The Machinist Psychological Analysis

The film whose main character I decided to diagnose is Brad Anderson’s The Machinist. The Machinist tells the story of a factory machine operator named Trevor Reznik (played by Christian Bale). Reznik is an insomniac whose mind throughout the film shows a more serious problem. He is avoiding the repercussions of a hit and run he had committed. After watching the film, I came to a conclusive diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. Schizoaffective disorder has the psychotic symptoms accompanied by either a major depressive or manic episode. The mood symptoms take most of the duration of the disorder. However, for two or more weeks the psychotic symptoms take over without the mood symptoms. In the film, the mood disorder is present at the beginning, but when the accident occurred at the plant, the mood symptoms …show more content…
The accident was caused by Reznik being distracted by a co-worker named Ivan. This accident possibly triggered the mild psychotic symptoms of the schizoaffective disorder. Of what I noticed, he displays positive symptoms in the form of visual hallucinations. After the accident in the factory, he was questioned for investigation of the accident. Reznik claims that he was distracted by Ivan, who the questioners state that there is no Ivan. Later in the film, you learn that Ivan is a hallucination of Reznik himself. Reznik also commonly pairs Ivan with his red Pontiac that caused the hit and run. Reznik also experiences a hallucination at a coffee shop at an airport where he meets Marie. He meets Marie’s son Nicholas at a carnival. Nicholas is the child who he killed in the hit and run and Marie is the mother. Every scene with Marie is dream like hallucination. Near the end of the film, he goes into the coffee shop and a different waitress is there. This waitress states that a Marie has never worked there and that Reznik sits in the same stool, stares at his coffee and