Psychological Approach on the Film "suicide"

Psychological Approach on the Film "Suicide"

"Suicide" is a German film directed by Raoul W. Heimrich, which clearly portrayed how the three psychic zones--id, ego, and the superego function in an individual. Moreover, this film also depicts the different ideas of the defense mechanisms of an individual wherein the "channeling" occurs. All in all, this film examines the negative effects of the imbalance of these three psychic zones and the abnormality of that behavior in a person, which will be discussed in this paper.

First, let's scrutinize the film by looking at the behavior of the couple--the man and the woman. In the film, they embark on a film project meant to document people in the act of committing suicide. The woman, who acted as the id because she is obsessed in seeing people committing a suicide while the man, who act as the ego does the recording of the suicide attempts. This only proves that the id (the woman) drives the ego (the man) to do it without paying attention to the superego (the society they're in). Also it shows that when the id is not balance by the ego it manifests the dominant one which is the darker side of that individual. From these, I draw out that the whole film is a representation of a person. As we can see, the woman is just like the id that's full of the darker side of the human mind. In the film, she is demonstrating an obsession of seeing people committing a suicide. Also, in the film, it is stated that she wanted not just an ordinary kind of suicide but a bloody and a gross one. As the film progress, the obsession becomes an addiction; the woman doesn't want to stop even though the man who represents the ego wants to put an end to it. Also, another concept we can see here is the first premise of Freud that states, "most of the individual's mental processes are unconscious." With this example, we can prove that the first premise is true because in the film it is showed that the woman is unconscious of what she's doing until the man (ego) starts to realize that what they're doing is bad (the concept of the superego--the society).

Now, focusing on the man as the ego, it is evident in the film that he acted as the medium for the woman's satisfaction; he becomes the fulfillment of the id because it is the pleasure principle. In the film, we can see that the woman is enjoying what they're doing because the man (ego) does what the woman (id) is ordering the man to do; he couldn't resist because he was sexually inclined to the woman. This proves the second premise, which states "all human behavior is motivated ultimately by sexuality. From this part, it is very evident that the imbalance of the ego to the id and the superego brought the manifestation of what's the dominating one in the individual, which brings the abnormality of the behavior. Then, towards