Shutter Island Psychoanalytic Response

 

The film Shutter Island is an extremely complex mental thriller that you must watch multiple times to fully understand the movie. Teddy, believes he is a government Marshall looking for a missing patient named Rachel Solando, with the assistance of his accomplice Chuck. In reality, Teddy is Andrew Laeddis and Chuck is Andrews’ essential therapist. Andrew appears to have a fight between his conscious state, “Teddy Daniels”, and his unconscious state, “Andrew Laeddis.” Andrew knows that his wife Dolores murdered his kids and that he murdered Dolores out of rage. However, the blame and distress drag him back to his dreamland. Andrew is constantly tormented by the way his daughter attempted to convince him that he killed his family. Hence, Shutter Island is the perfect case of Freud’s theory of psychosis.

Initially, a person with an id personality will do anything to have instant gratification. Dolores represents the id because she is a lady who experiences sadness and schizophrenia, a few cases of this is when Dolores sets their apartment on fire because the voices in her head told her to do so. Also, Dolores only lives in Teddy Daniels fantasy world. Her unreasonableness and psychotic tendencies convinced her to kill the three kids. She never thought about the consequences of her actions. Some may argue that Dolores controls Teddy because he allows her to do so.

In addition, a person with an ego personality deals with reality, they try to find a logical reason for everything. Dr. Sheehan represents the Ego because he understands the reality of the situation at hand. He’s aware that Teddy is on the verge of eliminating any possibility of living a sane, semi-normal life. Dr. Sheehan is logical because he never wants to hurt Andrew, so he goes along with his part in Teddy’s dreamland to hopefully break Teddy out of his psychotic state of mind. An example of this is when Dr. Sheehan and Teddy hunt down pieces of information about the missing patient, and they become stuck in an old building due to hurricane-like conditions. Teddy concluded that Shutter Island is brainwashing their patients and that he and Dr. Sheehan are soon to follow. Dr. Sheehan agrees with him because he sees the bigger picture. He’s rational in his actions and careful when dealing with Teddy.

Furthermore, a person with a superego personality has a good set of morals in every situation. In the beginning of the film, Teddy Daniels is driven by his morals of good and bad. He chases a life where he seeks justice for the murder of his wife. From the moment Teddy enters the island his goal is to find the missing prisoner. As the movie progresses, he tries harder to solve this mystery even though, he keeps finding less evidence. This allows him to keep making up new reasons to live as Teddy Daniels, and not confront his truth. Andrew Laeddis can never live with himself knowing that he is a murder. Based on the observations from the film, Teddy Daniels has strong moral values. It’s ironic how he immorally kills his wife and now lives in a fantasy where he is driven by his morals. Even when we see Teddy come to his senses he remains in his fantasy world, not being able to live with himself as a killer. This is the superego still in effect, which dominates his mind.                                                                                                                                                                  To conclude, Shutter island is an excellent example of Freud’s theory of psychosis. Dolores has an id personality because she is irrational and irresponsible. Dr. Sheehan has an ego personality because he is rational and has a reasonable answer for everything. Finally, Andrew Laeddis has a superego personality because he goes against all his morals when he kills his wife. He creates a fictional world to live with himself. However, Andrew comes to the conclusion that he rather die a good man instead of living with all the remorse and guilt for his actions.