Freud's introduction to the concept of psychoanalysis provided an explanation and potential solution to a problem that would otherwise go untreated: hysteria. Although Freud's theory was met with strong skepticism, it is a theory that has had enough merit to still be used in the psychological field today. Freud recognized the incompleteness of his theory but stated that it was better than the alternative, since if anyone had provided a complete and exhaustive theory, it would have been the product of pure speculation (Freud 5). What makes Freud's theory of psychoanalysis so valuable is its effectiveness. Not just as a treatment, but as an explanatory text regarding trauma and hysteria. A great example of Freud's concepts of psychoanalysis and hysteria can be found in the novel Shutter Island. Edward “Teddy” Daniels, the protagonist of Shutter Island, suffers from symptoms of repression and trauma, and his repressed object is attempting to emerge from his unconscious through the trials Daniels is subjected to throughout the novel. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay As already mentioned, Freud's theory of psychoanalysis was largely incomplete and was therefore met with objections. His test subjects were very similar in upbringing and nature, and it was also an embarrassingly small test group compared to the work of his colleagues. Not only that, part of his treatment of hysteria and trauma involved the use of a kind of hypnosis, a practice difficult to understand even by today's psychologists. Freud recognized this; and while it wasn't an in-depth theory, it still revealed a lot about trauma and hysteria that most knew little about. Freud writes about doctors: “He cannot understand hysteria. Faced with it, he finds himself in the same position as the layman." (2). And there's more: Freud's methods, even in an infantile phase, often worked. Indeed, the fundamental idea of ​​his theory is practiced by contemporaries today. At the very least, the theory provided a step towards treatment, as "Hysterics, consequently, tend to lose [doctors'] sympathy..." (Freud 2) and are often left untreated. Psychoanalysis operates on the idea that the symptoms of hysteria are the product of a process known as repression. John Wilson writes: “According to Freudian thought the ego is highly selective in what it considers legitimate parts of itself and censors anything it doesn't like due to shame, guilt or morality. These dissociated parts of ourselves will be removed and kept in the id.” This is the fundamental idea of ​​repression: memories, thoughts, or experiences that do not agree with our self-image are sent into the unconscious (also known as the id). Freud says, however, that the repressed object always tries to resurface from the unconscious; writes: "If a stream flows in two channels, one will overflow as soon as the current in the other encounters an obstacle." (5). This "overflow" is the point at which one may begin to see hysterical symptoms as a result of repression. Although several case studies exist, Freud goes deeper in his lectures regarding a particular case involving devastating symptoms. It describes a woman with “…severe paralysis…eye movement disorders and severe vision problems; difficulty maintaining the position of the head, intense nausea when attempting to feed himself, and once for several weeks, loss of the ability to drink, despite a tormenting thirst. Even her ability to speak was diminished... she could neither speak nor understand her mother tongue... she was subject to states of 'absence', confusion, delirium, alteration of allhis personality. (1). It is important to note that until Freud and his collaborators, these severe symptoms of hysteria often went untreated, because it was a misunderstood and mysterious hysteria.disorder. Although Freud's theory was deficient in many respects, he was able to at least provide treatment for several patients suffering from these severe symptoms, as well as providing some significant information on what would otherwise have been an essentially untouched subject. She continues to write: “The doctor... put her into a sort of hypnosis and repeated them to her over and over again [the removed objects], to bring out any associations... The patient gave in to his suggestion and reproduced those creations for him psychic... They were fantasies... daydreams... which commonly took as their starting point the situation of a girl beside her father's sick bed. Each time she recounted a series of such fantasies, she was, so to speak, liberated and returned to her normal mental life. (2). Furthermore, "After about six weeks [of not drinking], one day she was talking in hypnosis about her English housekeeper, whom she did not like, and finally told, with every sign of disgust, how she had entered the housekeeper's room, and how that lady's dog, which she detested, had drunk from a glass... after she had energetically expressed her pent-up anger, he asked for a drink, drank a large quantity of water without difficulty...The symptom then it vanished definitively." (3). This was the origin of the so-called “talking cure”. The “talk cure” is essentially the extraction of the repressed object which would in turn lead to resolution of the patient's symptoms. The “talking cure” based its methods on the fact that “the nature of the symptoms became clear through their relation to the scene that had provoked them”. (Freud 3) and that “…hysterical patients suffer from reminiscences.” (Freud 4). This is crucial when psychoanalyzing Shutter Island's Edward “Teddy” Daniels, as the novel in its entirety is a product of Daniels' suffering from repression. Edward Daniels is subject to a tremendous amount of trauma. He was a veteran of World War II and was exposed to the most gruesome aspects of the already horrific war. An example of his war trauma is the following: "Cawley... put a record on the gramophone and the scratch of the needle was followed by stray pops and hisses... reminding him... of a collection of records he had seen" in a subcommander's office in Dachau, the man who was listening to him when he shot himself in the mouth. He was still alive when Teddy... entered the room. Gurgling. (Lehane 76). Daniels, although a character with little sympathy for injustice, still can't help but feel troubled by such a gruesome event. While this was not his primary trauma, it only added to the unfathomable amount of psychological distress Daniels was burdened with. Teddy also recounts a more serious trauma, saying the following: “They looked at us and wanted us to do what we did. And we definitely wanted to do that. So we executed every one of those fucking Krauts. We disarmed them, we backed them against walls, we executed them... By the end of that day, we had removed five hundred souls from the face of the Earth. I killed them all. No self-defense, no war had anything to do with it. It was murder... they deserved much worse... but how do you live with something like that? How do you tell your wife, parents and children that you did this thing? Have you executed unarmed people? Did you kill kids?...what you did was wrong too. And you'll never wash it off." (Lehane 144-145). This memory is unparalleled in its traumatic scope. Teddy, already dealing with the psychological distress that comes with war, found himself faced witha remarkably difficult ethical situation. His wishes, along with other public pressure, encouraged the execution of Nazi soldiers; however, the mass murder of five hundred people was something that conflicted with his self-image, despite who these people were, and therefore added even more immense psychological stress. To fully understand how powerful the trauma was that actually inspired Teddy's delusion, it is necessary to understand that the aforementioned traumas were not repressed but simply added stress. What was repressed was something probably much darker than even mass murder. The following is the crime description of a woman named Rachel Solando; this name, however, is a pseudonym with which Teddy was assigned to take the place of his wife, Dolores Chanal. Rachel Solando is a completely fictional character where the blame for the following crime was placed as a product of Teddy's delusion and inability to mentally handle the fact that Dolores Chanel, his wife, was actually the one who committed the crime: "Rachel Solando...drowned her three children in the lake behind her house. I took them out there one by one and held their heads under until they died. Then she brought them back into the house and placed them around the kitchen table and there he ate…” (Lehane 41). After discovering this, Teddy (who even he himself should note is a product of an illusion; Edward “Teddy” Daniels is, in fact, Andrew Laeddis)[1] kills his wife. This is the trauma that has completely divided Teddy's consciousness. Wilson writes: “If someone doesn't like an idea or impression, we simply shut it out and refuse to believe it exists one encourages one's preferred belief system and amplifies its existence through repetition and the momentum of acquired duration.”. This is exactly what Teddy (or rather Andrew) suffers from. To fully understand what impact the above event had on Teddy, one must realize that even in his complex delusion that Shutter Island finds himself in, he still remembers the subcommander and the mass murder. This is stated as fact, as Shutter Island's psychiatrists verify that Teddy was a U.S. Marshal and war veteran. Referring to Freud's case studies, we see that a woman was left unable to consume water because she saw a dog she despised drinking from a glass. Compare that to Teddy's traumas, and it's clear that he has incredible psychological will. The fact that he completely buried the trauma involving Rachel Solando/Dolores Chanal and framed a web of delusions that somehow excluded the situation indicates what a profound psychological impact the event had on Teddy. And this delirium in which he was the product of such a traumatic event is what frames the plot of Lehane's Shutter Island: Teddy, a U.S. Marshal searching for escaped assassin Rachel Solando. Teddy obviously has no memory of his true identity or that he killed his wife and is also unaware that Rachel Solando, who drowned his three children, is actually some sort of proxy for his wife, Dolores Chanal. although remarkably intricate, it is nevertheless not without slight flaws. Teddy, after meeting his randomly assigned partner (who is actually his psychiatrist) observes his partner, "...olive skin and thin, delicate hands that seemed incongruous with the rest of him, as if she had taken them on loan until his true ones returned from the shop. (Lehane 14). His partner's clumsy hands were a discrepancy between what his delirium proposed and reality was actually a nurse at the institute) and reflects on how,“There was something uncomfortably familiar about her…” (Lehane 43-44). Along with this, there is yet another conflict seen when Teddy is attempting to solve a code (in which he unknowingly created): "Teddy thought it was talking to him, becoming clearer... he could feel something in them scratching at him the brain...It was right in front of him....And then every possible logical bridge collapsed, and Teddy felt his mind go pale...” (Lehane 52). due to the fact that he could not consciously resolve what his mind unconscious had created without ruining his illusion. His mind responds by essentially shutting down to protect his created reality. Along with the above, there is another conflict that can be found that takes shape in a dream of Teddy's. "...He's here." "Who?" "Laeddis." The name crawls into his flesh. "No." "Yes." look. "You knew." "I didn't know." “Yes, you know.” (Lehane 89). All of these cases are examples of repressed thought trying to re-emerge into consciousness. However, Freud observed that if the repressed object is sufficiently contradictory to a person's morals and ethics, it will continue to remain buried in the unconscious for an incalculable period of time. This is the case in all cases mentioned above. Dreams play a significant role in Teddy's psychoanalysis, as "The interpretation of dreams is in fact...the interpretation of the unconscious..." (Freud 11). Teddy's dreams may corroborate Freud's statement, as they usually provide some sort of relation to Teddy's trauma with his wife. In a dream, he sees his wife and "...her back is charred, she smokes a little...and little ribbons of smoke curl from her hair." (Lehane 87). Then: "...she's no longer burned, she's soaking wet." (Lehane 87). The reason he sees his wife charred and burned is because she had burned down their old apartment. Teddy also repressed that event, because it was psychologically too difficult for him to process, and after the fire in their apartment, he decided that it would be better for the family to move to a cabin, which is presented in the next segment of his dream: “ ...a view of another place they once stayed, a cabin. There's a little pond out there with little logs floating in it…” (Lehane 88). Then, “His belly leaks and the liquid flows through his hands,” (Lehane 88) and, “His tears flow down his body and mingle with his dripping belly.” (Lehane 89). The recurring and constant theme of water is perhaps the most useful in relation to his past trauma; recognizing the symbolism in the water is crucial because it represents the drowning of his children. To further confirm this, his children are what he calls the “little logs” floating in the water. The meaning attributed to water goes beyond simple dreams; Teddy also suffers from severe seasickness throughout the novel. On top of that, Teddy was constantly reminded of his dead wife by seemingly random things, and one of the triggers with the most significant effect in this was water: when he referred to things that reminded him of his wife, Teddy notes." .. nothing was less logical in terms of connective tissue, or more pungent in terms of effect, than water…” (Lehane 20). This, of course, was not coincidental but was instead directly related to Teddy's past trauma in which i his children were drowned by his wife, which is why the water had such a devastating effect on him. Another example of a dream that allows the reader to peek into Teddy's unconscious is one in which Teddy and Andrew Laeddis both switch roles by having sex with Rachel. Solando and Dolores Chanal withapparent randomness. This ease of interchangeability is due to the fact that Teddy and Andrew are the same, as are Rachel and Dolores; the way they are separated is thanks to Teddy's illusion. Sleep is a time without consciousness, so there is less resistance against the repressed object emerging to the surface. Teddy, already under extreme psychological stress, also suffers from physiological symptoms. Referring to war veterans, Jeneen Interlandi writes: "In addition to nightmares and hallucinations, many of them had a variety of physical ailments including headaches, fatigue, digestive problems, and feelings of inactivity." In his article “How do you heal a traumatized mind?”, Interlandi recounts his experience with the psychologist Bessel van der Kolk. One of these experiences was a role-playing game similar to the one Teddy participated in. The subject of the role-play was a man named Eugene; “...his job consisted of disposing of exploded bombs. It's been a year of dead bodies, he said. He saw, touched, smelled and stepped on more bodies than he could possibly count. Some of them were children." (Interlandi). This isn't entirely unlike some of Teddy's war traumas. Furthermore, "Eugene killed an innocent man and then watched as the man's mother discovered the body shortly thereafter." (Interlandi). Although Eugene and Teddy experience separate traumas, both are war-related and both have produced physiological problems. These problems arose due to the fact that “…repressed memories were a common feature of traumatic stress. The traumatic experiences were not transformed into memories... but somehow remained "stuck in the machine" and then expressed through the body." (Interlandi). Perhaps Teddy's most widespread physiological symptom is headaches. These headaches head often materialize when Teddy faces a potential conflict between his illusion and reality. Some examples of the pain he suffers from headaches are: "A dull pain has spread to the left side of his head, just behind his eye, as if the flat side of an old spoon was pressed there." (Lehane 21), "At that point Teddy felt the place in the back of his skull." (Lehane 113), "...a canyon full of lava cut through the skull just below the part of his hair... the pain exploded like a dozen dagger points slowly pushed into his skull..." (Lehane 175), etc. It may be noted that the latter of all these, which is perhaps one of the most intense physiological pains he endures was after facing Rachel Solando. Freud also spoke of psychological disorders that lead to physiological symptoms: “...they undergo a change in unusual bodily innervations and inhibitions, which present themselves as appropriate physical symptoms. (5). Kamuf writes of another symptom: “…a foreign body is always a symptom, it always creates a symptom [faitsymme] on the body of the Ego, it is a body foreign to the body of the Ego”. Teddy, at various moments in the novel, expresses the discomfort he feels in his own body. Interlandi also confirms this symptom by saying: “Victims of trauma… are alienated from their bodies by a cascade of events that begins deep in the brain.” These physiological events only add to Teddy's incomprehensible amount of stress. Sabouri and Sadeghzadegan write: "...what actually gives rise to Andrew's psychotic state is the excessive repetition and recurrence of his delusions, hallucinations and dreams whose only message is the reminiscence of...past traumas that he finds unable to remember.” Teddy (actually Andrew Laeddis) is a victim of repression; his wife drowns their three children and he in turn kills her. It is a deeply dark event, and Teddy responds by completely excluding it from his consciousness and then formulating an intricate and detailed web of delusions that allow him to,”.