“The Cuts that Bind: Hitchcock, Lynch, Lacan”

This paper re-examines the long-contested relationship between cinema and Lacanian psychoanalysis, arguing that their fundamental intersection lies not in the image but in its absence: the cut. Whereas classical cinematic practice is to conserve the fantasy it constructs by disavowing the cut, psychoanalysis, by contrast, seeks to directly attain to the real by ‘traversing the fantasy’ along the lines of the cut. Taking Alfred Hitchcock’s cinema as a primary case, the paper examines how his films operate at the intersection of these two approaches, offering the comfort of narrative continuity while simultaneously unravelling this though a meticulous play with the cut. Focusing on Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960), the paper highlights Hitchcock’s employment of a ‘foundational cut’—a structural cleavage that paradoxically establishes narrative coherence while simultaneously fracturing subjectivity and revealing an absence at the heart of cinematic experience. Extending this analysis, the paper then posits that David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997) functions as a structural remake of both Psycho and Vertigo in its radical reapplication of their möbial arrangement, where by doubling the function of the cut, Lynch’s film reflexively applies Hitchcock’s logic to produce a second cleavage that disrupts narrative continuity, reorients viewer identification, and dissolves the possibility of stable meaning. Ultimately, the paper reaffirms the fundamental affinity between psychoanalysis and cinema, demonstrating how their intersection is not merely thematic but structural, embedded in the very logic of the cut that underpins both disciplines.