| An assignment due by midnight the day after it's assigned + a strict limit on the length of the paper + a weak thesis + stress + exhaustion = Sigmund Freud and the Movie Spirited Away Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away tells the story a small girl named Chihiro, who inadvertently enters the world of the spirits and must coexist with them and follow their rules in order to return home, while learning bravery and independence along the way. Seeing a young character move from a comfortable reality to an unknown one allows us to see a clear example of Freud’s model of the psyche: the id, ego, and superego. From the beginning, the viewer notices that Chihiro’s id and superego are relatively balanced; however, it is her ego that she does not have much control over. So, she’s seen sporadically switching between her id and superego. The prevalence of her superego surfaces immediately because she contrasts with her parents, who are both driven by their id. When the movie begins, the family is driving to their new house, and Chihiro’s father decides to take a shortcut, driven by his id’s curiosity. Chihiro’s superego immediately comments, “Dad, I think we’re lost.” They come to a dead end with a tunnel that leads to an abandoned amusement park. Her parents continue to insist on exploring, and now Chihiro’s id fills her with fear and apprehension. They eventually come to an empty restaurant, with a table filled with food. Her parents, without even missing a beat, again driven by their ids, begin to gluttonously consume the food. Without a question, Chihiro knows something is wrong; even when her parents offer her some of the food, she shouts at them, “I don’t want any. We’re going to get in trouble. Let’s just get out of here.” She’s now moved back to acting with her superego. We soon see that she was indeed right, when both of her parents turn into pigs. This event combined with the fact that spirits are beginning to appear around her, puts Chihiro into a state of shock and anxiety, and she again regresses back to being controlled by her id. As the movie progresses and as Chihiro becomes more aware of herself, she gains control of her ego. The catalyst for this transformation, though, is other characters in the movie, who temporarily fill in for her ego. Originally, she deals with the new reality by using the ego defense mechanism of denial, refusing to believe that the animals she saw were her parents and stating repeatedly that, “This is just a bad dream.” This combination of denial and suppression of the ego literally causes Chihiro to begin to disappear. Her ego, her own self, stops existing. Then, the character Haku finds her, and his mere presence restores Chihiro and stops her from disappearing, symbolizing that Haku is indeed a substitute for Chihiro’s ego. Later in the movie, Chihiro is again portrayed as losing control of her ego when a character literally takes Chihiros’s name and changes it to Sen, which translates to “nothing.” When this happens, it is again Haku who restores her ego, by giving her name back in the form of a slip of paper found with her name on it. Haku acts as her ego by being her mentor. He puts her id and superego back into balance, and shows her what must be done for her and her parents’ survival. He controls the decision-making that Chihiro was unable to make on her own. As she grows and becomes more independent, she begins to make more and more wise choices, showing that she’s taming her ego. When viewed from this Freudian perspective, the conclusion of the movie takes place when Chihiro is able to balance all three parts of her psyche. Her id drives her with the constant desire to save both herself and her parents, her superego drives her to make the right decisions along the way, and the development of her ego allows her to balance the other two and become more independent. Because she succeeded in this, her family is able to safely return home. |
