Parallel Narratives:

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Parallel Narratives
On Screen Delusions and
Shared Psychoses
Vaughan Bell
Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London
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Outline

• Psychopathology, phenomenology and cinema
• Parallel narratives

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Cinema, Phenomenology and Psychosis

• Phenomenology aims to understand the structure of
  subjective experience.
• It is applied to psychosis to better understand
  the experience of delusions and hallucinations.
• Cinema attempts to induce particular mental
  states through film.
• By applying phenomenological analysis to cinema
  and psychosis, we can identify film which helps
  us better understand the psychotic state.

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Myth of the un-understandable

• It is widely reported that Jaspers (1913)
  described primary delusions as un-understandable
  
• ...and often misinterpreted, suggesting he
  thought delusions were impossible to explain
  (Walker, 1991).

• Jaspers made the crucial distinction between
• Understanding (vertehen), the ability to
  empathically grasp the subjective experience
• Explanation (erklären), objective / causal
  explanation at a sub-personal level

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Objective Subjective Symptoms

• For Jaspers, this is closely related to his
  classification of symptom types
• Objective symptoms include observations of
  behaviour, performance, the rational content of
  the what the patient tells us.
• Subjective symptoms cannot be grasped by the
  sense-organs or logical thought, and require us
  to transfer oneself into the individuals psyche
  i.e. by empathy.
• (Note difference with contemporary use of the
  terms)

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Importance and Limits of Empathy

• Fulford et al. (2006, p185) note
• for Jaspers, it would be better to say that in
  empathy one simply lives though in ones
  imagination presumably the same type of
  experience as that which the patient is living
  through.
• Thornton (2007) summarises Jaspers position as
• although understanding lies at the heart of
  psychiatry, there are limits on its range. Some
  phenomena remain incomprehensible.

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Pushing the Limits of Understanding

• The more we can encounter the subjective aspects
  of an experience
• rather than simply grasping the rational
  contents, causal connections or scientific
  explanation
• the more we can push back the limits on the
  range of understanding.
• If we accept that an understanding of living
  through experience is important
• we can see that cinema is uniquely placed to
  communicate some of the subjective aspects of
  psychopathology.

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Application to Film

• Film can communicate the objective, observable
  aspects of psychopathology with varying degrees
  of accuracy.
• The following clip is from Anatole Litvaks
  influential 1948 film The Snake Pit.

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The Snake Pit (1948)
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Application to Film

• In this scene, the patient is seen in the third
  person for the viewer to observe.
• And perhaps we can identify various objective
  symptoms
• Pressure of speech
• Flight of ideas
• Persecutory ideas etc
• Indeed, this exact format has been used in
  psychiatry to demonstrate objective symptoms
  clinically.

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Symptoms in Schizophrenia (1940)
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Empathic Understanding

• What we dont get from either of these
  depictions, is an understanding of what it is
  like to experience those symptoms.
• Contrast with the following clip from the opening
  scene in The Snake Pit.

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The Snake Pit (1948)
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A Shared Journey

• Here the viewer not only shares in the perceptual
  experience of hearing the protagonists voices
• but also, at least momentarily, in her
  confusion, and discomfort.
• As noted by Jaspers (1912)
• The more numerous and specific these indirect
  hints become, the more well-defined and
  characteristic do the phenomena studied appear.
  Indeed, this personal effort to represent psychic
  phenomena to oneself under the guidance of these
  purely external hints is the condition under
  which along we can speak of any kind of
  psychological work at all.

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Varieties of Cinematic Experience

• Importantly, a film can communicate aspects of
  psychosis without explicitly being about
  psychosis.
• The films dont have to be great, or even
  mainstream, cinema.
• Often specific sequences can be valued for their
  phenomenological accuracy despite their
  lacklustre context.
• Genres such as science-fiction and horror can
  depict the experiences of psychosis under the
  guise of high-technology and the supernatural
  (Bell, 2006).

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Delusions on Film

• Delusions are more difficult to portray as
  subjective symptoms, as they do not directly map
  onto visual or auditory experience.
• One option is to use narrative structure to
  construct, resolve and contrast viewers beliefs.
• Im going to focus on the use of parallel
  narratives as a way of constructing the
  phenomenology of on-screen psychosis.
• Here, film-makers portray two or more
  interpretations of events to allow viewers to
  share the delusions of the characters.

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Parallel Narratives

• Perhaps the earliest example of this is in The
  Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920)
• Francis realises Dr Caligari and his assistant
  are not carnival showmen but murderers
• only for it later to be revealed that the story
  is part of Francis delusional system
• and Caligari is, in fact, head of the asylum
  where he is a patient.

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The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920)
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Film as Retrospective Delusion

• The use of a twist ending to reframe the film
  as a delusion is now a common plot device.

Twilight Zone episode
King Nine Will Not Return
Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Normal Again
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Film as Retrospective Delusion

• This has also been used to reframe scenes or
  subplots rather than whole stories, to
  significant effect.
• The device was memorably used in A Beautiful Mind
  (2001).
• Perhaps, used more effectively in Proof (2005).

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Proof (2005)
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Film as Retrospective Delusion

• This narrative device provides a reframing of
  past events, giving them a radically different
  meaning.
• Parallels with Jaspers account of primary
  delusions
• In each of these cases there is a deep change in
  the experience of significance of features of the
  world. In the case of delusional perceptions, an
  experience is transformed. In the case of
  delusional ideas, the significance of memory is
  transformed. In delusional awareness, a
  delusional idea springs unbidden, but in all
  cases, All primary experience of a delusion is
  an experience of meaning (Jaspers, 1997 99).
  Thorton (2007, p98)
• However, while the process is the same, the
  transition is reversed, from delusion to insight.

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Ambiguous Plotlines

• Occasionally, films will have ambiguous elements
  that can be interpreted either as delusional, or
  as real.
• Coscarellis Bubba Ho-tep (2002) uses two
  characters, one who is definitely delusional and
  who might be.

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Ambiguous Plotlines

• Its notable for a number of reasons, not least
  for being a comedy and having a positive
  portrayal of the elderly mentally ill.
• As viewers, we are left unsure about the reality
  of the characters beliefs or the experiences
  they have.
• Although perhaps we have partial insight into
  some characters beliefs.
• As with the defence account of delusions, the
  desired story is much preferred to the
  alternative, that both are hopelessly lost in
  their psychotic worlds.

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Paranoia and the Parallel Narrative

• In the film literature, Rosemarys Baby (1968)
  has been taken as an allegory on feminism
  (Valerius, 2005) or birth trauma (Fischer, 1992).
• Interpretations of psychosis were described as
  dismissive !
• The film uses a range of techniques that allows
  us to share in the phenomenology of psychosis.

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Delusional Atmosphere

• Sims (2005, p125) notes of delusional atmosphere
  
• For the patient experiencing delusional
  atmosphere, his world has been subtly altered
  Something funny is going on I have been
  offered a whole new world of meanings. He
  experiences everything around him as sinister,
  portentous, uncanny, peculiar in an indefinable
  way. He knows he is personally involved but cant
  tell how.

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Uncanny People
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Uncanny People

• These scene is striking largely for the fact that
  the actress in the film is actually Victoria
  Vetri.
• The viewer shares Rosemarys misrecognition, but
  has an accompanying sense of unease about the
  coherence of the world.

• This device is used later in the film with a
  similar effect.

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Uncanny People
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Uncanny People

• Unbeknownst to Mia Farrow or the viewer, the
  voice on the phone is Tony Curtis.
• In this scene we have both our own, and Rosemary
  / Mias sense of unease to exaggerate the effect.

• Captured by the PDI-21 item Do you ever feel as
  if some people are not what they seem to be?
• And is reminiscent of Schrebers (1903) phrase
  fleetingly improvised men.

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Sinister Portent - Memory
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Sinister Portent - Perception
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Doubting Reality
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Sinister Portent Amplified
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Deep change in significance
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Viewer as arbiter of reality

• The genius of the film is that it can be read in
  two mutually exclusive, but both completely
  coherent, ways
• A gradual transition into psychosis
• A targeting of Rosemary by coven of witches to
  bear Satans child.
• Everything Rosemary mentions to her doctor
  occurs, even when this wasnt highlighted at the
  time (makeup, pyjamas).

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Viewer as arbiter of reality

• Unlike many other films, however, there is no
  single reality to agree upon.
• The deep change in significance can occur
  either when as assume the plot is real, or
  Rosemary is deluded, or if we tolerate both
  possibilities.
• Stanghellini (2004, p101) talks of psychosis as
  involving a hyper-tolerance of semantic
  complexity
• Schizophrenics have a more fluid semantic
  network which allows for an expansion of the
  horizon of meaning Not only this, but they
  actively seek out the broadening of the semantic
  halo.

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Conclusions

• Applying the phenomenological method to film and
  psychosis can help us push back the boundaries of
  subjective symptoms.
• The films do not have to be explicitly about
  psychosis, they just have to induce related
  mental states.
• Narrative is a method for manipulating belief
• and therefore may be useful as a vehicle for
  understanding the experience of meaning
  transformation in delusions.

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Delusion is expressed in belief, but based in
experience. Stangellini (2004, p184)