A good film shows us characters and shows us their lives and analyze their actions and environment. A great film takes us into it's the character psyche and take us into their mind and show us true humanity in their characters. A good director creates sympathy for characters you should like. A talented director can make you like the broken if not even the evil characters. This act of creating these broken but sympathetic and likable characters is something Hitchcock started. The beginning of this idea of making these broken people not a powerful and in control character your lead. Hitchcock is renowned for many things from him making the wrong man theme famous, to his use of motifs, to his cameos and more, but this idea of your lead not being put together and never being fully resolved was a new idea. This idea of creating a sympathetic villain was brand new. At his time, no one even touches the idea of psychologist or mental illness as anything but the creation of a villain. However, he turned this on its head. He made the first film with a psychologist shown in a good way spellbound. Though spellbound was not one of Hitchcock best films, one critic named Thomas Leitch said it was” most determined attempt to employ the jargon and images of psychoanalysis”. Spellbound was the beginning of Hitchcock interest in psycho-analysis that entering into the end of his life led to him starting to create these broken characters, who were likeable and we felt for. You see this new way
In the book Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem by Rosalyn Schanzer the town of Salem starting going into a panic of the theory of witches from the fits of two girls. Everyone accusing each other, family is accusing family. Brothers are accusing brothers. Accused witches are taken to trial, but are the trials that fair? The trials were unfair because of the use of spectral evidence, the inability to testify for oneself, and the surprisingly unbiased judges.
The psychoanalytical lens helps us as the readers to better understand the characters and their actions throughout the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but first we have to understand what exactly the psychoanalytical lens is. The psychoanalytical lens has to do with the ID, Ego, and Super Ego. The ID has to do with people’s natural instincts. Most of the time people don’t even realize they’re using their natural instincts and there’s nothing they can do to change them. In a way, it’s like a new born baby. Next there is Ego. The Ego has to do with figuring out what’s best for each person and not worrying about anyone else besides one’s self. People ask their self, what’s going to make them feel the happiest? It’s almost like they’re being
Alfred Hitchcock in the film Psycho and Peter Shaffer in his stage production Equus both explore the true nightmares that manifest from sexual and emotional repression. The writers emphasise the motives and the reason for the characters actions opposed to how the causations of this repression occurred. Conversely, both works draw on the common theme of the disturbed human psyche, offering a critical perspective on the upbringing of each individual with regards to their early development, each characters subcontious fixations and abnormal behaviours through the use characters behaviours and representations. The characters Norman Bates and Marion Crane in Psycho and Allan Strang and Martin Dysart of Equus all face internal struggles against
more competence as an explanation due to evidence now being needed to prove someone guilty, there was still a aspect of psychological pressure towards obeying God and putting themselves forward for punishment in order to live a better afterlife.
Hitchcock uses misery, tragedy, and death to show the emotions of his characters. At no point is this more obvious than the end of the movie. Hitchcock spends the entire movie building up to this point and in the end he makes it extremely clear how tragedy has changed the relationship of everyone. After the nagging husbands murder of his wife has been confessed you see
He does the majority of the work and leaves enough clues for Lila and Sam to continue his job. The early deaths of the 'main characters' shocked the audience enough to leave them mystified and at the edge of their seats for the remainder of the film. Hitchcock had succeeded in creating suspense in his film using a new and different convention that had never been tried before.
Inside his mind, he finds all these evil from his thoughts that he had repressed and locked away all these years cause of his strict religious beliefs. The evil is represented by a devil he met in his unconscious mind. The devil holds in his hands a staff that resembles a serpent is similar to the story of Adam and Eve where the snake leads them away from being the purest of man and in Young Goodman Brown where the devil with the serpent staff leads Brown deeper into the forest. All his thoughts that were considered wrong by his religion were repressed and forgotten. These thoughts which he thought were forgotten are actually locked deep into the “forest” part of his mind and the opening of that door will only take a matter of time before the mind can’t take anymore. Once the door creaks open from the pressure of the thoughts, the person becomes hysterical unless a method of mental solution provided in Freud theory is utilized. Proven by Sigmund Freud, hysteria is not at all physical and is indeed a mental condition.
Freud has also touched upon the melancholy of losing a loved one. Freud’s theory is that loss and melancholy is what can lead to madness. This trait is also seen in Scottie’s reaction to the believed death of Madeleine. Scottie goes mad and has to be institutionalized. When he is released he finds the Madeleine “look alike” in Judy and develops a deep obsession. Heather Holf who wrote Hitchcock’s Vertigo and the Tragic Sublime says:
An anthology of gay male fantasy erotica. For the Like a Spell anthology, we asked writers to challenge the traditional tropes and send us something new—original stories of magic users, interesting twists on the typical sorcerers and mages. The response was overwhelming and exciting, and we decided to publish four separate anthologies, using the theme of classical elements (earth, air, fire, and water) as the focus for each collection.
In the introduction of the book Magic in the Middle Ages chapter, one emphasizes the definition of magic. During the medieval era, Europeans believed that there were two types of magic, which were called natural and demonic. As natural magic was considered to have a correlation with science as the Wolfsthurn handbook illustrated the usage of a combination of herbs and magic in conjunction. For example, using herbs to treat an illness with the addition of reciting specific words was deemed as natural magic. On the other hand, demonic magic was not thought to be a form of science but was a perverted depiction of religion. That demonic magic’s power source was from demons and that words that could not be interpreted were thought to be demon names. In addition, treatments that involved animal skin from the Wolfsthurn book would be considered demonic magic as it was suggested that it was a ceremonial sacrifice to demons.
In the Movie, American Psycho, Patrick Bateman demonstrate challenges to identify his unique type of personality theories. The purpose of this essay is to review a selected film as a Psychology student, and discuss it from a psychological perspective. Also in this paper providing a diagnosis for a character in the movie and discuss the behaviors that support the selected diagnosis, and to explain and discuss the mental illness depicted in the film.
Throughout No Witchcraft for Sale, Doris Lessing develops a theme surrounding the topics of family, trust, and religion. Lessing does this by developing a cast of characters including Teddy, the Farquars, and Gideon. She mentions how the Farquars and their servant Gideon had grown close to each other after the birth of the Farquars’ son Teddy. She also explains how the Farquars were a deeply religious family and that Gideon was a mission boy himself. However, when a scientist arrives from the city to explore the native knowledge of medicine, Gideon’s trust and relationship with the Farquars is tried. Although Gideon is not a direct relative of the Farquars, the theme of this story is a trial of family and family’s strength to overcome.
asks if she is OK. I think most people would if you saw this woman
Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep.” His madness is definitely on a different level than just a psycho. He is insane and loosing it every moment of the story, repeating words and using disturbing metaphors and similes. He compares many things such as referring to the eye of the old man as the “evil eye”, and “eye of a vulture”. Metaphors are used constantly to confuse the readers. “I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye.”
This movie brings out some interesting facts about psychoanalysis. Doctors in this field are different from others because they attempt to have rationale on the irrationality of emotions. The main aim is to analyze why behaviors deviate from the normal norm. This film shows a main idea of clinical psychology. People can go through profound amount of suffering which from outside sources or self-imposed. This movie successfully brings out the depth of emotional suffering that one can go through and brings out therapy in action. Cronenberg brings out the extent of sufferings that a patient goes through. Sabina’s behavior is seen moving from relative calmness into a violent behavior. Her eyes are seen poping out of her head, her limbs convulse, and her jaw spasms in a non-human way. Her mind tortures her in a way that this manifests physically. Dr. Jung uses his treatment “talking cure” to help Sabina find out the source of her hysteria. This treatment helps her answer the question why her mind is torturing