Psychological analysis of the Black Swan character:

Borderline Disorder, psychosis, obsessions? - Black Swan's'

psychological spin
Monday, February 21, 2011 19:55 | | |
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Darren Aronofsky directs this drama where Natalie Portman shares the spotlight with Vincent
Cassel and Mila Kunis. The director delves into the dark side of the human being, presenting the
story of a dancer absorbed by her profession. A devouring passion that leads her to live a
nightmare where betrayal, sensuality, self-destruction and love are part of a disturbing cocktail.

Black Swan -"Black Swan"

The film begins when Thomas Leroy (Casell), the artistic director of a ballet company in New
York City, decides to replace the principal dancer of the Lake of Cinemas ballet. The decision
becomes an ideal opportunity for Nina (Natalie Portman), who aspires to play a double role: the
docile white swan and the sensual black swan. The dancer's life is completely absorbed by dance.
Nina lives with her mother (absorbent and domineering), Erica, also a retired dancer who
enthusiastically supports her daughter's professional ambition. However, their path will be
crossed by Lily (Kunis), whose actions endanger Nina's dream and take her to the brink of
perdition. (self-harm, delusions and hallucinations)
Analysis of the psychological profile of the protagonist

Are self-harm, delusions and visual hallucinations part of a known psychotic disorder or mental
problem? Can the combination of stress, perfectionism and parental control push a person over
the edge?

The reality: "The protagonist does not suffer from psychosis at all," says Dr. Dolores Malaspina,
professor of psychiatry and director of social initiatives and psychiatry at New York University
Langone Medical Center. According to Dr. Malaspina, Nina's affliction is most common in the
neurotic, obsessive-compulsive or borderline personality disorder patient who suffers from
"psychotic mini-episodes."

The visual hallucinations portrayed in the film are very strange and unrealistic, says Dr.
Malaspina. The audience must think that she really suffers from terrible visions as if they were
fantasies rather than real hallucinations.

Dr. Malaspina does appreciate the psychological symbolism in the film. The two swans represent
Nina's internal conflicts. "Your psychological growth requires the emotional fusion of your white
and black swan," says Dr. Malaspina.

Rachel Loewy, an adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San
Francisco, agrees that Nina's problems could be consistent with borderline personality disorder
(in which a person has difficulty establishing appropriate boundaries with one another). and
others) rather than a full-blown psychosis. However, Loewy believes that Nina's hallucinations
and fantasies could also suggest that she has lost track of reality completely. If she is convinced
that she is turning into a bird, then she probably has a psychotic disorder with strange delusions
putting her in a decidedly serious situation.
Stress can trigger a psychotic episode in people who are already vulnerable, Loewy says. Stress
in the family environment is a common trigger, although parenting style is not generally a cause
of psychosis, he adds, so we can't blame it all on Nina's mother.

Dr. Malaspina thinks Nina's prognosis is good with psychotherapy, small doses of antipsychotics
and antidepressants perhaps. The key is a strong therapeutic alliance with the therapist. She
suspects that the bloody scene at the end may be a fantasy.

Loewy believes that Nina has a chance for psychological recovery if she were treated. Since
common side effects of antipsychotics include weight gain and lethargy - two complications that
are not exactly compatible with ballet dancing - if Nina were truly psychotic, she would have to
choose to give up her career in order to get her mind back.

Excellent film with a high psychological and dramatic content, starring Natalie Portman, Vincent
Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder. The story is located in New York City,
Natalie Portman plays Nina Sayers and Mila Kunis plays Lily, these young people are dancers
from a renowned ballet company; Both are competing for the main role (Swan Queen) in the
ballet “Swan Lake”, the role consists of two characters played by the same dancer, the white
swan and the black swan.

Warning: If you haven't seen the movie, don't continue reading, I don't want to ruin the movie for
you (let it be noted that I warned this).

The double role of the Swan Queen requires an ambivalence of characters and personalities in
the dance, Nina is perfect for the white swan because she is a shy, withdrawn and very
vulnerable young woman, while for the black swan it requires seduction, ease, spontaneity ,
characteristics that stand out in Lily... but only one can be chosen, it is every dancer's dream.

To mention some psychological aspects of Nina's character (protagonist), first of all she is a
young woman overprotected by an authoritarian mother (she still treats her like a child), she is
shy, with poor social interaction (asocial), perfectionist, insecure, therefore The lack of a father
figure seems to feel uncomfortable with men, especially with the director of the play (however,
she seeks his approval at all costs), sexually repressed (egodystonic, having lesbian erotic
hallucinations with Lily), feels a degree of guilt before her own success (at one point it seems
that she could self-sabotage her career), her ballet dancer mother in the past, blames her for not
being able to achieve her goals in the world of ballet for giving birth to her. He also feels guilty
about the expulsion of Beth (Winona Ryder), the principal dancer in the company (his idol), who
previously played the role of the swan queen, but who was publicly expelled due to her
"advanced" age... The director of the play, Thomas (Vincent Cassel) even throws a party to say
goodbye to Beth and welcome back Nina.
As you can imagine, the world of ballet is highly competitive and stressful, seeking perfection in
every movement; The Director is not very sure that Nina has the full capacity to play the main
role, giving her off-color criticism, he clearly tells Nina that she does not play the black swan in
the best way, that she must let go, seduce the prince with her dance. , compares her to Lily who
performs that aspect of the double role very well. In view of so much stress Nina begins to
somatize with a rash that is observed on her back, and to develop a Personality Disorder. From
the beginning of the film, disorders such as bulimia, anorexia, kleptomania, obsessive-
compulsive disorder (cutting nails and scratching one's back repeatedly, significant symptoms of
anxiety and stress, to the point of self-flagella) can be seen. a Delusional Disorder, characterized
by ideas of persecution that occur when he sees women with loose hair with their faces with
seductive or Machiavellian expressions, and when he feels that Lily wants to steal his role;
Somatic delirium is also observed when she sees blood on her fingers, that feathers are coming
out of her back, that her toes are joined together (malformations or abnormalities in the body), as
well as hallucinations when she sees herself transformed into a chimera. between a woman and a
black swan; When a person has so many disorders, low self-esteem is a primary, basic
characteristic.

Nina's cracked face

It is important to mention studies carried out by the Spanish Association of Clinical Psychology
and Psychopathology (2002), which states that personality disorders (PD) in patients with
anorexia and bulimia occur in 72% of the patients studied, (in other cases In other words, 2 out
of 3 people with anorexia/bulimia also suffer from PD); It is also said that delusional disorder
can be associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder, as happens to the protagonist.

Nina, wanting to find “perfection” in her role, seeks at all costs to carry out that metamorphosis
that she needs to personify the black swan, unconsciously living a story analogous to that of
Swan Lake, a situation that inevitably leads her to the same end. tragic.
Monday, January 17, 2011
black swan

I had not had the opportunity to see Black Swan, until yesterday, and I must comment that it is now my
favorite film of 2010, leaving aside Inception.
I fell in love with Inception for being so immersed in Psychoanalytic content, but Black Swan beat it for
being a psychological thriller wrapped in a work of art. Before I start I must tell you, IF YOU HAVE NOT
SEEN BLACK SWAN, it is better that you do not read this post.

Black Swan shows us the story of a young dancer who has a fervent desire to become the Queen Swan,
and who upon achieving this begins to go through a series of events and experiences that lead us to
become involved in this perfect story.

Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) was an innocent young woman, who was not capable of breaking the
rules and who was correct, and pure in everything she did, all until she was forced and forced to act as
the black swan of the story. What's going on? Well, she does it, but it is extremely interesting to analyze
everything she experiences to take the form of a black swan.
 After achieving the role, the pressure imposed by her teacher and director of the play, Thomas Leroy,
causes her to begin a mental battle where Nina feels that there is an "I" of her that is evil. and that me is
about to come out and take over her.

As a result of Thomas's demand, and her knowledge that she cannot correctly interpret the Black Swan,
she triggers hallucinations and delusions.

It was difficult for Nina to embody the black swan because her personality and charisma did not go hand
in hand with the personality and characteristics that required being a black swan. She was pure, and
white like the white swan is, but she didn't have that mischievous and dark side that the black swan
needed. However, she continued with her goal of knowing how to play the role of Queen Swan, a role
that required 2 personalities in herself.

The days go by, and she begins to feel threatened by her classmates and especially by Lily, a new girl,
who proves to have great skills at playing the black swan.

When Nina observes that Lily seems interested in her role, she begins to develop a paranoia that all of
her classmates were a great threat to her role.
Hallucinations increase and Delusions grow, where she begins to observe things where there are none
and where she experiences things that did not really exist.

But the whole story reaches its peak when Nina arrives at the work and her paranoia takes absolute
control of her. She begins to observe events that drive her to perform acts that she would never have
thought of doing, and after interpreting the white swan, with all its purity and splendor; The time has
come to go to the dressing room and stop being the white swan to frame the demanding Black Swan.

But when she got to the dressing room, it turned out that the one in front of the mirror was not Nina,
the pure girl, but rather a Nina who had no control over what she thought, a person with a psychosis so
alive and latent that she impulse to give life to the evil and bearing of the Black Swan within her.
She comes out on stage and it is not Nina who dances, but everyone watches a girl without fear, strong,
determined and perfect, with delicate but fearless movements, movements full of security that was
worthy of the Black Swan.
Everyone is shocked by such a performance, she is still a black swan, everyone applauds and praises her
for such a perfect performance.

What not everyone knew was that Nina was not acting. She was a true black swan, and that swan was
the one who appeared before the public. A black swan that ceased to exist when Nina returned to the
dressing room to be a white swan again.

Nina realizes that she is wrong, and that nothing is as she thought, but it is too late, the Black Swan did
his job, and triumphed.
 Upon leaving the dressing room, devastated by such events, she goes out for her last performance,
where she once again plays that delicate and fragile white swan that says goodbye to the audience and
then leaves.

Black Swan shows us a perfect story, where a young woman begins to develop Schizophrenic Psychosis
after going through so much stress.

Nina meets one of the most important criteria for Diagnosing Schizophrenic Psychosis, which is having
the presence of Hallucinations and Delusions. In addition, it meets the criteria for a Paranoid
Schizophrenic Psychosis, which are Preoccupations with delusional ideas such as "Everyone wants my
role as Queen Swan, everyone would kill for it", "Lily wants my position in the play".

As you will see, it is not a simple film, it is a work of art that shows you how a young girl can develop a
Paranoid Schizophrenic Psychosis in the Active Phase throughout the film.
Darren Aronofsky's apotheotic film, Black Swan, composes the psychological portrait of an
attractive, but shy, ballet dancer, through a series of psychic manifestations inside her psychotic
mind. It is the triumph of affection over action, the latter being merely descriptive, to underline
the transcendence of the emotional behind a series of symbolic or significant elements. The
fragmented psyche of the main character, Nina, generates a rupture of reality, a particular gaze
that constantly dissects reality and recomposes it under its own language; apprehensible External
and internal reality become indistinct, they converge, supplanting reality due to the absence of an
I in the foreign. This is the central topic of the film, fragmented identity. The idealization of a
Self in dance, completely evident, forces us to see all art as an act of vanity. We take on different
faces in the representation and when we take off the mask (in Latin persona means mask) we are
nobody. We need to see the reflection of what we are, or what we are not, and to do so we
dispense with interpretation, the way of impregnating ourselves with what is different from us.
The absent is disguised in the apparent presence of the human that determines the indeterminate,
or rather, gives a way of access to an incomplete reality. This is what throughout the film
produces cathartic moments in Nina's character, a disjunction of the frustrated Self that does not
allow her to distance herself from the object, since she has become an object. The Freudian
castration that would have separated her as a subject never occurs, since she never left the
mother's Oedipal desire and therefore has no identity. In the strict psychoanalytic sense she can
be everyone except herself: her mother, her theater partner Lily, her predecessor Beth and even
her theater teacher, Thomas, played by Vincent Cassel. Her desire has been replaced by that of
others, what others expect of her, until she condenses an alter ego; enemy of itself, as the film
makes explicit in a dialogue by Thomas “the only thing standing in your way is you.” Clearly the
dichotomous relationship that Darren Aronfsky took from works such as The Double by Fyodor
Dostoevsky, adding schizotypal overtones of Repulsion by Roman Polanski. This dissociative
identity disorder is, in many aspects, what happens in the cinematographic apparatus. It is a
prosthesis, a substitute that rearranges external or sensitive information, generating a new
meaning or possibility of the world. In other words, it is a reflection that shows us split or
disjointed; breaks down our daily vision. The film camera does not see this separation from the
real, the human eye seeks to articulate an order by making an implicit intervention in the world it
observes. The act of seeing always implies a displacement of signifiers. Therefore, the gaze is an
eternal return, the echo of the subconscious signals the change in us, reality remains.
Imagination, the creation of a symbolic space, represents the exile of the immobile through the
movement of consciousness, the inner cinematograph. These considerations make Black Swan a
completely filmic story that is incomprehensible outside of this narrative medium. Cinema is the
correct vehicle of expression when it seeks to reproduce this expulsion of the real and the advent
of the dreamlike: a purgatorial act commonly called psychosis but absolutely necessary in a
healthy psyche.
Joy and perfection
By Alfredo González Reynoso

Black Swan, and part of Aronofsky's cinema, represents the passage from conflict to
symbiosis of mutually contradictory subjectivities, or at least this can be concluded from
this psychoanalytic reading of the film.

In a film without subjects there is no plot. Cinema makes subjects emerge in order to launch its
narrative fabric. Therefore, faced with a film like Black Swan, by Darren Aronofsky, whose
protagonist is so fundamental, almost omnipresent, one must ask: what type of subjectivity is this
that sustains the narrative plot? But the protagonist in Black Swan does not represent only one
subjectivity, and the ones he shows are incompatible. Let's go in parts.

Nina (Natalie Portman) is a disciplined ballet dancer. Her mother, obsessively controlling, was
also, but her career was cut short after her pregnancy. Thus, ballet, so physically demanding, is
for Nina an unconscious way of sacrificing her enjoyment and completing her mother: she wants
to be the perfect dancer that her mother wanted to be, like the retired dancer Beth, the “Ego
ideal” that bases his obsessive neurosis.

Thomas (Vincent Cassel), renowned ballet director, has chosen her to star in his version of Swan
Lake . He knows that Nina can impeccably represent the pure and innocent white swan, but he
doubts that she can embody the sensual black swan. Thomas needs Nina to abandon her almost
childish modesty and be as carefree and voluptuous as Lily (Mila Kunis), the new dancer, so he
gives her a task: “Go home and touch yourself.”

From here Nina fights between two subjectivities: neurotic obsession (perfection) and the
perverse imperative (enjoy!). It seeks to obey the imperative to achieve perfection, but both
subjectivities are irreconcilable. This internal division is externalized in the figure of Lilly, his
doppelgänger (“double”), who, according to Freud, symbolizes the threatening return of the
repressed. Lily, then, embodies in Nina the joy that her mother confined her.

The conflictive maternal relationship makes Nina explore her enjoyment with bitterness, marked
by the dispute for control over her body: just as Nina scratches her back to defy her mother's
prohibition, enjoyment also emerges as an attack on maternal authority ( for example, after
arguing with her, he fantasizes about having sex with Lily in her bedroom).

For his part, film critic AO Scott rightly observes in Nina two other subjective dualities: the
Nietzschean dialectic between Apollonian (rational) and Dionysian (passionate) art, as well as a
“flirtation” with the misogynistic virgin/prostitute division (symbolized in the swans).

From here Nina fights between two subjectivities: neurotic obsession (perfection) and the perverse
imperative (enjoy!). It seeks to obey the imperative to achieve perfection, but both subjectivities are
irreconcilable.

Black Swan is how those incompatible dualities (purity/lust, Apollo/Dionysus,

neurosis/perversion) go from conflict to symbiosis . Its dizzying crescendo montage prepares us
to access this ecstatic paradox. Already in the brilliant Pi and the pretentious The Fountain
Aronofsky did this with scientific subjectivity and mysticism. Now in Black Swan he achieves
this by accessing a psychotic plane where reality and fantasy merge.

So, in the end ( spoiler warning), in the midst of an outbreak of schizophrenia, Nina destroys her
“ego ideal” by killing Beth and symbolically eliminates Lily in another hallucination, a
projection of her repressed enjoyment, without realizing that she is actually has stabbed herself.

Freed from neurotic obsession (Beth) and perverse imperative (Lily), Nina enters the scene,
transforms (literally) into the sensual black swan and gives the best performance of her life.
Then, amidst applause from the audience, lying down, dying, she says: “I felt perfection.” Nina
has finally managed to reconcile the paradox: completing her mother and, at the same time,
accessing her enjoyment.