Conference Agenda

Films produce images, or more precisely, a sequence of images, i.e., processes. Deviating movements and open outcomes have always been part of film. Thus, film is a place of experimentation. New perspectives are tried out, enabling viewers to develop and reshape their perceptions (Binotto, 2024). The camera teaches us to see differently and to desire differently.

Our research group starts from the hypothesis that teacher and school films make it possible to see school differently in times of crisis. In this way, they advance research and contribute to new research questions and results. They explore school as an institution as well as pedagogical discourses with their main signifiers and their ideological connotations within different eras. Thanks to their diverse perspectives and viewing strategies, they construct complex school situations and lines of flight that move beyond rationality. This brings to light “formations of the unconscious” (Lacan, 1998a). Phantasms, beliefs, and ideological blindness become visible.

Psychoanalysis has made many valuable contributions to film theory and analysis. In this sense, the symposium draws primarily on the tradition of film analysis inspired by Lacan, Metz, Copjec, Žižek, Zupancic, and McGowan (Tyrer, 2026). On the one hand, they see film as a means of ideologically concealing and sewing up the traumatic real. On the other hand, it enables encounters with the real, which is particularly evident in the staged, individual, and collective symptoms and their effects on the viewer.

Our thesis is that film does not coerce but rather seeks to bear witness and sometimes to convince. It allows the audience to dream, fantasize, and enjoy. When it succeeds in bringing the audience into contact with their own view of school, learning, and teaching, and in arousing the desire for what is lacking, it enables the unconscious to open up. It is then possible for beliefs to be challenged, changed, or reinforced.

Films are educational tools that teach clinical viewing and listening. Through what the camera or screen shows or does not show, where otherness is only hinted at, one's own view and desire become conscious (McGowan, 2015). Interpretation is challenged and experienced (Copjec, 2015).

This is especially true in encounters and confrontations in which students and teachers explicitly or implicitly ask the question “Che vuoi?”: “Who are you? What do you want from me? What do you desire from me?” Becoming aware of this through film scenes allows us to experience ourselves as divided subjects with over- and underdetermination.

Particularly relevant today is the social and educational challenge of the crisis of symbolic order (acceptance versus rejection) or belief in the impossible as a condition for the possibility of collectivity, freedom, and authority (McGowan, 2016).

The symposium examines how the film “Das Lehrerzimmer / The Teachers' Lounge” (2023) by Çatak & Duncker depicts the real, symptomatic, and subversive aspects of today's schools and how the film can interpellate viewers to reflect on subjectification and professionalization and to confront their own (traumatic) desires through the film.

Three areas of focus will be addressed.

- A perspective on the (pedagogical) beliefs of teachers (Borer).

- The phenomenon of extimacy, or the awareness of one's own symptoms in the symptoms of others (Weber).

- The crisis of the symbolic order of the school (Rauh).

We expect the symposium to advance our international research, particularly with regard to film analysis and our methodological thesis that teacher films can be used to raise awareness and clarify one's own desire to become a teacher. Given the challenges facing the teaching profession throughout Europe, we believe this to be of great importance.

The concept of beliefs appears in educational sciences as a heuristic tool for understanding the actions of educational actors (Fives & Gill, 2015). If, from a psychoanalytical perspective, one not only asks “who makes the order?” but also seeks the subjective appeal of a specific “order”, the analysis of beliefs appears to be a fruitful approach. What allows a specific authority to convey its worldview to the subject without the subject experiencing this as coercion? Can beliefs be changed? As a teacher, do you have to change beliefs? What criteria of truth can teachers use to change their students' (false) beliefs? The film “The Teachers’ Lounge” (2023, Çatak & Duncker) offers ample material for exploring these questions. Not only does film teacher Carla Nowak (L. Benesch) herself advocate a specific concept of truth, but she also puts her beliefs into practice by filming in the hope of obtaining convincing evidence. In her class, she comments on a presentation by her students about Thales as follows: “People no longer explained the phenomena of the world with God or a higher power. Instead, they searched for a universally verifiable truth. This forms the basis for modern science.” Earlier in the film, Nowak's school is hit by a series of unexplained thefts. Nowak conducts her own investigation – she sets up her laptop camera to record the teachers’ lounge and finds, albeit perhaps only supposedly, the real culprit. Film seems to be a suitable medium for putting an end to outdated beliefs and establishing one's own conviction of truth. However, the film fails to deliver on both fronts. This gives us an opportunity to reflect on what qualifies film – especially the excessively fictional kind – as empirical material for psychoanalytical and educational research. Thus, the feature film challenges classical notions of truth (McGowan, 2007), by incorporating the audience's perspective into its own structure. Does the truth lie in this structuring – in the form? Freud's “Interpretation of Dreams” seems to suggest so (1900a/1958). This has consequences not only for the analysis of the current “order”, but also for the accompanying beliefs about truth held by its subjects. Psychoanalytic film analysis reveals that “facts ...” are always “linked to verifiable experience.” However, beliefs structure this verifiable experience (McGowan, 2016, Žižek, 2008). The film “The Teachers’ Lounge” highlights this and lends itself to analysis. My contribution examines the issue through two selected film scenes.

Fives, H., & Gill, M. G. (Ed.). (2015). International Handbook of Research on Teachers’ Beliefs. New York, London: Routledge. Freud, S. (1900a). Die Traumdeutung. In GW II/III. Freud, S. 1958 [1953]). The Interpretation of Dreams. In J. Strachey, (Trans. & Ed.). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vols. 4 & 5. London: Hogarth. McGowan, T. (2007). The Real Gaze. Film Theory after Lacan. Albany: State University of New York Press. McGowan, T. (2016). The Necessity of Belief, Or, The Trouble with Atheism. International Journal of Zizek Studies, Vol 4, No 1. https://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/view/238/320 [28/01/26]. Žižek, S. (2008 [1989]). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London, New York: Verso.

“Teaching is a relationship-based profession.” In this contribution, I discuss the challenges this implies, using the film “The teacher's Lounge”. There are fantasies developed by the individual protagonists. On the one hand, these fantasies help the subject to give form to their desires, but on the other hand, they lead them astray if they are not worked through, treated reflexively, and ultimately transcended. Here, we see how the young woman Nowak is determined by the phantasm of transparency. This is evident in the “surplus value” she attaches to knowledge and, above all, rationality, particularly in her attempt to solve the theft at her school. This is consistent with her partially obsessive-compulsive behavior toward her colleagues. Thus, she sets off a spiral in which she becomes a living "hell" for her colleagues and the secretary (Sartre, 1971). At the same time, the latter also became hell for her. No one at the school has the situation under control: no one is master in his own house, but everyone is fighting for it. So, the unconscious fantasies promote chaos. Thus, attempts to establish symbolic order also fail. Antagonisms become visible, cracks in the teaching staff become apparent. It becomes uncanny and gloomy. The Real imposes itself. The film is an example of what Lacan called the best name for the real: the “two,” i.e., the relationship (Lacan, 1998b). Every relationship reveals an unbridgeable negativity, a non-relationship. The students, colleagues, and parents largely appreciate the young teacher's commitment. Or she realizes too late that her excessive commitment, her enjoy to enlighten, strains relationships and stands in the way of solving the problem. This excess of enjoyment promotes symptoms in the other person. They all think they are contributing to the solution of the problem, but in some cases, they promote repression through “not wanting to know.” The developing symptoms, the realization that the outside world is related to her inner world – the phenomenon of extimacy – finally enable Ms. Nowak to put on the brakes and try to rebuild her relationships with her colleagues and the student Oscar. In doing so, she can partially transcend her fantasy and overcome the morality of transparency through desirous interpretation and action. Accepting contingency, something new can emerge (Lacan, 1975). This contribution shows that film analysis, which incorporates one's own interpretive desire (Copjec, 2015), helps students broaden their clinical perspective and enables new encounters.

Copjec, J. (2015). Read my desire. Lacan against the historicists, London: New-York, Verso. Lacan, J. (1975). Le Séminaire, livre XX, Encore, Paris : Seuil. Lacan, J. (1998b). « Il fenomeno lacaniano ». La psychanalisi, No 24, Astolabio, Rom, S. 18 Sartre, J.-P. (1971). Huis clos. Paris : Folio. McGowan, T. (2015). Psychoanalytic Film Theory and The Rules of the Game, New-York, London: Bloomsbury. Rauh, B. & Weber, J.-M. (2020). Lehrkräftebildung mit Fack ju Göhte. Junge Lehrerinnen und Lehrer zwischen Adoleszenz und Verantwortung. Gießen, Psychosozial. Weber, J.-M., Zahn, M. & Pazzini K.-J. (Hrsg.) (2018). Lehre im Kino. Psychoanalytische und pädagogische Lektüren von Lehrerfilmen. Berlin: VS. Weber, J.-M. (2021). Roma d’Alfonso Cuaron: “C’est seulement l’eau qui révèle la verité dans ce film”. In N. Roelens & A. Erchadi (Eds.), Breaking the waves. Water (Issues) in Contemporary Verbal and Visual Arts (p. 93-100). Luxembourg: Melusina.

Cinematic representations of school and teaching can be understood as a medium for (self-)reflection on systems, systemic crises, crises in the development of the people involved and their attempts to cope with them. They thus address the knowledge that crises manifest themselves in specific forms in macro-, micro-, and psychic systems (CfP-ECER 2026). This contribution regards films as empirical material that can be psychoanalytically explored in order to understand what is represented in the film in a new and different way. Sensu Freud (1900a) films can be experienced as an "other scene" that affects viewers, but allows them to engage with the issues activated in them from a productive distance (Weber & Rauh 2020). The thesis is that the film "Das Lehrerzimmer / The Teachers' Lounge" links the poly-crisis of a system with a crisis in the professional development of a new teacher. On the one hand, the film “Das Lehrerzimmer / The Teachers’ Lounge” (Çatak 2023) presents a multiple, intertwined process of erosion of the symbolic order of the school as a/an - social institution that respects the rights of pupils - mediator of a reflexive understanding of science - educational institution for a reflexive approach to relationships and emotions - space for experimenting with one’s desire and becoming a subject. On the other hand, the film shows reflection and relationships as possibilities for the renewal of school, embodied in the protagonist. The teacher Nowak, who at the beginning follows the phantasms of objectivity and transparency, of rationality and liberation from feelings, moves through the crisis towards a position of not-knowing. In doing so she stands for (unconventional) thinking and behavior in contrast to the phantasms of other teachers, which undermine communities and education. How can education and communitiy function in a pluralistic society orientated towards jouissance? The film brings ethical (and political) conflicts surrounding the “Big Other” (Lacan) – which also manifest as internal conflicts – into the discourse, - transgressing investigative techniques vs. the non-negotiability of the fundamental rights of vulnerable persons - the ideology of objective truth vs. the recognition of subjective truths - a psychotechnical approach to feelings vs. a transformation of feelings through reflection. Using three selected scenes from the film, the contribution reflects on these (educational) ethical conflicts, on current discursive cultures for reducing uncertainty and the necessitiy of starting from a position of not-knowing as a way forward in times of crisis.

Çatak, I. (2023). Das Lehrerzimmer. If… Productions. Freud, S. (1900a/1999). Die Traumdeutung. In GW II/III, S. 1-642. Weber, J.-M. & Rauh, B. (2020). Das Phänomen Fack ju Göhte. Lust und Arbeit am Exzessiven. In B. Rauh & J.-M. Weber (Hrsg.), Lehrkräftebildung mit Fack ju Göhte. Junge Lehrerinnen und Lehrer zwischen Adoleszenz und Verantwortung (S. 7-19). Gießen: Psychosozial.