Monday, October 29, 2012

Psychopathology Film Analysis: The Dangerous Method

The Dangerous Method                 

Plot Summary:

            This film is about the emergence of psychoanalysis, the intense relationship between the psychiatrists Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, and more centrally on the affair between the married Carl Jung and his Jewish-Russian patient Sabina Spielrein. As Sabina was being treated, Sexual Masochism and Conversion Disorder (Hysteria) was well portrayed throughout the movie.

Disorder:

Sexual Masochism is a paraphilia characterized by intense and repeated sexual urges, behaviors, or fantasies that involve pain and degradation, for examples, by being beaten, bound, humiliated, or otherwise made to suffer (Comer, 2010). Most masochism begins in childhood but the urges acts out later during early adulthood, especially in the time of stress, and it may continue for many years (Comer, 2010).

From the movie, Sabina could always recall her first time being beaten by her father when she was about four. That time, she broke a plate, then her father told her to go to the little room and take her cloth off, there, he would spanked her hard but Sabina would always liked it, it always excited her, and she continued to like it more and more. Later on, every time she was called to that little room, she would get wet, some sort of arousal, and she would start touching herself. Moreover, at the scene when Sabina dropped Jung’s coat, Jung picked it up and clean it by hitting the coat with a stick. That time, Sabina immediately and furiously stopped him because it also excited her, making her masturbate at that night. Furthermore, Sabina always seek for humiliation, any kind of humiliation. When Jung had a secret affair with Sabina, Sabina told him that they have a different thing, that she wanted him to be furious at her, humiliate her, and punish her. In many scenes with Jung and Sabina having sexual intercourse showed that Sabina love it when Jung spanked her buttock with his hand, a stick, or a belt.

Conversion Disorder, also known as Hysteria, is a somatoform disorder in which a psychosocial need or conflict is converted into dramatic physical symptoms that affect voluntary motor and sensory function without any underlying organic cause (Comer, 2010). Sabina showed clear physical symptoms, primarily motor ones, at the beginning of the movie and at times of stress, she completely lost control of the movement—her lower jaw would unintentionally stick in and out, her fingers and hands uncontrollably grasped tightly, her elbows, arm, and body involuntary move around, back and forth, with every part of her muscles seemed uncontrollably tense, tighten and stiff. She was in a very torturous posture.

Causes:

Biological – She might have nervous system prone to errors in targeting (Student Notes).
Behavioral – Sabina sexual masochism could develop through classical conditioning. After the father spanked her, she was asked to kiss his hand or the father could be the one kissing her. This may reveal the association made between pain and erotic arousal that may have been the cause of her later masochistic urges and acts. According to the behavioral learning theory, Sabina, as a child, is the victim to observe inappropriate sexual behaviors. She then learned to imitator and those behavior happen to be reinforced, leading to masochism.
Psychodynamic – According to Freud, Sabina hysteric symptoms were caused by her sexually repressed energy (unconscious desired). Her primary gain of those symptoms is to keep her internal conflict out of awareness. She could also achieve secondary gain from them that enable her to avoid responsible, unpleasant activities or to receive attention, sympathy, or even financial compensation from others (Student Notes).
Cognitive – The purpose of the conversing emotion into physical symptoms is not, like psychodynamic, to defend oneself but to communicate extreme feelings of, for examples, fear depression, jealously, guild, anger, etc, into a more comfortable physical language for her (Comer, 2010).

Treatment:
Biological – Antianxiety and antidepressant drugs could help reduce her anxiety.
Psychodynamic – Therapists help patients to become conscious about the underlying fear or needs and eliminate the need to convert anxiety into physical symptoms (Comer, 2010).

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