Abstract
Alfred Hitchcock has often been cited as a film-maker who used the Freudian and Lacanian theories of psychoanalysis and applied them to the narrative of his films. Spellbound is a film which uses psychoanalysis as a plot device; psychoanalytical elements are found both in the characters, like in many of his earlier movies, but also in the plot itself.
The story deals with psychoanalysis, which is a method by which modern science treats the emotional problems of the ordinary man. The analyst seeks only to induce the patient to talk about his hidden problems, to open the locked doors of his mind. Once the complexes that have been disturbing the patient are uncovered and interpreted, the illness and confusion disappear... and the evils of unreason are driven from the human soul. Here, the story focuses on the therapeutic release of one of the characters, John Ballantine. Psychoanalytical elements are explicitly described from the very beginning with an explanation to the audience of what it is and explicitly includes it as an important, if not the central part of the plot.
