Abnormal Psychology - Film Review - Mental Disorders in Fight Club

Jack not only changes the people around him and makes them see that there is a brighter day, but he also rebuilds their morals and confidence. He does this in various scenes of the movie. For instance, when Jack asked Dedmon to challenge the NCAA and all Dedmon was getting back was rejection letters. Jack asked him if he was

On the contrary, Jack chooses how to act regardless of his role models, meaning that he can be held accountable for his own actions. From the beginning of the memoir Jack is depicted as an immature child whose dream it was to transform into someone different. Jack’s dreams of transformation get further and further from reality predominantly due to how he decides to act and the people he chooses to spend his time with. Jack is responsible for his own actions as he is the one who actually decides how he acts. A moment in the memoire where Jack’s delinquency is depicted is when Jack states that “[he] was a thief.

Fight Club is a complex movie in that the two main characters are just two sides of the same person. Edward Norton’s character is the prototypical conformist consumer working a morally questionable office job to feed his obsession with material possessions. He works as a recall coordinator for a “major car company” and applies a formula based on profitability, rather than safety, to determine the necessity of a recall. Though never explicitly stated, he seems to be in his late twenties or early thirties and throughout the movie has a constantly haggard appearance because of his insomnia and fighting. Brad Pitt’s character is a carefree nonconformist and the manifestation of Edward Norton’s

     Jack also had a strong sense of paranoia. He constantly thought that his wife Wendy was out to get him. He thought that she was going to take their son Danny away from him and accuse him of abuse. I feel that although Jack had more symptoms of schizophrenia it could be justified that he had an antisocial personality

Tyler is a nihilist because he does not believe in the value of friendship or loyalty. Tyler's main drive is to destroy the narrator's life. Tyler has not emotional connection to people, and he also has no regrets. He, eventually, forces this philosophy onto the narrator and thereby transforms him into Tyler Durden. In the first chapters of the novel, it is difficult to distinguish the narrator and Tyler because of the effect that Tyler had on the narrator's personality. Tyler emphasizes this point when he says, “I used to be a nice person” (Palahniuk 98). Eventually, Tyler destroys the narrator's humanity and pulls him from the senses that control societal actions.

We do not know much about the boys pasts, but we can see from Jack’s behavior that it might have not been the most ideal which, in turn could have turned him into the murderer he is now. While many people think that it is just things we are taught that determine our actions “… both biological and social factors combined mold people into who they are and determines the mindset

As an audience, throughout the film it is evident that there is a significant contrast between the narrator and Tyler as they view many things differently. Just like the Fight Club and the IKEA furniture, the narrator becomes obsessed with Tyler and the life he leads. When Tyler is first introduced as a passenger on the airplane, the narrator is immediately drawn to him in a way that is different than any other person he has met. He feels a connection with him that he has not felt before, which is why he calls him when his apartment burns and he loses all of his important IKEA furniture. Tyler tells him it’s “just stuff” (Fight Club) and “the things you own end up owning you” (Fight Club), which completely contradicts everything the narrator had previously believed about his home and the furniture. Through Tyler, the narrator starts to lose his need for material objects when Tyler tells him “Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... let’s evolve, let the chips fall where they may” (Fight Club), instead he focuses on the fighting and his friendship with Tyler since he has finally found something that fills the void in his life and gives it meaning. Though it may seem abstract that Tyler would fit into this argument, it all comes together at the end of the film when the audience finds

Throughout the movie, Jack is suicidal. He self-pity himself and thinks he is somehow being penalized for his deeds and what he told the murderer on the radio, he even start talking to a doll saying, “Do you ever get the feeling you’re getting punished for your sins?”. There are several DSMs connected to being suicidal. One is fatigue and loss of energy, feeling of worthlessness or unwarranted and misplaced guilt on a daily basis. Also, weakened capability to think or focus. Lastly, persistent thoughts of death, repeated thoughts of suicide with no detailed strategy or suicide attempts. The idea of killing yourself originates from more than one part of the brain. One such place is the Frontal Lobe where reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, and problem solving

Throughout the movie though it seems that everything that Tyler did, he (Edward) did as well. Like everything was always was done together. Everything that needed to be expressed came from Tyler as if he was speaking for him (Edward). But then became the recruiting of their members from the fight club. When he started

I believe Jack created Tyler in order to find his masculinity. When Jack loses everything he has, he does not know how to cope with such an excessive amount of stress. At this point, he turns to Tyler. Together, the two of them create Fight Club, a new way for men to relieve their stress and find their strength. Jack confesses to Tyler that he never really knew his father because he abandoned him when he was about six years old. Since he was raised by his mother, this becomes the movie’s best indication of why he suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Jack never had a male role

The psychological disorder which was illustrated in Fight Club was Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Multiple Personality disorder, meaning that their consciousness is disrupted as well as their memory and identity (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, & Nock, 2014). The narrator, who halfway through the movie we discover his name is Jack, is the one suffering from this psychological illness. The narrator was quite abnormal as his behavior changed drastically as he first struggles with insomnia, which could be considered a small issue, and then later ends up partaking in a criminal offense group and even murders a man. Another odd scene was when the viewers began realizing that he is actually suffering from an illness which occurred when he began hitting himself and acting as if someone (Tyler) was punching him.

His second epiphany occurs when he shoots Tyler, and thus himself. On the first level, the narrator acknowledges his death instincts by confronting his fear of pain and death. He accepts Tyler’s ideas of experiencing death so as to be fully conscious of his physical existence. When he shoots Tyler, he does so with the awareness that he is shooting himself. This is the final step he needs to take in order to be fully aware of what he is. On the second level, by rejecting Tyler’s nihilistic ideas of destroying institutions and value systems, he chooses what values to stand for and thus creates his own purpose for himself. “In choosing his ethics, Man makes himself.” He also translates the belief in these values into the actual action of shooting Tyler, thus defining his existence through actual action. On the third level, by shooting Tyler, he assumes responsibility for all of Man, not just himself. He assumes responsibility for Man because he invents what Man should be: one who does not act in an uncaring and destructive manner towards others. On the fourth level, shooting Tyler allows the narrator to be defined in a way he wishes to be defined in the eyes of the “other”. Shooting Tyler is crucial towards removing the existence of Project Mayhem. He does not want Marla to find out about Project Mayhem because he will then lose his connections with her. It is important to the narrator to have a

Together, they end up creating the underground fight club that becomes wildly popular with blue-collar workers. Shirt-less men beat each other into bloody messes every Saturday night in the basement of a bar. As the movie progresses, this underground club becomes more of a renegade resistance group that causes mayhem to corporate America. While Tyler is leading his cult to more mischief and mayhem, Jack thinks it has gotten out of hand. Fight club has spread across the country and Tyler’s next mission is to blow up all the major credit companies to erase everyone’s credit thus leveling the "economic playing field." Jack, in an attempt to stop him, chases Tyler around the country but it always appears that he has just missed Tyler. Jack slowly comes to the conclusion that he himself and Tyler are the same person. While Jack thought he was sleeping, in reality his schizophrenic other half was working Tyler’s jobs, making soap and trying to blow Americas materialistic views to pieces. Jack is able to destroy his alter ego by over coming Tyler’s influence and shooting himself through the cheek; however, he is not able to stop Tyler’s explosions. The last scene shows the buildings collapsing while Jack and Marla are kissing.

Fight Club is a unique film that has many different interpretations consisting of consumerist culture, social norms, and gender roles. However, this film goes deeper and expresses a Marxist ideology throughout; challenging the ruling upper-class and a materialist society. The unnamed narrator, played by Ed Norton, represents the materialist society; whereas Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, represents the person challenging the controlling upper-class. Karl Marx believed that the capitalist system took advantage of workers, arguing that the interests of the upper-class class conflicted with that of the common worker. Marx and Durden share the same views about the upper-class oppressing the materialist, common worker. By interpreting Fight Club through a Marist lens, the viewer is able to realize the negative effects a capitalist society has on the common worker by seeing the unnamed narrator’s unfulfilled and material driven life in contrast to the fulfilling life of Durden who challenges the upper-class. The unnamed narrator initially fuels the upper-class dominated society through his materialistic and consumeristic tendencies; however, through the formation of his alter ego—Durden—the unnamed narrator realizes the detriment he is causing to himself and society. He then follows the guide of Durden’s and Marx’s views and rectifies his lifestyle by no longer being reliant on materials. Also by forming fight club, which provides an outlet, for himself and the common worker,

Durden on the other hand is a man with little scruples. He is not an evil man. He just wants to wake people up from the perpetual dream world that they live in and he will go to any lengths to achieve his vision of setting people free. He lives in an old house that was most likely condemned a century ago. It sits in front of an old factory. His nearest neighbor is a mile and half away. Tyler makes and sells soap. He also has other jobs that afford him time to do not so pleasant things such as urinate in soup at high class restaurants and splice objectionable images into family films in major theater chains. Tyler has no rules, no limits, but he gives no breaks either, you either follow him or are against him. Tyler tries to better people in weird off the wall ways. Whereas Jack is such the sheep that he follows everyone else as compared to Tyler who is the one who tries to change society and Jack follows him because Tyler is the way he is not. Jack is intoxicated by Pitt's character, Tyler Durden, who lacks inhibition, just as Jack lacks personal freedom.