DISHA SAREEN(1000378) INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY 12/04/16

MPU 2063
INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

ASSIGNMENT 1

MOVIE-REVIEW- SHUTTER ISLAND

NAME : Disha Sareen

ID NO. : 1000378

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

SERIAL NO TOPIC PAGE NUMBER

1. Introduction 3

2. Review 4-11

3. References 12-13

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INTRODUCTION:

This section of the review explains why I chose this movie and what my methods of
research were.

The movie I chose is SHUTTER ISLAND. The primary purpose of selecting this
movie was to allow me to study more in depth about Dissociative Identity Disorders
(DID). DID patients have more than one sense of self with or without being aware of
it (depends from patient to patient). It is intriguing to understand what a DID patient
feels when they do not even realize that they are suffering from this mental illness.
Watching this movie provided a lot of facts and interesting ideas that are related to
DID. Being able to understand the capacity of the brain to save the human from
harm/depression/suicidal tendencies is also explored in this review. Shutter Island
also throws light on the efforts of the psychologists/ psychiatrists to treat mentally-ill
patients with psychoanalysis rather than lobotomy. The film depicts a part of the
change that came in the medicine of mentally handicapped people.

In order to do this review, I researched online websites that had written about this
movie. Apart from that I also took part in healthy discussions with my friends who
have knowledge about the movie and tried to understand what they grasped form
the movie as some parts of the movie were open to the viewers interpretation. It was
interesting to listen to and understand other peoples point of view.

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REVIEW:

Released in 2010, Shutter Island is an American psychological thriller film directed by

Martin Scorsese which has Leonardo DiCaprio as its protagonist. This film is based on a
novel named Shutter Island, written in 2003 by Dennis Lehane. Shutter Island is set in
the 1950s and focuses on Dissociative Identity Disorders (DID). It focuses on how
trauma affects the human brain. The movie also depicts the plight of the mental
institutions in the 1950s and how mental sicknesses were treated with physical
treatments like lobotomy. The movie shows us how the mind tries to remove itself form
pain-causing memories by doing anything it possibly can. The human brain develops
various features that allow it to block certain parts of its memories. One drawback of this
is that it becomes susceptible to hallucinations, which is well depicted in the movie. The
film covers the domain of how emotional burden may lead to the dismissal of hope and
desire all together. It also shows the viewers that realizing the truth isnt enough rather it
is the will to work towards it that is challenging. The doctors in the film use
psychoanalysis as a trial treatment for Andrew to try to introduce this method of
treatment in order to reduce lobotomy.

The movie revolves around Leonardo DiCaprios character Andrew Laeddis/Teddy

Daniels, who along with his partner Chuck, is brought on a ferry to Shutter Island to
investigate the case of a missing patient at the Aschecliffe Hospital for the criminally
insane. The mysterious disappearance of the patient Rachel Solando was a serious
case as she was admitted into the asylum after she drowned her three children for no
evident reason. On investigating the matter, Teddy finds a note in Rachels room which
says What is the law of 4? Who is 67?. This further complicates the matters for Teddy
as he was told there are only 66 patients at Ashecliffe. According to the Plot Summary
by IMDB, this inclines Teddy to develop the belief that there is another patient on the
island that the hospital authorities are not informing him about. Teddy begins to doubt
everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.

Once Rachel Solando is found, Teddy is thanked for his services and is asked to leave.
But because of his increasing suspicions about what is actually happening at the
hospital, he is bent on finding out the truth and confirming his beliefs. He becomes

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paranoid and starts to suspect that Nazi-Brain-Experiments are going on at the hospital
which the authorities are trying to hide from Teddy since he is an official US Marshal.

As the movie progresses towards its climax, Teddy is made to realize by Dr. Cawley,
who is the head of the facility, that Teddy himself is in fact patient 67, named Andrew
Laeddis, who was admitted to the hospital two years ago on account of murdering his
wife Dolores who had drowned their three children. He was admitted as he developed
multiple personalities because of what he had gone through in his past. It is explained to
Teddy that his whole investigation was actually an elaborate role play by all the
members of the hospital as an attempt to join his personalities and in turn bring him
back to reality.

The experiment is successful and the doctors are extremely happy about it, because
now lobotomy could be prevented for people suffering with similar mental disorders and
other treatment options could be explored for the mentally handicapped.

However, the last line of the movie by Teddy/Andrew- Which is worse? To live as a
monster or to die as a good man, shows to the audience that he could not live with the
fact that he murdered his wife, who had drowned their 3 kids. He preferred to live a life
without memories as the pain of the past was too much for him to bear. He thus
pretends that he has regressed back to being Teddy and has again gone into the
fantasy world he made for himself to escape the truth. He is, with much regret and
sadness, taken by the guards to be Lobotomized so that he, according to him, can die
as a good man.

The movie Shutter Island explains to us the mystery that is the Human Brain. The
human brain is complex and what it does is sometimes extremely baffling. The movie is
based on trauma and Dissociative Identity Disorder. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
was previously called Multiple Personality Disorder(MPD). DID is a severe case of
dissociation of a person from their thoughts, memories, feelings, or sense of identity.
DID is believed to be caused by some form of trauma that a person has suffered. In this
the person develops another personality in his mind, which is basically a coping
mechanism by the brain. Cases of DID very from person to person. Some DID patients
may be aware of the other personalities in them, while others may be clueless about

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them. DID can account from two to even 17 personalities in one person. People with
emotional and abuse issues before the age of 9 are said to be more prone to getting
DID later in life.

In the movie, the lead character Andrew Laeddis has suffered a major trauma in his life
which becomes the reason he develops another personality Teddy Daniels. It is shown
in the movie that he was married to a beautiful woman named Dolores and they had 3
children between them.

He can be examined on many of Sigmund Freuds theories about the unconscious.

According to Jordon Alexa Perry, while he is living in his fantasy life as an investigator
on the island, his unconscious thoughts often appear in his dreams. It is interesting to
know that the trauma Andrew suffered was not only what happened to his family, but
also what he saw and experienced in his service in the World War two. He suffered from
some Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after his service at the war front in WWII,
due to which he started drinking. His PTSD was a result of death and bloodshed he saw
during his service there as a soldier. He was involved in the shooting of a number of
Nazi soldiers when they captured their camp. He was able to comply at that time and do
his duty because he was obligated to do so. But once the realization of what he had
done dawned on him, it was strenuous for him. PTSD symptoms may vary from person
to person, and they lead to disturbed thoughts, sleep, and also cause hallucinations.

During the time that Andrew suffered from PTSD, Doloress personality started
changing. She started showing symptoms of depression and suicidal tendencies. But
Doloress personality change was clearly noticeable after the birth of their third child.
Andrew continued drinking to hide his pain in terms of the PTSD and also in terms of
how his wife was changing. This served as a stress factor for Dolores and she got more
and more upset. She had attempted to kill herself once before by setting their apartment
on fire. Seeing all this, Andrew moved his family to a secluded lake house where no one
would recognize Doloress illness. Dolores has thought to have suffered from
Postpartum depression and the subtraction of friends and family in the new lake house,
added to her mental instability.

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Postpartum depression can make women feel very sad, hopeless, and worthless. In
terms of pregnancy, it happens after miscarriage, childbirth and stillbirth. In some cases,
like in that of Dolores, the health of the mother deteriorates into postpartum psychosis.
Postpartum psychosis is a condition that may involve psychotic symptoms like delusions
or hallucinations. Dolores, suffering from postpartum depression (PPD) had fleeting
thoughts of suicide or of harming her baby. Because of suffering from not only this, but
also postpartum psychosis, she felt the need to act on these thoughts. PPD does not
disappear on its own, rather it needs counselling and appropriate medication. If Andrew
had done that for his wife, she probably would not have become so consumed by her
disease and his family would have still been alive.

The moment that Andrew saw what his wife had done to their three children, was the
moment that he lost his mind. On a Saturday morning, when Andrew was out of the
house, Dolores took their three children and drowned them in the lake behind their
house. (Clyman, 2010). On returning home, Andrew saw this site and was shattered.
On taking out their bodies from the lake, he was heart-broken especially when he saw
that Dolores was not comprehending what she had done. Dolores told Andrew to put
her out of her misery and complying, Andrew shoot Dolores and set her free. This is
the reason that Andrew was convicted was murder of his wife Dolores.

On diving into the mind of Andrew, it is evident that all of this was extraordinarily painful
for him. Seeing the love of his life lose her mind, kill their three children and he killing his
wife was hugely painful for Andrew and to cope up with which his mind made another
personality named Teddy Daniels. In his new self Teddy Daniels, he did not have any
children and some person name Laeddis was the one who murdered his wife. Doing so
he essentially removed himself from the guilt, as in his mind he was the victim not the
criminal. It is revealed in the end that Andrew makes anagrams for all the names his
new personality uses. Anagrams is what the Law of 4 was for Andrew/Teddy. He
subconsciously rearranges alphabets to form names for the fantasy world of Teddy. He
rearranges Dolores Chanal (his wifes maiden name) into Racheal Solando, and
Andrew Laeddis into Edward Daniels (Teddy). Him making anagrams shows us how
his mind still relates to the two different senses of self within him. It is a symbolism of

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the mind as to how he is one entity trying to make more of himself, in which neither of
them know each other consciously but are related sub-consciously.

Psychoanalysis, which is used in this film, is a system of psychological theory and

therapy that aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious
and unconscious elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into
the conscious mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association. It
basically means that our behavior is influenced by not only our conscious-self, but also
our sub-conscious collection of feelings, thoughts, urges and so on.

Psychoanalysis perceives DID as a syndrome of defense where the patient has used
splitting and dissociative defenses, which involve the passive and active removal of an
aspect of knowing in order to preserve the good self and the good object. (Marmer,
1991).

Sigmund Freud was known as the father of Psychoanalysis and he stated that we have
two drives in us that motivate and influence our thoughts, behaviors and actions.: Life
and Death. The Life instinct brings and an increased tension whereas the Death instinct
focuses more towards self-destruction and death. These are survival techniques which
help us stay alive and away from eminent danger. They also help us to compose our
three elements of personality: ID, Ego and Superego. For Andrew, the fact that he killed
his wife, shattered his ego, which is the part of the personality which deals with reality.
Two avoid the guilt imposed on him by his superego, his ID took over and created two
alters.

While patients with DID have different alters, some symbols in the unconscious mind
are transferred from one alter to another. In the movie, Andrew (believing himself to be
Teddy) sees his wife and daughters faces in dreams. He sees fire and water and blood
in some of the dreams symbolizing his past. In his dreams his dead wife and children
may be an extended representation of himself that has crippled him with guilt and he
tries to drown his children deeper into his subconscious to avoid attaching himself to the
crime.

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DID involves the splitting of the original personality into multiple ones essentially
removing the parts from the main personality that may hinder the aspect of good for
the person. In this, the person (willingly or unwillingly) shifts the personality and lets the
other one take over which is more capable of doing so, allowing the person to exist in as
many parts as necessary to satisfy his life and death instincts. DID is a defense
mechanism that the brain uses and the different personalities have elaborate fantasies
that allow the patient to prevent anxiety from similar stimuli.

A strength in Psychoanalysis is that it emphasizes a patients interpersonal experience

(Shedler, 2010), which would be very helpful for a DID patient who experiences
emotional and cognitive difficulties and needs to identify issues, explore relationships,
gain insight in order to change their behavior (Mcleod, 2009)

As for Andrew, his thought barriers became blur as he blamed himself for the death of
his wife and children. He felt that he shouldve gotten Dolores help when she was
showing signs of the illness, but he didnt and thus it was his fault that his children had
passed away. In his mind, he could not forgive himself for what he had done to Dolores,
no matter what she did to deserve it. The traumatic experiences in his life left him with
no other defense other than to separate himself from it and make a new self, where he
could not blame himself for what happened to his family.

Another dimension of traumas that Andrew faced was the bloodshed, death, and dead
bodies he saw during his service in the US marshal, when he went to stop a Nazi
Camp. He saw piles of dead bodies of people including those of women and children.
He shot the Nazi soldiers without mercy as orders from the US Army. All these things
also burdened Andrews mind and made him vulnerable emotionally and
psychologically. These disturbing images, combined with what happened with his family,
haunted his psyche and blurred his psychological lines, removing the distinct partition
between imagination and reality.

Dr. Cawley and Dr. Sheenan (Chuck) were sympathetic doctors who wanted to find
another way to cure patients like Andrew other than to drug or lobotomize them. They
decided to have this experiment on Andrew because a week before he had violently
attacked a patient when he called him Laeddis. This aspect shows us how strongly his

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mind was trying to separate the two identities within Andrew. Violence is a normal
response in DID patients because their mind would do anything not to associate the
main personality with what they have tried to hide or deny. This was the Doctors last
attempt to try to combine Andrews personalities, which if unsuccessful would lead to his
lobotomy.

In order integrate Andrews personalities, they developed a secure and safe

environment for Andrew where he could communicate and cooperate with them. The
doctors established this role-play as a treatment method to provide a strategic
integration of his personalities. They provided subtle indicators or clues so that Andrews
personalities were able to share memories, feelings, and even dreams. They had to be
extra careful as it was possible that Andrews system would collapse all together on
realizing the truth. The collapse would be caused as he might not be able to deal with
the anxiety and depression and would want to re-dissociate.

As for Andrew, the treatment worked when he realized his true personality that he is not
Teddy but in fact Andrew. He was allowed to come to that realization, during the course
of the role-play. The goal behind the role-play was to show Teddy how impossible his
conspiracies are about the facility being running Nazi-Experiments. Once he saw that, it
would make no sense, leading him to extinguish it all together.

At the end of the movie, Teddy does realize his true identity, that is Andrew. He wakes
up to the reality though he is warned by Dr. sheehnan that he has regressed into his
fantasy world before. Andrew however is smart. The next morning, he realizes that the
doctors and wardens are observing his behavior. What Andrew sees at the moment is
the fact that he is surrounded by his own guilt and pain. These emotions are still so
heavy on Andrew that he knows he cannot live with them. He knows that he would be
suppressed under the burden of the death of his family and he being the reason behind
it. Thus, rather than living with the knowledge of his pain, he chose to pretend that he is
still Teddy Daniels and let the authorities lobotomize him, so that he can finally be free
of his burden.

The last line of the movie from Andrew to Dr. Sheenan is Which would be worse: To live
as a monster or to die as a good man? This line shows the viewers that Andrew is not

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in his delusional state and realizes the truth. After realizing the truth behind all of his

actions it is clear that his life is relatable to many of Freuds theories which are all used to

aid him in distorting reality to protect him against pain or threatening impulses arising from

the id (Friedman & Schustack 77). According to his last line, if he accepts his guilt and

becomes sane, he will become the monster. His delusions are his brains way of removing

this guilt and hiding the fact that he ignored his family, did not act on his wife's mental

illness, allowed her to murder their children and then murdered her. By accepting what the

doctors are telling him he will need to go on living in the knowledge that he allowed terrible

things to happen and did terrible things. The doctors will be able to treat him without a

lobotomy but he will be fully aware of the crimes he committed. On the other hand, in his

delusions, he is a good man, who is on the side of the law and whose wife was murdered by

a man names Laeddis. If he chose to continue to believe in his fantasy of being Teddy, he

would be lobotomized which would deprive him of the mental ability to think otherwise. His

power to reason would be taken away, but he would not have the pain or guilt of what

happened to his family and his shortcomings for it.

At this point of lucidity, he makes the decision that he cannot live with his crimes and would

prefer to lie to his doctor as he knows that it will result in his lobotomy. Its true that
misinformed therapists who use outdated or ineffective approaches may do damage. But
this can happen with any disorder with any inexperienced and ill-trained therapist.
Research-based and consensually established treatments for DID do help. (Sabouri,
Sadeghzadegan,2013) This inability to help Andrew was what lead to his decision of being
lobotomized.

This decision of Andrew gives an insight into the human emotional capacity. This tells us

that making a DID patient aware of his dissociative personalities isnt enough. The important

process is what follows after which allows the person to have some hope to be able to live

with himself after the realization strikes him. Teddy was given no tools to deal with his

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issues or work through them, which is what eventually led to his choice of being

lobotomized. Had he be given proper treatment post his realization, he would have been

able to cope up with his past and would have been able to try to move forward with the

reality. The time was a major factor for the doctors as they didnt have enough. On looking

into the matter closely it is evident that had Andrew been given more time the point when he

reached his sanity to the time of the lobotomy, he would have been able to attain some

determination to hold on to reality with the help of therapy.

From an analytic point of view, the events in chronological order are the entrance of two US

marshals(Teddy, Chuck) to Aschecliffe Hospital investigating the escape case of a patient,

Teddys flashbacks of his wife whom he loved beyond words, hunting for his wifes killer

Laeddis, searching for patient 67,facing the truly missing patient, the thought of being

drugged by the shrinks, and endeavoring to end the evil experiments carried out at the

hospital, and finally coming to terms with reality. Shutter Island depicts what the mind goes

through emotionally and how it manages to cope up with the traumas it may face. The film

explains to us that what we expose ourselves to, thinking of it as harmless, may in fact be

damaging to our mind in the long run. One interesting factor about the movie is that is

shows to the viewers that reality is just a state of perception. Reality for one person may not

be the same for the other. The sane or the insane, both believe in what they see. They do

not only view it, but also hear, feel, taste, and sense it. It is thus not easy for a person to

realize and comprehend that what they have been believing to be reality is in fact a bed of

dreams and fantasies woven by their brain to escape the bitter truth. Shutter Island also

makes clear the fact that for a human being to survive, their social, and emotional needs in

terms of a family need to be fulfilled. It is not just the worldly pleasures that make a person

complete, the support and love of family and friends is equally important. By portraying the

case of Andrew Laeddis, the viewers experience an insight into the minds of the mentally

disturbed. Another important factor to be understood from this film is that it isnt enough to

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make a person face reality. The real work comes in when they are given the tools to work to

accept the reality. To be told that this/that isnt real without providing him proper treatment

and therapy may eventually lead to a DID patients downfall. All in all, Shutter Island is an

eye-opening film. It allows the viewers to understand that there are people who have

suffered so much in their lives that they are broken mentally and as humans it is our duty to

understand what and why a person is like that and try to help them the best we can. The

film also describes the effort by people in the field of psychology to help find new and more

effective techniques to treat mental illnesses in people.

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