Harry Potter's Pensieve and the Unconscious

Lee, Seung Yup; Moon, Duk Soo; Chung, Un Sun; Bahn, Geon Ho

Abstract

Drama, movies, and literatures can make psychoanalytic theories easy to understand and utilize. In Harry Potter, one of the most popular novels and the most popular blockbusters in the 21st century, many motifs of psychoanalytic theories are symbolized through magic tools: such as the magic wand, invisible cloak, Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry, and the polyjuice potion. Among them, the pensieve is a magic tool for saving and representing memories. The scenes reexperiencing memories and solving problems of the present through the pensive is similar to the psychoanalytic process of bringing repressed materials into the consciousness in order to resolve symptoms. The pensieve is a definite way to look into the trauma or fantasy of the patient which the therapist is always curious about. The authors compared with the characteristics of the pensieve and psychoanalytic theories to study clinical application of literatures, though it is unfeasible to use kind of magic tools like the pensieve in psychoanalysis therapy. We also tried to explore the techniques of hypnosis, psychodrama and neuroimaging studies which share the common characteristics of the pensieve, and explore the concept of the Unconscious in various fields through outcomes of Information Technology field such as USB storage devices and personal cloud services.