Black Swan Psychology Essay

In Black Swan, a ballet dancer named Nina is casted to play both the White Swan and the Black Swan in the famous ballet titled Swan Lake. In the well-known opera, a princess is turned into a White Swan, who falls in love with a prince but then commits suicide when she finds out that the prince confessed his love to the Black Swan. In the movie Black Swan, Nina has to deal with the challenges that arise from trying to accurately portray both characters whom are completely opposite. It is easy for Nina to be the White Swan. She is innocent and controlled. However, it was very hard for her to become the dark, seductive, and mysterious Black Swan. To fully become this character, Nina has to deal with the struggles of becoming the opposite of who she really is. This results in many hallucinations that involve harming herself. She also starts to imagine things that are not really happening. Eventually, Nina has psychotic episodes when she truly becomes the Black Swan. Whenever she takes a step into her transformation, she has hallucinations such as having black feathers come out of her skin. It also seems as if Nina is obsessed with perfection because she even tries to kill herself. The true reality is not what she sees because she is so trapped in the world of Swan Lake.

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 ...

... middle of paper ...

... the mold of a dancer. The fact that Nina has an eating disorder shows that it is not rare for people with schizophrenia to display symptoms of another disorder.

One of the myths displayed in Black Swan is about how people with schizophrenia are all paranoid. Throughout the movie, Nina becomes more paranoid about losing her leading role and even stabs herself with a piece of glass, believing that she stabbed Lily. People with schizophrenia are not all paranoid.

Overall, I think Black Swan was very intriguing and proved to be an accurate display of psychotic dysfunction, particularly schizophrenia. This movie required critical thinking in order to be able to put together the pieces and to understand the depth of schizophrenia. Even though this movie showed the darker side of schizophrenia, I still recommend it to anyone who has an interest in this mental disorder.