Hans Hermas Überlegungen zur Bildhaftigkeit des Films im Vergleich mit anderen Darstellungsformen -- Vorstellung einer Arbeit aus den Forschungen zum Film am Wiener Institut für Psychologie in den 1930er Jahren

This chapter examines the doctoral dissertation of Hans Herma (Johann/John Leopold Herman, * 1911 in Wien, † 1966 in New York), Die Bildhaftigkeit des Films. This dissertation was part of an extensive research program at the Vienna Institute for Psychology in the 1930s. Herma’s work focused on a specific aspect of film: its ability to take the viewer out of their immediate perceptual environment and place them in the scene represented by the film. According to Herma, film goes beyond the deictic possibilites of a novel through its ability to offer an ad oculos demonstration. Taking the pictorial character of film as his starting point, Herma provides in his dissertation a detailed and empirically based description of the perceptual psychological foundations of film and how they interact with the technical features of the medium