A phenomenological analysis of Fellini's films to understand the effect of LSD therapy on his creativity

O. and colleagues used a phenomenological, qualitative approach to analyse how LSD may have influenced Federico Fellini's creativity as expressed in a sequence of his films. Rather than interviewing the director or analysing clinical data, the authors applied phenomenology in a third-person mode to cinematic texts, treating films as manifestations of an author's life-world that can be read for changes in subjective experience. The authors frame their project within prior theoretical work that conceives creativity as arising from multiple mental states (for example a Dynamic Framework of Thought) and within phenomenological accounts (notably Merleau-Ponty) that emphasise pre-reflexive, hyperassociative realms of experience. They note that psychedelic states are characterised in earlier literature by changes across perception, emotion and cognition, including hyperassociative structure, altered figure/ground relations, intensified colour and light, and a continuum of perceptual change that can culminate in ego-dissolution. The analysis focused on five core dimensions of the life-world as operationalised through cinematic elements. The authors assessed: (1) lived time — how time is experienced and represented, visible for example in editing strategies such as flashbacks; (2) lived space — the director's experience of space as indexed by scenarios, atmospheres and use of colour; (3) others — the depiction and expressive behaviour of characters, including grotesque or caricatural personae; (4) the lived body — bodily experience inferred from actors' physiognomy and embodied behaviour (the authors explicitly note the need to infer Fellini's own bodily experience from his alter egos on screen); and (5) selfhood — distinctions between pre-reflexive, embodied self-awareness and narrative selfhood, which the authors read through narrative structure and editing. The authors explain that these five dimensions were examined across films produced before and after a documented LSD session that Fellini underwent in summer 1964 under medical supervision. Data for the analysis were the films themselves (their characters, scenarios, costume, colour, sound design and montage). The authors present this as a novel application of phenomenology — analysing a sequence of films in order to infer how a specific event (LSD therapy) may have altered an artist's life-world and creative output. The Methods text does not provide a formal coding scheme, inter-rater reliability, or a defined set of films analysed in a numbered list; rather, the approach is described as interpretative, based on reading cinematic features through the five life-world dimensions.

O. and colleagues argue that Fellini's post-LSD films show a marked shift in the depiction of time, space, bodies, colours and sound that is compatible with phenomenology of the psychedelic state and with earlier reports of LSD's effects on artists. The authors report that after a supervised LSD session in the summer of 1964 (which Fellini himself later described as producing an exaltation about colours, seeing colours detached from objects), Fellini's first colour film Giulietta degli spiriti is distinguished by very bright, high-contrast tints in costumes and scenarios. The authors link this change to prior studies in which artists given LSD reported altered figure/ground relations, greater intensity of colour and light, symbolic and abstract depiction, and fragmentation or distortion. The authors describe subsequent post-LSD work as showing a continued evolution toward bizarreness and exaggeration. Satyricon (worked on from 1967) is highlighted as a culmination in which characters, costumes and scenarios are grotesque and distorted rather than philologically accurate; the film explicitly sought to erase boundaries between dream and imagination. Later films such as Roma are described as combining subdued, fairy-tale coloration in certain sequences (e.g. childhood memories) with brighter colours and more deformed individuals elsewhere (obese figures, hunchbacks, exaggerated prostitutes), indicating a persistent metamorphosis in the perception of space and otherness. Sound design in the post-LSD films is also emphasised: voices and ambient sounds frequently appear dissociated from visible sources, producing disembodied or para-atmospheric acoustic effects that the authors liken to experiences reported in schizophrenia and to psychedelic phenomenology (including synesthetic relationships between sound and vision). The authors cite Fellini's own account of the LSD session and link his description to a broader interpretative claim: while they do not assert that LSD alone caused all stylistic changes, they argue that LSD played a role in shifting Fellini's creative approach toward surreality, heightened colour autonomy, grotesque embodiment and altered soundscape, thereby contributing to what came to be labelled "felliniesque." The authors position these observations alongside previous literature on psychedelics and creativity, noting concordance with reports that LSD can change artists' styles and deepen perceptual understanding of colour, form and light. They acknowledge that causation cannot be definitively established from this kind of interpretative, third-person analysis; nonetheless, they maintain that the timing of the LSD session and the subsequent stylistic developments in Fellini's films are consistent with an influence of the psychedelic experience on his creative output.