Doctoral Dissertation Research: The History of Film and Video in Child Psychiatric Research

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This project will investigates how medical and scientific practitioners have employed film and video, throughout the 20th and 21st century. It will focus on developing a historical understanding of cinematic and audiovisual technologies in child psychiatric research and practice. It will broaden our understanding of how technologies have been used in the psychology of young children, to diagnose normal and pathological development in infants, and to treat relationship problems within families. The study will engage with old and new media in laboratories and clinics. It will study the limits of the media and the opportunities that they offer to science and medicine. It will use child psychiatry as a case study of broader media-historical changes. The aims is to educate expert and lay audiences about the historical backgrounds and potential implications of scientific and clinical tools. In addition, the project will investigate the emergence of the recent sub-discipline of early childhood psychiatry. It will document how this field shaped and was shaped by audiovisual technologies. As well as, how both the discipline and the technologies have contributed to the ways we conceptualize, treat, and educate our kids. The research will be of interest to teachers, parents, and policy makers for designing and implementing educational practices for young children. The project primarily approaches the various historical roles and functions of moving images in child psychiatric research and practice. It will do this through a close reading and historical contextualization of scientific and clinical films and videos of infants from the early 20th century to the present. The project will take into account a large number of different contexts (historical, disciplinary, national). The focus is on several salient periods at the intersection of moving image technologies and the study of the child?s mind. It will study the use of cinematic methods for the observation of children in ?real life situations? by psychologists and psychiatrists such as Arnold Gesell and Kurt Lewin in the 1920s to 40s. In addition the development and propagation of one of the most influential psychological theories, attachment theory will be analyzed through the medium of film in the era Post-World War II. It will also address the rise of video technologies as both scientific and clinical tools in early childhood psychiatry over the last forty years. The researchers will inquire into past practices through archival study and recent approaches through oral history interviews and participant observation in an outpatient clinic for early childhood psychiatry. Overall, the project aims at contributing to a better understanding of the role of visual technologies in the past and present of scientific knowledge and medical treatment of the mind of the child.