Shutter Island: a brief psychological view of the movie
The island called Shutter Island, located near Boston , houses the hospital psychiatric hospital of Ashecliffe for demented people.
The island is used to lock up and treat, mainly, people with severe mental disorders who have committed some type of crime. The agent Edward Daniels and his partner Chuck Aule are sent to this place to investigate the disappearance of an internal patient, Rachel Solano, who entered the institution after drowning their three children. Both investigators will try to solve the case, but throughout his investigation Daniels will see a series of strange elements that the case hides much more than he expected.
This brief paragraph introduces us to the argument of Shutter Island, a film directed by Martin Scorsese and released in our country in 2010. Based on the novel of the same name written in 2003 by Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island is a film in the form of a psychological thriller set in the fifties, a turbulent time for psychiatry and psychology in what refers to the treatment of individuals with psychic disorders. That is why analyzing and sketching a brief psychological vision of the film can be really interesting both to deepen the meaning of the argument and the history of psychiatry.
It is advised in advance that this article contains SPOILERS Regarding the film, with which its reading is recommended only to those who have already seen it, do not want to see it or do not mind that the development and conclusion of the film is gutted.
- Related article: "15 films on Psychology and mental disorders"
Entering the sinister island: reviewing your argument
The story begins with agents Daniels and Aule arriving on the island, to which they have been sent in order to investigate a disappearance. Upon arrival in Ashecliffe, the psychiatric hospital on the island, and after being briefed on the security measures by the staff, the agents meet with the director of the center, Dr. Cawley. This indicates that the missing person is Rachel Solano, a patient who entered the center after drowning her children murdered her children and has disappeared surprisingly, leaving no trace.
Inspector Daniels proceeds to ask him to let them see the records of the professionals who treated the patient , to which the director refuses even though it allows them to interrogate the staff. The exception would be the psychiatrist who took the patient, who is on vacation at that time.
Both agents proceed to investigate the case by inspecting the island and the hospital, interrogating psychiatrists and other patients. However, throughout the process the agents see different strange and disturbing details, such as the fact that they are not allowed to visit the island's lighthouse or the attitude of the psychiatrists and even that at a specific moment another of the residents It tells the protagonist to flee from the place they make believe that there is something strange in the situation.
In addition, Edward Daniels presents throughout the investigation a series of visions along with flashbacks of his participation in the war. During a dream his wife appears to him, who died along with her children in a fire caused by a certain Andrew Laeddis who coincidentally was also admitted to the sanatorium in which they find themselves and then disappear. In her dream, she tells him that her murderer and Rachel are still inside the island.
The mysterious note
In the cell where Rachel was imprisoned, the missing inmate . Edward finds a note with which it is written "The law of four: Who is 67? ", Which causes him to decide to investigate the patient with that number, being convinced that it is the person who caused the fire that killed his family.
The clues and the interrogation of one of the patients seem to indicate that lobotomies are practiced in the lighthouse and that unethical experiments are carried out with the internal patients. Due to these facts, the obstacles with which it is to investigate and the comments of the residents make the agent think that a conspiracy is being forged against him so that he can not expose the actions carried out in the sanatorium.
With time Rachel Solano is found and presented to the researchers by the doctors , but Agent Daniels still sees something suspicious in the case and the place. After discovering a way to enter the lighthouse, both agents decide to risk investigating inside to collect evidence and then flee the island and expose to the psychiatric hospital, after which Chuck Aule disappears. Shortly after agent Daniels discovers in a cave the real Rachel Solano, which indicates that she was a psychiatrist from the center who was hospitalized for trying to denounce the practices and experiments carried out in the center.The next day the people in charge of the center affirm that the agent Daniels arrived alone at the island, with what this one thinks that his companion has been kidnapped to realize experiments. For all this, finally decides to break into the lighthouse, where he meets his partner and Dr. Cawley.
The identity of Andrew Laeddis
At this point the argument makes an unexpected script twist: the doctor and Chuck explain to Daniels that in reality he is Andrew Laeddis, a war veteran and dangerous patient of the center admitted to him after murdering his wife Dolores Chanal.
The whole situation and the research that he was carrying out have been a theater organized by the heads of the center as the last opportunity to make him come back to reality as an alternative to lobotomy, since Laeddis suffers from a psychotic disorder which prevents him from coping to the events and given his military training is one of the most dangerous residents of the center. In fact, the patient I was investigating, Rachel Solano, does not exist (the woman the doctors present to her as such was an employee faking her role) but her name was built from his wife's, which it was said of Rachel drowned her children while suffering from a depressive episode.
In the closing stages of the film it seems that Andrew has finally accessed the memories of his family's death, remembering who he is and what led him to that place. Thus, the doctor's plan would have succeeded in returning him to reality, and he could advance in the treatment of the problem. But shortly after the protagonist speaks with the one who previously believed his partner Chuck, actually a psychiatrist from the center, indicating that they should escape from that place. This leads to finally being considered as having made a regression and due to the dangerousness of the case they decide to lobotomize the patient.
While there is a possibility that he has actually relapsed, the last sentence he utters before they take him to the lighthouse ("This place makes me wonder what would be worse, living like a monster or dying like a good man") that his supposed regression is not such, but a performance. In this way the end of the film would suggest that Andrew Laeddis, despite recovering the sense of reality, he decides that it is preferable to be lobotomized and to free himself from the burden of knowing what he has done than to be treated differently and accept and assume that he has killed his wife and lost his children.
Psychology and psychiatry reflected in the film
Shutter Island is a film that due to its theme and the plot twists that it has, may or may not like those who see it . But regardless of this throughout the film we can see different psychological or psychiatric elements that have been working throughout the film and even that are the basis of his argument.
Some of these elements are the following.
History of psychiatry: from the asylum to deinstitutionalization
It has been mentioned at the beginning of this article that the film is set in the fifties, being a turbulent time for psychiatry. This is because it was throughout this decade and the next in which the so-called psychiatric revolution originated, after an arduous "war" (mentioned directly in the film) in which two opposing currents confronted each other.
Up to this point people with severe mental disorders were locked up and isolated in psychiatric institutions, also known as madhouses, in which they were treated as prisoners and isolated from the world and from a normal life. In them patients were treated by controversial procedures such as insulin coma, electroconvulsions or ablation of parts of the brain as in the case of lobotomy.
As a reaction to this type of treatment and to the social exclusion and annulment of patients, antipsychiatry would be born, which would advocate for greater use of psychotherapy and the abolition of practices such as those cited.
The prolonged confrontation between both positions would end with the confluence of both in a new psychiatry , more focused on the search for the normalization of the patient's life. The consequence was the closure of most psychiatric institutions (a process known as deinstitutionalization) and the search for another type of approach to the treatment of disorders, such as pharmacological treatments, stopping the application of most of the controversial medical therapies of the era and restricting them to cases of great gravity that could not be solved in any other way.
Peering into the mind of Andrew Laeddis: his disorders
As we have seen, throughout history is reflected as the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio has some kind of mental disorder.
It is important to keep in mind that we only know a part of the disorder that torments the protagonist, as well as that mental disorders generally do not occur in a pure state but contain characteristics of other disorders.It would be necessary a correct exploration of the patient to be able to determine more accurately the disorder that suffers, although it is possible through the symptoms shown to get an idea of the problems in question.
PTSD
Due to the symptoms that are reflected throughout history it is possible to suspect the presence of a post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. The fact of having been exposed to traumatic events that have caused a deep emotional affectation, the reexperimentation in the form of flashbacks and dreams, the dissociation of his personality and the difficulties of sleep and concentration that are seen throughout the film correspond to this type of disorder. Also, the fact that the mental disorder is linked to a specific event seems to indicate PTSD as one of the most likely diagnoses.
Psychotic-type disorders
However, since it is not possible to diagnose this disorder if another explains the symptoms better and given that the patient presents a way of acting characterized by the presence of hallucinations and delusions (a large part of the film being their representation). ), is much more compatible with the case that Andrew Laeddis has a psychotic disorder.
The delusions and hallucinations would have in this case a persecutory character (since he feels persecuted) and self-referential (the character sees himself as a researcher who seeks to help), and would be used by the protagonist as an unconscious mechanism to escape from the reality. Within the psychoses, the set of symptoms would suggest a paranoid schizophrenia, although the high systematization of delusions could also indicate the option of suffering a delusional disorder.
Visible treatments during the film
Throughout the film you can see how different types of psychiatric and psychological treatments were applied at this time, some of which have been refined over time.
The bulk of the film can be explained as an attempt on the part of the doctors to force the return to the patient's reality through the representation of the patient's fantasies. This technique has some resemblance to psychodrama, a technique in which it is intended to represent the psychic conflicts of patients in order to help them cope with them and internalize them. However, applying this technique in psychotic patients is complex and can be counterproductive, since can reinforce their delusions and make the situation worse .
The pharmacological treatment of psychotic problems is also visualized in Andrew Laeddis himself. The character in question was treated with chlorpromazine, an antipsychotic that kept hallucinations and flashbacks at bay. In fact, as explained in the film, the tremors and headaches that the character suffers throughout the film are produced in part by the withdrawal syndrome to this drug. When he stops taking the medication, flashbacks of his past and several hallucinations reappear with force, as when he talks with the one who considers the real Rachel Solano.
The last treatment that is applied to the protagonist is the prefrontal lobotomy, a technique through which the connections of part of the frontal lobe are removed or cut. Since the frontal lobe governs the executive functions, its ablation produces a state of continuous sedation and severe limitation of mental functions. It was used as a last option in the most serious and dangerous cases. Over time it would be replaced by the use of other psychotropic drugs.
