Mary Wild

✨ COVER REVEAL ✨ I'm thrilled to share the cover of my forthcoming book Psychoanalysing Horror Cinema. This stunning artwork was created by the supremely talented @suspirialand , who perfectly captured my vision with haunting beauty and intuitive brilliance. Her painting integrates the book's themes in the most authentic and evocative way imaginable. I'm beyond grateful to her. #horror #horrorcinema #horrormovies #psychoanalysis #filmtheory #coverreveal #routledge #womanwriter #newbook #coverart #horrorbooks #femaleauthors

New on Patreon ✨️ I’m joined by painter @annadouglasartist for an atmospheric conversation about art at the threshold of the inner and outer worlds. Grounded in the stark, expansive landscapes of the American Southwest, Anna’s work transforms desert space and urban areas into psychologically charged terrains, featuring surreal glamorous feminine eyes in the sky and other uncanny symbolic interruptions. We explore how her paintings hold tension within stillness, evoke narrative without fixed meaning, and draw from a deep well of subconscious imagery that continues to unfold over time. We move through Anna’s creative influences — from cinema to music — and discuss her artistic practice, including the rituals and sensory conditions that allow her to enter a state of flow. I also reflect on my recent experience in Monument Valley as a point of connection, as we consider the mythic pull of the high desert and the way landscape shapes the imagination. Listen now via the link in my bio, or vist patreon.com/marywild #artofinstagram #painting #femaleartists

Via @mystic_eb #scorpio

New on Patreon 🔪 Brian Finnerty @scaredsane from Macabre Daily joins me for a deep dive into one of genre cinema's most fascinating recurring figures: the horror movie shrink. Drawing on diverse examples, we examine how psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychotherapists appear in horror as mediators of mental illness, flawed healers, and sometimes monsters in their own right. Brian organised our discussion around three archetypes — The Obsessive, The Bleeding Heart, and The Monster — and we refer to six memorable examples: Dr. Samuel Loomis (Halloween, 1978), Dr. Hal Raglan (The Brood, 1979), Cynthia (It Feeds, 2025), Father Damien Karras (The Exorcist, 1973), Dr. Robert Elliott (Dressed to Kill, 1980), and Dr. Philip K. Decker (Nightbreed, 1990). DM me if you'd like to see the long list containing names of twenty horror movie shrinks. Together we unpack how these characters function within their respective narratives and the unconscious fears that are revealed more generally about mental health practitioners. From Loomis’s obsessive crusade against Michael Myers whom he sees as 'pure evil', to Raglan’s radical 'psychoplasmics' treatment that externalises trauma into monstrous children, to Decker’s terrifying abuse of therapeutic authority, horror repeatedly returns to the figure of the shrink as both healer and threat. The conversation explores anxieties about professional betrayal, the limits of science, compassionate empathy causing harm to the professional, exposure of our most private thoughts, and the unsettling possibility that the person analysing our mind may harbour incurable darkness of their own. Brian Finnerty is a licensed professional counsellor and horror writer. He is a regular contributor to @macabredaily , where he writes the Skeletons in the Closet and Scared Sane columns exploring horror through the lens of mental health and LGBTQ+ representation. #horrormovies #horrorfilms #horrorcinema #psychology #psychiatry #psychotherapy

My supremely talented cover artist @suspirialand . Susi and I work together like David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, she painted my words and created the most beautiful portal for my book. I'm so lucky to experience such a fulfilling and expansive collaboration. Already commissioned Susi to paint the cover for book # 2 📡✨️ #femaleartists #womensart

Projections: Surrealist Cinema. Online Lecture by me on 18th March, 6:00PM-8:00PM GMT, hosted by @freudmuseum , Tickets: £15 Cinema is a haunted medium — one attuned to slippages, distortions, and the breakdown of logic. From its earliest experiments, film has offered a unique route deep into the psyche, where conventionality loosens its grip and desire burns in bright images. Surrealist visionaries in particular are invested in cinema’s capacity to nullify rational boundaries – as the critic René Gardies observed in 1968, film is “a privileged instrument de-realising the world, providing alchemical tools for transforming reality.” In this 2-hour online lecture, we will explore the overlap between the psychoanalytic method and surrealist cinema — two disciplines that insist on the supremacy of the unconscious, decoding absurd dreams and defying the banality and hypocrisy of so-called civilised society. Examining works by Luis Buñuel, Věra Chytilová, David Lynch, Guy Maddin, Jan Švankmajer, and Maya Deren, the proposition is that surrealism is a revolutionary anti-art, much like the psychoanalytic process itself, unlocking the mind’s creative potential by overcoming repression. Advance viewing is optional; select scenes will be shown during the webinar. #surrealistfilm #surrealism #psychoanalysis #filmstudies #cinema

Thank you Maestro 🥹❤️ #davidlynch

Projections: Contemporary Female Filmmakers, Wednesday 21st January, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm GMT @freudmuseum What happens when women take charge of the cinematic gaze? When the lens no longer objectifies but dreams, remembers, and revolts? This lecture journeys through psychic landscapes shaped by contemporary female directors — worlds of longing and disillusionment where the feminine subject searches for new forms of expression within and beyond constraint. These films trace the tension between private emotion and the social world, revealing how women navigate visibility, power, and self-definition despite misrendered and suppressive conditions. Our discussion will draw upon recurring psychoanalytic motifs: dream logic, the uncanny, sexuality, hysteria, and the spectral return of what culture represses. Through this lens, the feminine experience emerges not as a category, but as a dynamic terrain of vulnerability and imagination. Featured 21st century filmmakers include Claire Denis, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Marjane Satrapi, Andrea Arnold, Anna Biller, Nikyatu Jusu, and Coralie Fargeat. Together we’ll trace how women behind the camera are transforming Freud’s vocabulary — translating the unconscious into image, gesture, and sound. Advance viewing is optional; select scenes will be shown during the webinar. Speaker: Mary Wild is a leading voice in film studies, and the creator of the Projections lecture series at Freud Museum London, applying psychoanalysis to film interpretation. She posts exclusively on Patreon and Substack. #freudmuseum #femalegaze #cinema #womandirector #contemporaryfilm

🧠SCARED SANE: “PSYCHOANALYSING HORROR” Review😱 In our new column from @scaredsane , our resident therapist provides his expert perspective on the intersection of horror and mental health across various mediums. In this article, he reviews @psycstar ’s PSYCHOANALYSING HORROR Link to the campaign in our stories and bio or at macabredaily.com 🩸

Quantum timeline jumping in 2026 🧿

Via @service_magazine

On 22nd May 2024, I lived through a numinous event in the Otto–Jung sense: an encounter characterised by awe, otherness, and an overwhelming sense of meaning. It began with a meditation, a song by Sia, and a sudden vision of cosmic scale. What stayed with me was a profound reorientation toward the self - both the younger self who survived, and the higher self who seemed to speak. Visit psycstar.substack.com to read my essay, which is an attempt to describe the experience faithfully, situate it within the numinous tradition, and explore the symbolic vocabulary through which the psyche chose to communicate. #sia #numinous #meditation #vision