Session 1 of 3

*** Film must be viewed prior to event. ***

Discussion of the film “The Thing”

Friday, November 14, 2025
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
Via Zoom

1982 (109 min)
Director: John Carpenter
Discussant: Alex Smith, Psy.D.

A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.

Presentation: At surface level fantastical, appalling, and occasionally comical, horror renders that which is unthinkable or unspeakable into inhuman, slimy, or spectral forms, presenting the taboo or the overwhelming at a safe, controllable distance from the self. In horror, unthinkable and unspeakable aspects of the “self” can be experienced as the monstrous “other” and exorcised with flamethrowers. The horror movie generates credibility through performance, photography, and effects that ground the viewer in a “reality” that can then become credibly unreal. This magical reality evokes archaic experiences of the self as unbounded and vulnerable, taking on challenging, unsettling thoughts and feelings while allowing for the suspension of the neatly boundaried “I” of the viewer.

John Carpenter’s The Thing belongs to a rich tradition of paranoia and body horror in the uncanny narrative and horror cinema. The self, here under the condition of isolation and environmental confusion, becomes vulnerable to external corruption. The un-integrable impulse is cast off, producing a disintegrated state. Then, in the presence of an alien “other”, the once familiar body is usurped. The mind is subsumed. The “me” becomes a “me” copy that is at once terrifying and terrified, its sole purpose being to consume additional “others.” The Thing is an allegory for the mental mechanisms of unbounded consciousness: not only the body, but also the psychological boundaries constituting the self, are at risk.

In working on this allegory, we will briefly touch on horror cinema’s enduring interest in paranoia and the unbounded consciousness. We will consider Clara Keane’s clairvoyant work on existential permeability and Andre Green’s psychic envelopes as regards their explanatory power for experiences of unbounded consciousness, paranoia, and uncanny encounters. We will see how The Thing, as an apex of creeptastic cinema, resonates with our own experiences—both archaic and present-day—of the fragility of our distinct, boundaried sense of a “me”, and why it matters.

Discussant: Alex Smith, PsyD, is the Director of the Psychology Department at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington. He completed his MFA at the New School for Social Research, his PsyD at the George Washington University, and his internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Alex is the author of the novella HIVE, and his stories and poems have appeared in various small publications and anthologies, the most recent being The New Flesh: A Literary Tribute to David Cronenberg.

Pre-registration is required via the WBCP website at http://wbcp.org. If you do not have an account on the WBCP website, you will need to create a “guest account” to register and view/print your CME/CE credit certificate after the seminar. For registration assistance, contact the WBCP at 301-470-3635/ 410-792-8060 / 202-237-1854 or [email protected]

Registration Link: https://wbcp.memberclicks.net/reg_psy_cinema_25-26

Full Program Link: https://wbcp.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/PR/25-26/11-14-25%20Psychoanalytic%20Takes%20on%20the%20Cinema%20-%20The%20Thing.pdf