn the patient–therapist relation upside down. By challenging notions of therapy and critically addressing its potential embeddedness in power relations, it is argued, the films themselves serve as a form of postcolonial therapy and empowerment.