I just watched the movie Black Swan (2010) today for the first time and have to say it was nothing short of wild. I have heard quite a lot about the film but did not expect it to be anything like the way it turned out. I read the psychoanalysis readings before watching it and really felt like I was taking notes the whole time on possible connections. This is from encyclopedia Britannica definition of psychoanalysis “Freud and Breuer observed that, when the sources of patients’ ideas and impulses were brought into consciousness during the hypnotic state, the patients showed improvement.” In the movie Nina was constantly going out of consciousness and a hypnotic state. It was kinda the opposite of the quote as she slowly began to realize her ideas and impulses as she drifted from a sort of hypnotic state where they were apparent, back into normal consciousness.
In Freud’s psychoanalytic theory the id, ego and superego exist and balance each other out. The ego here is given the task of dealing with the id and superego while trying to cope with the reality around it. The id consists of ones wants and desires while the superego takes in the environment around it and tries and balance out the ego. Freud said the ego worked both in the conscious and the unconscious, and it was clear in the film that Nina was diving back and forth between the two. As the theory states, Nina then developed anxiety because the three were not synchronized and this led her into a deep neurosis.
In the film we see examples of this throughout Nina’s character development. Early on we see her need for perfection as she is practicing in front of the mirror. She just had finished a hard day where she finally had a shot at her dream, the lead part, and failed. Instead of getting defeated she is seen practicing and the camera zooms in on the floor. Here we can see the floor is literally warped from all of the practicing she has done away from the company. This shows us that she has been at this for a while and her need for perfection in her form has enveloped her for a long time. There are many other instances that show this desire for perfection but the one that stood out the most to me was her constant problem with her nails. She is always picking at them and in the scene where Thomas Leroy announces her to their supporters she is shown running to the bathroom after thinking her nails were bleeding. She peels back her skin trying to fix the imperfection until she finally snaps back into consciousness and to the fact she was not bleeding at all. Nina’s id, ego and superego are conflicting throughout the film, we see many examples of this but her need for perfection seems to dominant the conflict as she snaps in and out of reality.
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I am glad that you incorporated the Freudian ideas of psychoanalytic theory in your post; it really made for some good ground to stand on. However, you description of the id, ego, and superego was a bit confusing. I also never thought of her hallucinations as her being in some kind of hypnotic state, which is an interesting thought. It makes me wonder what she would have seemed like at those points to anyone around her, if they had been able to see her. For instance if someone was in the room when she pulls the feather out of her back, what would that have looked like to them? Would she have been looking at her back at all? The relationship between reality and delusion in this movie was so mind-boggling for me in this way, and as the viewer we are forced to accept the fact that we will never truly know what happened. Interesting stuff!
Encyclopedia Brittanica’s definition of psychoanalysis was interesting when I tried to apply it to the Black Swan. I agree with you when you mention how, throughout the movie, Nina keeps going in and out of a hypnotic state. But I think this keeps her from making the realizations she would need to make in order to “fix” herself. This is why, ultimately, her “perfection” was her demise.
I also did the psychoanalysis readings before watching the movie and I’m glad I did, because I was able to look at the movie and think about the id, superego, and ego the whole time. Making a connection to these made things a little more clear to me, as it was easier to see where the conflicts within Nina’s own head arose from.