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Analyzing black swan movie
Black swan movie analysis
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Movie: Black Swan (2010)
Disorder: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Black swan is a movie directed by Darren Afonsky, starring Nina, a ballerina at a New York City dance company, where she is given the highly competitive role of Swan Queen by Thomas. The role of swan queen requires to represent both the white and black swan. Nina is a perfect representation of the white swan: frigid and innocent. Whereas her friend Lily represents the black swan; sensual and seductive. Throughout their friendship, Nina tries to find the darker and sensual side of her to fit the role of black swan. Meanwhile, other sides of her emerges as well as their friendships progress. According to the DSM V criteria, Nina has the condition of Obsessive Compulsive disorder, under the category of anxiety disorders. People with OCD has a daily struggle with intrusive thoughts and behaviors that increases their anxiety. They try control their anxiety with compulsive behaviors, but over time the behaviors become less and less helpful. Starting from the beginning of the movie, Nina was very unstable as her whole life is revolved around dancing. Nina has OCD and there are many other disorders that contributes to it throughout the movie. The other disorders and factors that contributes to her OCD is her family
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Nina monitors her diet carefully without any trouble but a few times throughout the movie she is seen purging. After the audition, where Nina fails to finish the black swan routine, Nina is seen in the bathroom stall purging. Afterward there seems to be a sign of relief and comfort; this shows that after stressful situations and she has a lot anxiety built up, purging would temporarily reduce her anxiety. This is a form of a compulsive ritual Nina use to to reduce her anxiety from the pressure the role of swan queen has on
Regina is a 20 year-old single female who is struggling to obtain her business degree at a mid-sized university. In the last two and a half years she has only received 26 credit hours. Seeing that she is having problems, her adviser along with her parents, suggested that she attend therapy. Regina is frequently having anxiety about germs and performing certain rituals in order to lessen her anxiety. In order to be comfortable in her classes, she feels she must arrive early, find a specific desk on a certain row, and thoroughly clean the desk and seat before she can be seated. Also, before she can leave her off-campus apartment in the morning, she is finding herself spending more and more time cleaning her apartment, then showering and getting dressed, and then cleaning the bathroom thoroughly. Regina also has found herself fearful of eating in restaurants and going to eat at family and friends homes. Her fear of germs is intensifying and prohibiting her from having adequate relationships. This is leaving her to feel quite isolated and lonely.
OCD is broken down into two components the obsession and the compulsion. The first component; obsession is when an individual is consistently having these reoccurring thoughts or images about a certain problem or issue in their life. For example; an individual that has OCD can have a constant thought or image about getting sick or dying from the various germs or diseases that people contract every day. So this individual goes to the extreme to make sure that they do not contract any of these germs or diseases. That is when the compulsive component begins. This is when the individual takes these extreme actions to protect themselves from whatever they have these high anxiety feelings about. So continuing using the same example; this individual will consistently clean their homes every day for several hours at a time. They tend to clean their hands several times when out in public and are very tedious about where they go and what they touch while in public. They are also very caution about how they interact with other people. They just take extra steps to protect themsel...
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-I) was published in 1952 by the American Psychiatric Association to define and classify mental disorders. It did not have much influence in classifying mental disorders during that time. Up until the late 1960s, when the system of nosology starts to have some real influence on mental health professionals, the American Psychiatric Association published DSM-II in 1968. DSM-I and DSM-II system lacked precise descriptions of the disorders and relied heavily on unproven and unpopular theories. Therefore, the third edition of the DSM was published in 1980 to make new reforms to its predecessors. One of the changes was more specific classification of the disorders and being more precise. For example, phobia
OCD has symptoms such as compulsive hoarding, extreme anxiety, depression, and food aversions. It currently has no sure cause but it has said to be a product of genetics or abnormalities in the brain and serotonin levels as controlling serotonin tends to help in treatment of OCD. Obsessive Compulsive disorder is seen in 2.3% of Americans. It’s more prominent in adults than in children.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is a disease that afflicts up to six million Americans, however all its characteristics are yet to be fully understood. Its causes, triggers, attributes, and variations are still unknown although effective medicines exist to treat the symptoms. OCD is a very peculiar disease as Rapoport discusses it comes in many different forms and have different symptoms yet have many similarities. One sure aspect is that it appears, or at least its symptoms do, out of the blue and is triggered either by stressful experiences or, most of the time, just appears out of nowhere. One example is a boy who's father was hard on him for being affected by the worlds "modern ways", the boy at a high school party tries LSD ( a hallucinatory drug), after that thoughts of whether his mind was dangerously affected by the drug. What seemed like completely appropriate worrying and anxiety turned into attacks of anxiety, he couldn't shake the thoughts that something was wrong with his mind. Essentially he had "his mind on his mind" constantly and that haunted his days his thought were as follows: " did the lsd do anything to my mind? The thought never went away ; instead it got more and more complicated. There must be something wrong with my mind if i am spending so much time worrying about it. Is there something wrong with my mind? Was this from the lsd? Will it ever get better?" (The boy who, J. L. Rapoport 125,126) Dr. Rapoport promptly put him on Anafranil (an anti-depressant, used for OCD, not marketed in the U.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a disorder which causes people to develop an anxiety when certain obsessions or compulsions are not fulfilled. OCD can affect both children and adults with more than half of all adults with OCD stating that they experienced signs as a child. People living with OCD display many obvious signs such as opening and closing a door fifty times because they have to do it “just right”. Others exhibit extreme cleanliness and will wash their hands or take showers as often as they can because they constantly feel dirty. OCD devastates people’s social lives as they are fixated and obsessed with perfection that can take forever to achieve. However people living with OCD are often found to have an above average intelligence and typically excel at school due to their detail oriented mindset, cautious planning and patience. OCD can be caused by many different factors such as genetics or the ever changing world a...
Some symptoms of Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) are fear of germs, perfectionism, and rituals. When someone has OCD they are afraid of germs and might constantly be washing their hands or cleaning their room. Someone who suffers from OCD needs everything to be perfect and they might organize their closet by color size. Their rituals calm their anxiety. Certain rituals are things such as checking the stove a certain number of times to make sure it is off or tap their finger a number of times just because it makes them feel better. Obsessive compulsive disorder can be associated with other mental disorders that cause stress and anxiety, but it can be treated with cognitive behavioral therapy and medication.
The cause of OCD is still unknown. But some researchers believe that it runs in the family but do not know if any environmental or stress factors affect the risk of getting OCD. Some believe some environmental factors like stress, abuse, illness or death of a loved one can start the possible effects of OCD. Others believe low levels of a neurotransmitter called serotonin is the cause of OCD, and that it can be passed from parent to offspring. Researchers are studying the fear and anxiety levels in the brain to create a better treatment for the symptoms of OCD.
Nina fits the mold of many different mental disorders. I, however, personally think that Nina portrays the symptoms of a person with schizophrenia. In the DSM-5, it states that schizophrenia is characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior, and other symptoms that cause social or occupational dysfunction. It is required that a person have at least two of these symptoms. It is clear throughout the movie that Nina has hallucinations that ...
Self-destructive behaviors are also very common in individuals with Borderline personality disorder. Susanna validates this trait by her lack of motivation, conversations about suicide, and her suicide For example; Lisa, the diagnosed sociopath, displays very little empathy for those around her. This is made clear when she sees Daisy’s post suicide body and is not saddened whatsoever. Another accurate portrayal is the patient with anorexia nervosa Janet. Janet refuses to eat, is in denial about her condition, is emotionally labile, and is always exercising.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a type of anxiety disorder that can be best characterized by the recurrent or disturbing thoughts that are labeled as obsessions. Sometime these obsessions can take on the form of intrusive images or the unwanted impulses. The compulsions can come from the repetitive or ritualized behaviors that a person feels driven to perform on a daily basis. The majority of people with the diagnosis of OCD can have both obsessions and compulsions, but most of the times about 20% have obsessions alone while 10% may have the compulsions alone (Goodman M.D., 2013) . Common types that have been illustrated in individual’s diagnoses with OCD can be characterized with concerns of contamination, safety or harm to themselves, unwanted acts of aggression, the unacceptable sexual or religious thoughts, and the need for symmetry or exactness. While some of the most common compulsion can be characterized as excessive cleaning, checking, ordering, and arranging rituals or the counting and repeating routines activities that are done sometimes on a daily basis multiple times in a day.
Schizophrenia is a psychologic disorder with symptoms of different mixtures of delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking and markedly disorganized or catatonic behavior (Bergsholm, 2016). The main theme in the movie “Black Swan” is to show the process of a normal person to become a schizophrenia patient. The main character, Nina, is a ballet dancer and she is in a very competitive ballet company. As the movie goes on, she gradually appears the symptoms of hallucination, paranoid delusion, self-mutilation, aggressive behavior, hostility and suicide attempt (Velligan, Alphs, 2008). The actions of Nina has clearly shown that Nina is experiencing schizophrenia. Therefore, the movie “Black Swan” is accurately representing schizophrenia with concrete details and images.
Nina has also blacked out on several occasions and shows signs of mutilation to her body without her knowledge: bruises, cuts, and scratches. According to her mother, Nina used to self-mutilate when she was a child, but it has recently started happening again. Nina sees images of herself, but a different and “evil” version of herself. This could be the awakening of an alter personality or sub-personality. Nina’s stress level with the new performance in her ballet company may have played a part in this change.
When Nina cheat on husband and notice that she loves Ned, she says “I’ve loved him ever since that first afternoon…then love came to me…in his arms…happiness!” From this description, it is clear that she realize love after having done sexual activity. Her figure here completely matches with Abbie who seduced Eben to gain sperm and result in loving him. Also, there is a strange match in terms of killing their own children. Looking more closely to the similarity with other heroines in other works, we can see similarity with Ella of All God’s children Got Wings in terms of suffering in marriage with unwanted husbands. Besides that, in terms of intense maternity, it can be pointed out that it is similar to Cibel in The Great God Brown, also it can be said that Nina is similar to Christine in Mourning Becomes Elektra in terms of murderous intent to her husband. In this way, Nina has a lot of features of the heroines of plays O'Neill. From this, we can consider Nina as a memorable female character that represent all heroines in O'Neill’s
There are many symptoms that lead to the conclusion that someone is suffering from OCD. A person may have a fear of germs, wanting things to be in perfect order constantly, and unwanted thoughts. The compulsions in OCD are the acts that a person feels obliged to do and this may include repeatedly washing hands, excessively cleaning and washing hands and counting regularly. Life with OCD is generally hard and the sufferer generally does not get any relief or satisfaction until they are able to perform their rituals (National Institute of Mental health,