To the opening question: why psychoanalysis and the image? A provisional answer given by Griselda Pollock:

psychoanalysis is one of the major theoretical discoveries and hence theoretical resources of the twentieth century. Its topic: subjectivity or in other terms, the split, sexuated subject, its unconscious and its affections, is clearly central to the arts and humanities. Alongside theorisations of society, language and the sign, textuality and meaning-making, and the elaboration of an anthropological concept of culture as way of life, way of struggle and negotiation, a theory of subjectivity and the specificity of the workings of the conscious and unconscious have been undoubtedly central to modern thought and cultural experience. Psychoanalysis is not an esoteric, clinical field remote from twentieth century culture. With Saussure, Proust, Einstein and Picasso, Freud and his teachings are part of the modernist cultural revolution that asked: what isÂ…?.questions such as: What is the physical universe, time and space? What is language? Asking "what is the human mind?' psychoanalysis has radically reshaped the way we understand not only subjectivity but sexuality, and the subjectified production of meaning through word and image.