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Jungian Themes in Federico Fellini’s 8½

By Michael Nielson

Twentieth century psychologist Carl Jung’s influence is often felt inside the artistic community do to his psychological examination of art and acknowledgement of primordial archetypes.  However, in film analysis much of his influence is limited to his psychological types as opposed to his theories of art and the archetypes.  These are two aspects I feel film analysis would benefit greatly from acknowledging.  In order to better illustrate this, I will examine Federico Fellini’s 8½, and bring aspects of the film into a clearer light through an examination of both the theories of art and archetypes.  I will begin by giving a brief outline of 8½ and present details crucial to an understanding of the narrative.  I will next move onto an introduction of Jung’s theory of art, and through exerts from interviews with Fellini, I will illustrate how the two are interconnected.  Finally, a presentation of Jung’s theory of archetypes will show how, through these archetypes, we can better understand the meaning and symbolism of key scenes in a film.  Together these elements will show the wide ranging impact Carl Jung’s system is able to have in the field of film analysis.

I – An Introduction to 8½[1]

            8½ is often considered to be the magnum opus of Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini.  It tells the story of fictional filmmaker Guido Anselmi(Marcello Mastroianni), a character who appears at least in part to be based upon Fellini himself.  Like Fellini, Guido is in the process of making a film that has not yet been fully developed.  This film will revolve around a hero who leads “a group of people to start a new life after a nuclear holocaust” via a rocket, and interactions with both a Catholic cardinal and a mysterious woman in white are the only other details revealed.[2]  The production of the film continues despite this, leading Guido to endure an intense psychological pressure from both producers as well as various Church officials.  There are numerous sequences involving both past collaborators, like his fellow writer Daumier(Jean Rougeul), who acts as his creative conscious, pressuring Guido to live up to past successes.  There are also potential producers, who level him with questions regarding financial and logistic issues of the film.  Another pressure surrounding the film can be seen in Guido’s relations with the Catholic Church, whose opinion still weighs heavily on him, despite an inner impulse to purge himself of its dogma.

Guido’s personal crisis is not limited to only the film, as it also results from troubles with the opposite sex.  Two women who clearly exemplify this are Luisa(Anouk Aimee), his wife, and Carla(Sandra Milo), his mistress.  Carla is the first to enter the story when Guido greets her arrival via train, and we quickly learn their relationship is shrouded in secrecy.  His wife Luisa, who arrives over halfway through the film, appears very happy to see Guido at first, but this quickly changes when she begins suspecting infidelity.  After she leaves Guido at the screen tests for his new film, he is suddenly approached by a third feminine influence, Claudia(Claudia Cardinale), the woman who he had envisioned playing the mysterious woman in white central to his new film.  She will serve an important function that will be understood more clearly after examining Jung’s theory of archetypes. 

            In addition to the scenes which tell the story of Guido in the here and now, the film also flows seamlessly between his memories and dreams.  Though there are only two memory sequences, they both tell us of events that would have a profound effect on Guido’s psychological development.  The first deals with matriarchal figures in his youth, while the other details his experience being caught by church officials with the prostitute, La Saraghina(Edra Gale).  Guido’s dreams give us insight into the nature of his present crisis, and in many ways will be his salvation in overcoming it.  A significant fantasy occurs when Guido’s anxiety reaches a fever pitch during an encounter between Luisa and Carla, causing Guido to become fully engulfed in a fantasy where the women of his life come together in a harem.  Upon arriving, he is immediately showered with love, but the women soon begin to protest Guido’s guidelines, and he is forced to subdue them with violence, after which they encircle a table and eat dinner.[3]    This circular imagery would carry over into the final fantasy of the film, when Guido finally halts production and announces there is, in fact, no film.  Shortly afterward, Guido brings all the characters of his life together to dance in unison, solving the creative crisis that had been the central theme for the duration of the film.

II –Jung’s Theory of Art and 8½.

            The case for using Jung’s psychology as an approach to analyzing film has all but been overlooked in most circles, often in favor of a more Freudian perspective.[4]  What little literature does exist ignores Jung’s theory of art, and instead focuses on a more well know aspect of his system, the psychological types.  An example of this is seen in Don Fredericksen’s article entitled “Two Aspects of a Jungian Perspective Upon Film: Jung and Freud; The Psychology of Types” where he deals primarily with the “typing of psychological attitudes and functions” and the relation of these attitudes to characters in film.[5]  Jung’s psychological types consist of what he refers to as ‘extraverted’ and ‘introverted’ types.  The extraverted type, who is more focused on fertility than self-preservation, occurs “when orientation by the object predominates in such a way that decisions and actions are determined not by subjective views, but by objective conditions.”[6]  In contrast, the introverted type, who is more focused on self-preservation than fertility, occurs when orientation to the object is achieved through subjectivity and “is therefore oriented by the factor in perception and cognition which responds to the sense stimulus in accordance with the individual’s subjective disposition.”[7]  These two base types are further broken down into two rational functions, identified as thinking and feeling, and two irrational functions, identified as sensation and intuition.[8]  Each individual has one function of primary importance that dominate the other three, and one auxiliary function which is subordinate to this primary function.[9]  The remaining two are relegated to the unconscious nonego, where one takes the role of the inferior function, and the other acts as its auxiliary function.[10] 

While I agree with the conclusions Fredericksen draws regarding the usefulness of analyzing characters by means of these types, I feel if we stop our investigation here and fail to take into account other aspects of Jung’s literature, we are missing important ways his system is relevant to film analysis.  The first is Jung’s theory of art, which focuses primarily on literature, but is able to extend its influence to all of the creative arts.  In “Psychology and Literature”, written in 1930 and revised in 1950, Jung distinguishes two separate types of novel, which he refers to as the psychological and visionary types.  The psychological novel “deals with materials drawn from the realm of human consciousness.”[11]  In novels of this type, the author has a hand in illuminating the material to the point all interpretation of the work is concrete.[12]  In contrast, the visionary novel is drawn from “a primordial experience which surpasses man’s understanding.”[13]  Here, the question of the novel’s meaning and the characters psychology are not fully determined by the author, leaving the interpretation in the hands of the reader.[14]  Jung identifies the ideal reader of the psychological novel as the layman, while the ideal reader of the visionary novel is the psychologist.[15]  This is because the psychological type of novel “takes us away from the psychological study of the work of art, and confronts us with the psychic disposition of the poet himself.”[16]  A psychological inquiry has very little interest in the poet, and instead focuses on the creative vision itself.[17]  Because he feels “the vision represents a deeper and more impressive experience than human passion” it is placed at a higher level of importance.[18]

            Works Jung holds as exemplary of this distinction are Goethe’s Faust I and Faust II.[19]  Faust I (1808) “explains itself; there is nothing that the psychologist can add to it that the poet has not already said in better words.”[20]  This part of the tragedy deals with the traditional legend of Faustus selling his soul to the devil incarnate, Mephistopheles, and details a love affair between Faustus and the character of Gretchen.[21]  In Faust II (1832) however, “nothing is self-explanatory and every verse adds to the reader’s need of an interpretation.”[22]  Much of the tragedy involved with Gretchen has been forgotten, and the plot follows a five act structure, but each act has its own unique theme.[23]

Much of Jung’s theory of art is more fully illuminated by examining its genesis in his 1922 article entitled “On the Relation of Analytic Psychology to Poetry.”  Here many of the ideas regarding the creative vision begin to take shape as he investigates literature via psychological enquiry.  Jung very quickly establishes that, because of the inherent limitations of any science, “only that aspect of art which consists in the process of artistic creation can be subject for psychological study.”[24]  Jung introduces the basic distinction between the two contrasting types of art as well, by referencing them to his psychological types.  What came to be regarded as the psychological novel is connected to the extraverted type, while the visionary novel to the introverted type.[25]  This, however, is not meant to classify the creator of the work with the attitude of the work, as the contrast between Faust I and Faust II illustrates, a person of one type can clearly create a work of the opposing type.[26]

Jung’s view is perhaps best summarized in the conclusion of his exposition into the relationship between psychology and literature, when he claims that “a great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself” and “to grasp its meaning, we must allow it to shape us as it had once shaped” the artist who had the creative vision.[27]  This focus on this creative vision itself I feel makes 8½ an exemplary case of a visionary type of film, because, as John Stubbs describes in “Fellini’s Portrait of the Artist as Creative Problem Solver”, it celebrates this moment of creative breakthrough.[28]  This can be expanded on by examining what Fellini has said about the film and his thought process when constructing it.

In his interviews with Gideon Bachmann there are many examples of Fellini embracing a more open-ended approach to filmmaking.  Fellini speaks of being a guest in his “invented dream world” and needs to maintain “a feeling of curious surprise, a feeling of being a visitor, after all, an outsider, even when I am, at the same time, the mayor, the chief of police, and the alien registration office of this whole invented world.”[29]  This can be seen as directly correlating to Jung’s idea that the meaning of a visionary type of novel transcends the scope of its author.  Another example of this is when Fellini describes himself, during the production of a film, as being forced to “maintain a constant equilibrium…between that which you wanted to do, in other words the film as it presented itself in your imaginative sphere, and the one you are actually making” which reveals itself more fully as the production progresses.[30]  Much of what Fellini has said about his films follows this theme of disconnection between the final cut of a film and himself, and he describes the films as being able to “absorb and reflect the emanations of changing psychological, environmental, meteorological and neurotic configurations just like a living person would do.”[31]  This connection, however, is not limited to only the creative process, and also has a deep connection with the channeling of primordial experiences called archetypes, those collective concepts which Jung cited as characteristic of the visionary type of art.[32]

III – The Archetypes

Jung draws much support for his theory of art from skepticism of the scientific attitude psychology is subordinate to.  He claims that all a scientific examination can do is bring “the work of art into the sphere of general human psychology, where many other things besides art have their origin,” namely the archetypes.[33]  Central to Jung’s theory of archetypes is the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious.  The conscious mind is immediate to us and in many cases is thought by the subject to be the lone psyche.[34]  There also exists a second, unconscious mind, however, which is divided again into our own personal unconscious and our inherited collective unconscious.

While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity.  Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most part of complexes, the content of the collective unconscious is made up of archetypes.[35]

Jung describes the process of creating visionary art as unconsciously activating these archetypical images and shaping them into the work of art.[36]  These archetypes “stir us because they summon up a voice that is stronger than our own” and transmute “our personal destiny into the destiny of mankind,” evoking “in us all those beneficent forces that ever and anon have enabled humanity to find a refuge from every peril and to outlive the longest night.”[37]  These archetypes indicate the existence of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be “present always and everywhere” as patterns of instinctual behavior that answer the “omnipresent human need” they reflect.[38] 

Due to the extensive number of archetypes Jung referred to, I will focus on the terms key to the examination of 8½: the shadow, persona, syzygy and, finally, the self.  The shadow is introduced as “a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort.  To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.”[39]  The persona is the aspect of ourselves that we present to the world in an attempt to hide our shadow, and though it begins as an archetype, by the time it reaches peak growth it will be “the part of us most distance from the collective unconscious.”[40]  The anima and the animus, collectively referred to by Jung as the syzygy, are the dualistic component which represents in men the feminine unconscious and in women, the masculine unconscious.[41]

Both the shadow and syzygy can be realized and overcame, however, this task is not an easy one requires the presence of a partner to be recognized.  In the case of the syzygy, this occurs “only through a relation to a partner of the opposite sex, because only in such a relation do their projections become operative.”[42]   It is only after we have overcome these unconscious aspects of ourselves, that we can begin our paths to self-knowledge, which for Jung was “the total personality which, though present, cannot be fully known.”[43]  The realization of this self is the goal of life, because through it we transcend every opposing aspect of our personality so all of our self “is experienced equally.”[44]

Many aspects of these archetypical forms can be seen as occurring in Guido’s memories and dreams, where the archetypes could become activated at a critical moment which the subject “cannot overcome by conscious means.”[45]  His earliest memory is rich in this symbolism, and the magic words “Asa Nisi Masa” are a takeoff on Jung’s concept of the anima.  This, coupled with the focus on matriarchal figures in Guido’s life, can bring forth the conclusion that much of his own anima is taking shape in this sequence.  However, Guido’s own shadow side is also beginning to form here, and can be seen engulfing young Guido at the beginning of the scene.  This shadow side is something Guido would come to hide well in his dealings with others through his persona.  However, Guido could not suppress his shadow forever, and in the harem fantasy when he is forced to resort to violence to control the women, Guido becomes awakened to his own shadow side.  This begins a humbling process in Guido, and leads him to the modesty he is lacking to achieve self-realization and acknowledge his own imperfections.[46]

This process of self-realization continues, as an even deeper symbolism of the anima manifests itself in Claudia, the woman set to play Guido’s ideal woman in white.  When she criticizes Guido’s hero as unsympathetic and claims this character is afraid to love anyone, he finally listens and becomes self aware enough to take positive steps toward coming to terms with his own feminine nature.  As Jung states, overcoming the syzygy, like the shadow, is not easy and often meets with considerable resistance, but they are steps Guido has to take in order to achieve self-realization and solve the crisis that is plaguing him.[47]  Because Guido’s hero is merely a projection of himself, by acknowledging these shortcomings, for the first time in the film he has assessed himself and in the process “succeeded in deeming himself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interest.”[48]

Guido is next taken to a press conference where the production of his new film is set to be announced, and with both a newfound modestly courage, he finally reveals to the producers that there is, in fact, no film.  Nevertheless, all hope is not lost for Guido, because he is now equipped with this knowledge and acceptance of both his dark side and unconscious feminine nature.  He is quickly reassured he made the correct decision by Daumier, and after a deeply introspective moment of clarity, Guido appears, at least in fantasy, to have achieved this self-realization, and is able to direct all the characters who have appeared in the film together into a circle, where together they will dance in unison.

The circle has a very important meaning for Jung, and of all the geometric forms, he devotes most of his time to discussion of this shape.  Jung felt it corresponded “not to the ego but the self as the summation of the total personality” and signified “nothing less than a psychic centre of the personality not to be identified with the ego.”[49]  In connection with this, Jung was similarly fascinated with the mandala, “a circle used in…yoga as…an aid to contemplation.”[50]  He felt “the true mandala is always an inner image…gradually built up…through imagination.”[51]  It is no surprise then why these circular images were connected with the realization of the self.  However, Jung acknowledges this realization is a most difficult task and “an awareness of the two sides of man’s personality is essential, of their respective aims and origins.  These two aspects must never be separated through arrogance or cowardice.”[52]  Jung felt the realization connected with the symbolism of the circle was something that grew in the individual over time, and as Stubbs illustrates, it had been growing in Guido’s mind since childhood, and developed into the imperfect circle of characters in the harem fantasy, and ultimately the completed circle of characters in the final scene.[53]

While Guido appears to have realized the creative vision he needed to conquer his crisis, because the final sequence is a fantasy, much of what will actually happen to Guido is left up to the mind of the viewer.  There are still many questions regarding how Guido will behave in relation to the characters that populate the circle, and as Stubbs acknowledges, we never are told how this sudden revelation will affect Guido’s relationship with the other characters.  This is seen particularly in the interactions with Luisa, who we had last had seen in a heated argument with Guido.  Now, in his fantasy, she appears to have forgiven him, but we must remember, this is a fantasy and all his marital problems are not solved, an aspect that has caused a variance in interpretation.[54]  The fact that Fellini left Louisa’s decision up in the air should not be a surprise when one considers Jung observation that “practically all the trump cards are in the hands of our opponents.”[55]

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[1] 8½. Dir. Federico Fellini. Perf. Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale. Corinth Films, 1963-1992.  All references to the film from this point on will be to this version.

[2] Stubbs, John C. “8½.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 9.2 (1975). 106.

[3] Stubbs, “8½,” 106.

[4] Fredericksen, Don. “Two Aspects of a Jungian Perspective Upon Film: Jung and Freud; The Psychology of Types.” Journal of the University Film Assoication 32 (1980). 49.

[5] Fredericksen, 53.

[6] Jung, Carl G. “Psychological Types.” The Portable Jung. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Trans R.F.C. Hull. New York: Penguin, 1976. 180-182.

[7] Jung, “Psychological Types,” 180; 229.

[8] Jung, “Psychological Types,” 192-229. 237-266.

[9] Jung, “Psychological Types,” 266-267.

[10] Jung, Carl G. “Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy.” The Portable Jung. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Trans R.F.C. Hull. New York: Penguin, 1976. 367.

[11] Jung, Carl G. “Psychology and Literature.” Modern Man in Search of Soul. Trans. Dell, W.S. and Cary F. Baynes. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanich, 1955. 509.

[12] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 509.

[13] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 510.

[14] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 511.

[15] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 509.

[16] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 512.

[17] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 513.

[18] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 513.

[19] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 509.

[20] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 509.

[21] Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Anchor Books, 1963. 63-421.

[22] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 509.

[23] Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Anchor Books, 1963. 422-503.

[24] Jung, Carl G. “On the Relation of Analytic Psychology to Poetry.” The Portable Jung. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Trans R.F.C. Hull. New York: Penguin, 1976. 302.

[25] Jung, “On the Relation,” 311.

[26] Jung, “On the Relation,” 314.

[27] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 520.

[28] Stubbs, John C. “Fellini’s Portrait of the Artist as Creative Problem Solver.” Cinema Journal 41.4 (2002), 126; 129.

[29] Bachmann, Gideon. “A Guest in My Own Dreams: An Interview with Federico Fellini.” Film Quarterly 47.3 (1994), 9.

[30] Bachmann, 4.

[31] Bachmann, 13.

[32] Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 510.

[33] Jung, “On the Relation,” 303-308.

[34] Jung, Carl G. “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious.” The Portable Jung. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Trans R.F.C. Hull. New York: Penguin, 1976. 60.

[35] Jung, “The Concept of,” 60.

[36] Jung, “On the Relation,” 321.

[37] Jung, “On the Relation,” 321.

[38] Jung, “The Concept of,” 60-64.

[39] Jung, Carl G. “Aion: Phenomenology of the Self.” The Portable Jung. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Trans R.F.C. Hull. New York: Penguin, 1976. 145.

[40] Boeree, C. George. “Archetypes.” Boeree, 2. Introduction to C.G.Jung. 10 Dec. 2010. <http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/jung/boeree3main.html>.

[41] Jung, “Aion,” 148-153.

[42] Jung, “Aion,” 145; 161.

[43] Jung, Carl G. The Undiscovered Self. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. New York: The New American Library, 1964. 61.  Jung, “Aion.” 142.

[44] Boeree, C. George. “The Self.” Introduction to C.G.Jung. 10 Dec. 2010. <http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/jung/boeree5main.html>.

[45] Jung, The Undiscovered Self, 80.

[46] Jung, The Undiscovered Self, 116.

[47] Jung, “Aion,” 145.

[48] Jung, The Undiscovered Self, 101.

[49] Jung, “Individual Dream Symbolism,” 362; 367.

[50] Jung, “Individual Dream Symbolism,” 559.

[51] Jung, “Individual Dream Symbolism,” 560.

[52] Jung, “Individual Dream Symbolism,” 372.

[53] Jung, “Individual Dream Symbolism,” 364. Stubbs Portrait, 126.

[54] Stubbs, “Fellini’s Portrait,” 129.

[55] Jung, The Undiscovered Self, 75.

Bibliography

1.      8½. Dir. Federico Fellini. Perf. Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale. Corinth Films, 1963-1992.

2.      Bachmann, Gideon. “A Guest in My Own Dreams: An Interview with Federico Fellini.” Film Quarterly 47.3 (1994). 2-15.

3.      Boeree, C. George. “Archetypes.” Boeree, 2. Introduction to C.G.Jung. 10 Dec. 2010. <http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/jung/boeree3main.html>.

4.      Boeree, C. George. “The Self.” Introduction to C.G.Jung. 10 Dec. 2010. <http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/jung/boeree5main.html>.

5.      Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Anchor Books, 1963. 503.

6.      Fredericksen, Don. “Two Aspects of a Jungian Perspective Upon Film: Jung and Freud; The Psychology of Types.” Journal of the University Film Assoication 32 (1980). 49-57.

7.      Jung, Carl G. “Aion: Phenomenology of the Self.” The Portable Jung. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Trans R.F.C. Hull. New York: Penguin, 1976. 145.

8.      Jung, Carl G. “Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy.” The Portable Jung. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Trans R.F.C. Hull. New York: Penguin, 1976.

9.      Jung, Carl G. “On the Relation of Analytic Psychology to Poetry.” The Portable Jung. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Trans R.F.C. Hull. New York: Penguin, 1976. 301-322.

10.  Jung, Carl G. “Psychology and Literature.” Modern Man in Searc h of Soul. Trans. Dell, W.S. and Cary F. Baynes. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanich, 1955. 507-520.

11.  Jung, Carl G. “Psychological Types.” The Portable Jung. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Trans R.F.C. Hull. New York: Penguin, 1976. 178-269.

12.  Jung, Carl G. “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious.” The Portable Jung. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Trans R.F.C. Hull. New York: Penguin, 1976. 59-69.

13.  Jung, Carl G. The Undiscovered Self. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. New York: The New American Library, 1964. 125.

14.  Stubbs, John C. “8½.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 9.2 (1975). 96-108.

15.  Stubbs, John C. “Fellini’s Portrait of the Artist as Creative Problem Solver.” Cinema Journal 41.4 (2002). 116-131. .