If Elizabeth does respond to her oceanic feeling with spirituality, this process would be consistent with one of Freud’s major questions from the first two chapters of Civilization and Its Discontents. And, at the moment of her breakdown, although the play is revealed to be a production of Elektra, the first thought that came to my mind was that Elizabet seemed to resemble a nun. Later in the film, Elizabet drinks Alma’s blood in a strange scene that brings to mind the Catholic sacrament. Her refusal to speak, for instance, could be interpreted as a Buddhist vow of silence.
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Although the movie never specifies if Elizabet is religious, her character often evokes images of spirituality. If indeed this oceanic feeling shrinks with the development of the ego, it seems possible that the feelings one experiences as a young child and those Elizabet is feeling in her vulnerable, almost child-like, state could both stem from this oceanic feeling.Įlizabet feels compelled by this oceanic feeling to shut herself off from the world in an almost monastic fashion.
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I can remember from my own life that around the ages of six to nine years old, I would actively avoid the TV when my parents would watch the news because it would stir in me a strange sort of profound sadness that I have not experienced to such a degree since. It does however, remind me of the way children of a certain age react to the horrors of the world. While this image is indeed horrifying, this sort of behavior would hardly be classified as “normal” in most adults. She recoils in horror and steps backwards as if the image is physically harming her. Take for instance, when Elizabet sees footage of the self immolation of Buddhist Monk Thich Quang Duc on the television at the hospital. This sort of experience could explain the logic behind some of Elizabet’s behavior in the film. In that case, the ideational contents appropriate to it would be precisely those of limitless and of a bond with the universe-the same ideas with which my friend elucidated the ‘oceanic’ feeling.” If we may assume that there are many people in whose mental life this primary ego-feeling has persisted to a greater or less degree, it would exist in them side by side with the narrower and more sharply demarcated ego-feeling of maturity, like a kind of counterpart to it. Our present ego-feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive-indeed, an all-embracing-feeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it. Or, to put it more correctly, originally the ego includes everything, later it separates off an external world from itself. “In this way, then, the ego detaches itself from the external world. In this text, Freud describes a phenomenon known as oceanic feeling. To ponder this question, let us turn to Freuds Civilization and Its Discontents.
The Doctor makes it clear to us that she is not experiencing some sort of hysteria like the characters of other films we have watched in this class. One of the many questions that Persona posits, yet refuses to answer, is that of the origin of Elizabet’s ailment.
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