A cineforum project for medical students: Learning from unexpected cues

Recently movies have been used in medical, and particularly psychiatric education in various ways-movie clubs, cinemeducation lectures and special modules on specific disorders, the patient-therapist relationship, and sometimes even psychotherapy, countertransference or psychosocial formulation. So far, however, there has been little interest in the educational use of symbolic interpretations of movies that focus on emotional issues. We have a long experience of using movies as part of the psychiatry course for medical students and in cineforum meetings. Our approach is rooted in Eugenio Torre’s theoretical and practical work. Here we provide an alternative to the standard approach to use of cinema in medical training based on a more integrative perspective. Briefly, although we use clips from movies describing psychiatry disorders, we prefer to use movies which, sometimes unexpectedly, elicit emotional and reflective responses to issues of empathy, prejudice, change, relationships and their dynamics. A preliminary evaluation of this approach, described elsewhere, was encouraging. The course improved students’ attitudes to psychiatry, reduced stigmatizing attitudes towards psychiatric patients and strengthened students’ ability to tolerate the anxiety generated by others’ distress. Here we describe a typical cycle of cineforum meetings. The immediacy and evocative power of dynamic images means they offer a powerful way of eliciting emotions; in the context of group work facilitated by a group leader students’ emotional involvement can develop into a cognitive and emotional understanding of the issues portrayed.