Black Swan

The reactions of fellow moviegoers Saturday night to Black Swan was predictable. Those who were vocal about it thought it preposterous and laughable (incuding my wife). I found it to be a wonderful depiction of a young woman integrating her shadow within a psychologically intense battle ground of the theatre of ballet. The external manifestations of Nina's delusions, hallucinations were violent and disturbing but I believe to be a perfect mirror into the inner violence, drama, that this type of person might experience in real life. So one has to step back from the imagery and not take it too literally to appreciate the psychology of the film. Is this woman in need of therapy? Of course, but pathologizing her problem will only distance her dilemna from our own.

Th story of swan lake must be appreciated as this is the psychological backdrop of the film. Odette is a beautiful woman by night and by day a white swan, the result of a spell placed on her by the evil sorcerer Von Rothbart. The only way to lift the spell is by her falling in love with a prince. Prince Seigfried out hunting one evening witnesses her transformation from swan to woman and falls in love with her and they spend the night together. The next day she becomes a swan again and he plansto marry her but the sorcerer anticipates this and brings his daughter Odile to meet him making her look like Odette. The prince marries her thinking it is Odette and Odette discovers the betrayal and returns to the lake. The prince discovers what he has done and goes to odette and asks for forgiveness which she gives him but it is too late the spell can now never be broken and she decides death is her only escape. In some versions the prince follows Odette to her death by drowning in the lake and in other versions she acts alone.

The ballet Swan Lake becomes for Nina the perfect vas hermeticum within which she will be transformed. Being a swan half the time and a beautiful woman the other half, Nina (Odette) is under a spell cast by the evil sorcerer (Von Rothbart) who originally turned her into a swan. In order for Odette to be freed from the spell (become a whole person) she must fall in love with a prince (Seigfried). Nina's mother is sorcerer who keeps Nina in the mother realm. One is reminded of Rapunzel and the sorceress who keeps Rapunzel in the tower until the prince comes to rescue her. Nina's desire for ballet is the mechanism to work through this enchantment and disengage from this realm and from her mother in the process. Seigfried is the Director who, in his desire for a perfect ballet, tries to push Nina into herself to explore her shadow which is her sexuality, her ambitiousness, her jealousy, anger, rage, all of which is represented by Lilly (Odile) (sounds similar).

I love the fact that the movie begins with the emergence of this "other" that resembles Nina but is in the shadows. It is Nina being persued by her shadow from the very beginning. So the shadow is her and Lilly interposed and this is done visually throughout the movie. As this shadow self emerges it is sexual, confident, enraged at her mother, jealous, ruthless, and all what Nina is not. The stealing of Beth's posessions is very interesting. She wanted to be perfect and the stealing of these things, a nail file, lipstick were a ritualization of acquiring the perfection that she saw in Beth.

On a psychological level the scratching at her self was like cutting which is a way to ward of anxiety and more symbolically a way to get at the self lying beneath the surface only taking it to a literal extreme. It is also a way to feel as though one is regaining control over one's self, just as bolemia and anorexia are similar attempts to hold on to control. But the Director (therapist) is encouraging Nina to let go. This is not something she will accomplish by controling herself but only by letting go of herself.

So the Director, as the hero, must pull Nina out of the mother realm and away from the literal mother. Nina (Odette) must die so the merging of the black swan and white swan can create the transcendant third. The integration of the shadow must result in the death of the ego, the old self, the staus quo. When Nina offers her final words that she is now perfect, she is really saying she is whole, complete, she is now individuated. This movie is a wonderful allegory of individuation.

We may also see Nina as the puella capitvated by this archetype. As a swan she is in the realm of sublimatio flying high in the sky. The swan is connected to the sky and the water (unconscious) but in order for Nina to become a whole person she must come down to earth (coagulatio). The tension between these two realms will create a third called circulatio, the merging of these two realms. "It ascends to the heavens and descends to the earth and receives the power of above and below. Then you will have the glory of the whole world. Therefore all darkness will flee from you (Edinger).

It is a perfect image at the very end of the ballet and the movie in which Nina falls to the earth-her swan nature must become personalized, so she can become a person she is inetended to be. Flying high above the earth she was ambitious and fantasy-bound so the fall on stage was both the death of the puella, the swan nature, the death of Nina and the integration of the black swan Lilly, who she killed psychologically. In the audience we see the mother who seems to need Nina to complete this transformation, as much as she resisted it in life and perhaps a transformation her mother was never able to complete.