Psychology professor William Indick was teaching theories of personality when he realized his students simply weren’t getting it, so he started doing film analysis in his classes to explain these dense topics with examples from the silver screen. This led to a handful of books including Psychology for Screenwriters, Movies and the Mind, Psycho Thrillers, and Ancient Symbology in Fantasy Literature.

“I wrote a book about film analysis and then Ken Lee suggested I do the same thing, but flip it. Instead of analyzing films, take these ideas from films and project them onto screenwriters. You can use these techniques other filmmakers use in your films to make more psychologically complex characters.”

These books are meant to showcase an art rather than a science. “Analysis is an art. It’s the art of interpretation, so there is no truth in analysis. Psychologically is largely a philosophical field, so the attempt to make it scientific has merit but those merits are not apparent in the filmmaking process.”

Indick’s first book, Psychology for Screenwriters, is about to have a 2nd edition published. “The first edition was about taking these classic theories — from Freud, Erikson, Jung, Campbell, Adler, May — and applying these to the process of screenwriting.” Each chapter uses films to explain psychology.

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