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Psychology in one flew over the cuckoo's nest
Psychology in one flew over the cuckoo's nest
One flew over the cuckoo's nest from a psychological perspective
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“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” was a groundbreaking movie, when it was first released in 1975. It challenged the general concept of mental health and abnormality in the United States. Its influence emboldened people form every aspect of the society to pay attention to Mental Health Institutions in the U.S. Today, “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is still accepted as one of the most influential and significant movies in the world. Moreover, the movie was able to question the general stigma over the mental disorders successfully because it portrayed both mentally ill and healthy people in the same scenery, while establishing a fluid dynamic between its characters. Their dynamic relationships helped the audience to understand the nature of mental illnesses better. Many people got to chance to see how normal insane people can be, and how far sane people can go on the scale of abnormality. Overall, the movie centered itself around the idea of abnormality and how it relates to mental health. It highlighted some common misconceptions among the mental health field by showing how deviant …show more content…
characteristics can be misinterpreted as insanity. Considering the fact that the movie is only 133 minutes, it is hard to label any character as insane for certain. However, there are two considerable characters who demonstrate clear evidences of an existent mental issue with their unstable and self-harming behaviors. First of these characters is a patient named Billy Bibbit.
Billy is, in fact, more than 30 years old but he looks like a young adult whose social interaction skills are not acquired perfectly. He is known to have a mother whose influence is greater on him than anyone else. He gets so worried every time her name is mentioned. He stutters, especially when he is under pressure by others, and he is an internalizer, meaning that he does not express his emotions as much as he is supposed to be. Instead, he often prefers to escape from his problems or conditions rather than facing them. As a result of this type of internalization, he has suicidal patterns. For instance, when his mother gets angry at him about his marriage proposal to a young lady, he tries to cut his wrests and kill himself. Though, he fails at this attempt, he succeeds in another one towards the end of the
movie. My personal opinion from a psychology student point of view is that Billy demonstrates many symptoms of Oedipus Complex. In other words, I believe he has rooted attachment issues with her primary caregiver, her mother. He is known to have a deep affection for her mother, as well as perceiving her as the center of his life. The most important sign of his hidden sexual desires towards his mother can be observed any time he gets rejected by his mother. He reacts ultra-sensitively, and leans toward suicidal behaviors as mentioned before. For example, after having an intercourse with Candy, he gets caught by Nurse Ratched who’s a good friend of his mother. Nurse Ratched pressures him by telling that his mother won’t appreciate this type of behavior. Consequently, Billy first stutters more than ever, and then starts to hit himself harshly. When he fails to convince Nurse Ratched, he cuts his own throat and prefers dying over being rejected by his mother. Overall, this type of behavior can easily be interpreted as Oedipus Complex. Therefore, I believe that Billy was not mentally stable, and it was best for him to be institutionalized to prevent any self-harming behaviors. Secondly, I believe that Charles Cheswick fits the criteria of mentally ill in few aspects. He is approximately around his 40’s, but he has childlike behaviors. He often throws temper tantrums when people don’t pay attention to his ideas. He craves attention and appreciation from others which are all inappropriate behaviors considering his age. He has few pronunciation errors, which may signal a deficiency in his intelligence. My personal diagnosis for Cheswick is that he has Histrionic Personality Disorder because he has an endless need for attention. He often makes loud and inappropriate appearances. He exaggerate his behaviors and emotions to get more eyes on him. For instance, when Hardy talks about his wife in a group therapy, he supports Hardy by making huge gestures and really loud voices. He interrupts the argument between other patients, and claims that everyone is “ganging up against him too”. He also adds hysterically “…but I only want to help you…”, and repeats this phrase few times. I think this scene demonstrates how Cheswick wants the attention of others. He gets hysterical when others fail to meet his needs. Histrionic Personality Disorder is also characterized with being easily influenced by other. Cheswick is one of the first characters to be influenced by McMurphy. I believe, like Billy, he may go further to get other’s attention and appreciation by self-harming. Therefore, I think he is mentally ill, and needs to be under supervision.
The author Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado and went to Stanford University. He volunteered to be used for an experiment in the hospital because he would get paid. In the book “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Kesey brings up the past memories to show how Bromden is trying to be more confident by using those thoughts to make him be himself. He uses Bromden’s hallucinations, Nurse Ratched’s authority, and symbolism to reveal how he’s weak, but he builds up more courage after each memory.
Mark Twain best described courage when he said that, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear” (Twain). Both in The One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and Watership Down by Richard Adams, the authors deal with the topic of courage and each share a similar view on it as this quote. Indeed, both authors suggest that courage is not accumulated simply by acts of heroism, but rather by overcoming fears and speaking one’s mind as well. These books are very similar in the way that bravery is displayed through the characters in an uncommon way. Firstly, an example of bravery
I chose the subject about “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” written by Ken Kesey in 1962 for my research paper because my mother told me years ago of the accompanying film and how interesting it is. Two years ago a friend of mine came back from his exchange programme in the United States of America. He told me that he and his theatre group there had performed this novel. He was and still is very enthusiastic about the theme and about the way it is written. Although I started reading the novel, I didn’t manage to finish it till the day we had to choose our subjects at school. When I saw this subject on the list, which we were given by our English teacher Mr Schäfer, I was interested immediately. So I chose it.
This essay will be exploring the text One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey and the film Dead poet’s society written by Tom Schulman. The essay will show how the authors use over exaggerated wildcard characters such as McMurphy and Keating. The use of different settings such as an insane asylum and an all-boys institution. And Lastly the use of fore shading to show how the authors can use different texts to present similar ideas in different ways.
Billy is also traumatized by the extreme loss in his life. Everywhere he looks, he experiences great loss. First his father dies in a hunting accident, then he gets in a plane crash and everyone aboard dies but him, and while he is in the hospital recuperating, his wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. There is so much death surrounding his life, that it is no wonder Billy has not tried to kill himself yet.
In 1962, when One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (the Nest), was published, America was at the start of decade that would be characterized by turmoil. Involvement in Vietnam was increasing, civil rights marches were taking place in the south and a new era of sexual promiscuity and drug use was about to come into full swing. Young Americans formed a subgroup in American society that historians termed the “counterculture”. The Nest is a product of time when it was written. It is anti-authoritarian and tells the tale of a man's rebelling against the establishment. Kesey used metaphor to make a social commentary on the America of the sixties. In this paper I will deal with three issues that seem to strike out from the novel. First; is the choice that Kesey made in his decision to write the novel using first person narration. The second part of this paper will be an analysis of some of the metaphors and Kesey uses to describe America in the sixties. Finally I will speak about the some of the religious images that Kesey has put in the novel.
“There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life 's point of no return.” - Dag Hammarskjold
In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the reader has the experience to understand what it was like to live in an insane asylum during the 1960’s. Kesey shows the reader the world within the asylum of Portland Oregon and all the relationships and social standings that happen within it. The three major characters’ groups, Nurse Ratched, the Black Boys, and McMurphy show how their level of power effects how they are treated in the asylum. Nurse Ratched is the head of the ward and controls everything that goes on in it, as she has the highest authority in the ward and sabotages the patients with her daily rules and rituals. These rituals include her servants, the Black Boys, doing anything she tells them to do with the patients.
In the 1960’s Ken Kesey, a student of the university of Oregon and Stanford University, became interested in alternative medicine and mental health after participating in a US Military psychedelic drug study. Kesey proceed to work for this same institution. For him it was important to take notes on the individuals in this ward, to draw them even! Kesey had an urge to get to know them, even to understand their story and this is precisely what lead him to his current perspective on society and the conformity which it expects of those who are a part of it. It is in this spirit which he wrote one flew over the Cuckoo’s nest and made a brilliant example of counter culture which to this day stands as a strong criticism to the way which mental health professions can become so corrupt and out of control.
Throughout the mid-twentieth century, America withstood a period of revolutions as younger generations started to challenge society’s standards and beliefs. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest takes place during the end of the 1950s and in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, a time when many citizens began to challenge conformity. This novel was set among patients and workers of a mental institution. The mental institution is designed to cure patients who are deemed “insane” as a result of lack of submission within society. However, the institution is controlled by society and operates in the same manner as the Outside world. Although the facade of the mental institution makes it appear to be successful through major advancements, the patients still suffer the consequences of being unique and not fitting perfectly into society. Ken Kesey uses black humor in order to expose the horrendous treatment that citizens endure within mental institutions when they do not conform to the deranged idealistic beliefs of an inhumane society.
As all movies are created based on a book, there always seems to be changes and conflicting ideas. However, they still have the same main idea to the story line. The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey and the movie directed by Miloš Forman deal with the main idea of society's control of natural impulses. The author/director want to prove that this control can be overcome. Although the movie and the book are very different from each other, they still have their similarities.
“Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge,” verbalizes Andrea Dworkin. Gender-roles have been ingrained in the every-day life of people all around the world since the beginnings of civilization. Both One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Hamlet portray typical female stereotypes in different time periods. Due to the representation of women in literature like Hamlet by William Shakespeare and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kessey, and pop-culture, evidence of classic gender-based stereotypes in a consistently patriarchal world are still blatantly obvious in today’s societies.
Everybody wants to be accepted, yet society is not so forgiving. It bends you and changes you until you are like everyone else. Society depends on conformity and it forces it upon people. In Emerson's Self Reliance, he says "Society is a joint stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater." People are willing to sacrifice their own hopes and freedoms just to get the bread to survive. Although the society that we are living in is different than the one the Emerson's essay, the idea of fitting in still exists today. Although society and our minds make us think a certain way, we should always trust our better judgment instead of just conforming to society.
Throughout the sixties , America- involved in the Cold War at this time- suffered from extreme fear of communism. This caused numerous severe changes in society ranging from corrupt political oppression, to the twisted treatment of the minority. Published in 1962, Ken Kesey ’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , manages to capture these changes in the variety of ways. Kesey’s novel incorporates some of the main issues that affected the United States during the early and mid 60s. The government had no limits and was cruel to those who did not fit into society, including the mentally ill. The wrongful treatment of the people caused an eruption of rebellion and protest- thus the Beatnik era was born. The novel, written during this movement, sheds light on Kesey’s personal opinion on this chaotic period in US history . The treatment of mentally ill patients, the oppressive government, and uprising in the 1960s inspired Kesey while writing his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Fred Wright, Lauren's instructor for EN 132 (Life, Language, Literature), comments, "English 132 is an introduction to English studies, in which students learn about various areas in the discipline from linguistics to the study of popular culture. For the literature and literary criticism section of the course, students read a canonical work of literature and what scholars have said about the work over the years. This year, students read One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey, a classic of American literature which dates from the 1960s counterculture. Popularized in a film version starring Jack Nicholson, which the class also watched in order to discuss film studies and adaptation, the novel became notable for its sympathetic portrayal of the mentally ill. For an essay about the novel, students were asked to choose a critical approach (such as feminist, formalist, psychological, and so forth) and interpret the novel using that approach, while also considering how their interpretation fit into the ongoing scholarly dialogue about the work. Lauren chose the challenge of applying a Marxist approach to One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Not only did she learn about critical approaches and how to apply one to a text, she wrote an excellent essay, which will help other readers understand the text better. In fact, if John Clark Pratt or another editor ever want to update the 1996 Viking Critical Library edition of the novel, then he or she might want to include Lauren's essay in the next edition!"