Freudian Thoughts in Spellbound

The theory of psychoanalysis is based upon the character's relationships and how the use of symbolism, as a form of representation, is also a prospect of this psychoanalysis.

Introduction

Freudian theory of psychoanalysis has been the main source for many directors and producers who created films in the thriller genre since the 1940s. They used this theory as a plot device in many films to fulfill the need of the audience for such films with psychotherapy and psychoanalysis during the period of World War II and post- World War II. Among other films shot within this theory is Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), nominated for six Academy Awards. "Psychoanalytic theory is central" in this film (Sterritt, 1993:88).

Spellbound, focuses on the use of many experiences, in highlighting the identity of one of the main characters, Ballantine (Gregory Peck) who suffers from amnesia. In the forefront of these experiences is Dr Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman). As Gilligan rightly revealed, “Freudian analysis helped Bergman … to uncover Gregory Peck's past” (Gilligan, 2003:379). Spellbound, "presented an effective use of psychiatry and psychoanalysis as plot ingredients" to reinforce the "bourgeois reality" of the post-World War II (Spears & Wood, 1971:320; 1998:47).

The dream sequence, which was designed by Dali, fits very well into this effectiveness of marginalized situation. This essay intends to analyze Hitchcock's film Spellbound by the use of Freudian and post-Freudian theory. It is not intended to discuss character analysis as such, although so much of the theory of psychoanalysis is based upon the character's relationships. Secondly, the analysis of the use of symbolism, as a form of representation, is also a prospect of this paper.

Fantasies and Reality

Guilt Complex: Repeated Motifs

Spellbound's use of ideas that are drawn from Freud's discoveries, of concepts like repressed memories, includes the main theme of “how it is that in our normal state we are able to distinguish between fantasy and reality” (Freud, 1991:225). For Boyd “fantasy itself … is Oedipal in nature” and it leads to “Freudian depths of incestuous desire and patricidal guilt” (Boyd, 2000: http://www.sensesofcinema.com).

For example the ideas of guilt complex identifiable throughout the film are used to determine the main plot. It is this guilt complex, triggered by the accidental killing of his brother in his childhood that has caused Ballantine's amnesia and made him believe that he is the one who killed Dr Edwards. From this point Spellbound contrasts Ballantine with the other patient in the film who suffers from guilt complex, and believes that he has killed his father, using this as a conjunction to highlight similarities with Oedipal themes, but in function to the fabula.

For Žižek these "repeated motifs" linked with Freud's "compulsion to repeat" are in function of both the story and the visual complex in the film (Žižek, 1992:126). Similarly Greenberg sees it as “appreciated only in repeated viewings; with its subtle insistence of the influence of childhood conflict upon adult destiny” (Greenberg, 1993:138). Also, Spellbound explores the distinctive ideas of the new replacing the old, such as when Dr Edwards was to replace Dr Murchison as the head of the Green Manors mental asylum.

The Paternal Function: Politicized Experience

The notion of politics used in the psychoanalysis of Spellbound takes for granted the existence of power relations that are linked with basic social structures and that are involved in the construction of each individual. For Silverman, Spellbound speaks “to the failure of the paternal function” (Silverman, 1992:52). For instance, the “individual task” that Constance undertakes “in order to begin to escape from the spaces, roles, and gestures that [she has] been assigned and taught by the society of men” is among other facts contributes to the “experience to be politicized” (Irigaray, 1977:164).

Obviously all this "experience" is under question because it has not taken “into consideration the specific exploitation of woman” (1977:165). As for Mulvey it is a "political weapon" of the patriarchal system (Mulvey, 1975:6). The fact that Constance's picture was in front of the newspapers when she abandoned Green Manors to find Ballantine clarifies that she has been "prescribed by the patriarchal system", but the presence of the two investigators, face to face with Constance and Ballantine in Dr Brulov's house, brings the conclusion that the “patriarchal system” is not functioning properly. For Irigaray, “politics has … questioned its own relation to phallocratic power” (1977:165).

However, Constance instantly contributes to this as “the unattractive "woman" who knows too much” (Žižek 1992:125). “She finds the signifier of her own desire in the body of the one” who is Ballantine “to whom she addresses her demand for love” (Irigaray, 1977:62). Irigaray's theory highlights this concept as: “dialectic of relations that are sexualized by the phallic function” (1977:62). Grosz's response to Irigaray's "plallocentrism" concludes that, “the patriarchal symbolic order leaves no space or form of representation for women's autonomy” (Grosz, 1990:174). For Grosz “the relations each sex has to the phallus”, leads to the fact that this relation “defines the structure of romantic relations between them” (1990:116). Relations and mother figure