Representing altered states of consciousness through technical images is inherently contradictory because attributing a physical body to mental images denies their essence, as Husserl argued. Jean Mitry drew on this assumption when examining filmic access to mental states from a phenomenological perspective. This essay reconsiders Mitry's contribution, focusing on the role of projection—both technical and metaphorical—in cinematic technique and imagination. It aims to raise crucial questions for comparing filmic forms of the visible with those introduced by virtual technology.
Cinema has long been fascinated with altered states of consciousness—memories, visions, nightmares, and dreams—which interrupt a story's flow by inserting different temporalities. Following Gilles Deleuze's arguments on cinema, this essay examines how narrative film has represented such states. In early cinema of attractions, altered states appeared as physical realities intertwined with the world. Classical Hollywood later developed a visual grammar to normalize these disruptive images within the narrative. Modern cinema, with its new interest in the link between moving images and thought, explored this issue in depth. The essay concludes by analyzing the hallucinations experienced by Isak Borg in Bergman's Wild Strawberries as a complex case of altered mental states.