The Secret Window Movie Analysis

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The Secret Window movie is a 2004 American psychological thriller which displays the issue of split personality of the main character. In the movie the writer Mort Rainey played by Johnny Depp is going through a divorce from his spouse. He moves to upstate New York to his cabin to be alone. Rainey is trying to stay mentally healthy but instead he is being harassed by John Shooter who claims Rainey plagiarized his work. Rainey ignores the strange man at first but then a series of events start to occur. Rainey believes that Shooter is behind everything that is going on and is unaware of his actions. He then realizes that Shooter is not real and it is him and Shooter usually comes out when alcohol is involved. Rainey then remembers everything …show more content…
He also remembers killing his wife and burying the body. The character displays split personality, which is also known as Multiple Personality Disorder or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) it’s a chronic emotional illness in which the person has two or more distinct personalities. The type of personalities that the sufferer of DID makes consist of what Freud calls the id and superego. When Rainey catches his wife in bed with another man he screams grabs his head and walks away this shows how Rainey doesn’t want to accept his reality. The movie also shows us how he withdraws from society by moving away to a cabin. After six months his lifestyle not organized and he is miserable. Rainey smokes, never sleeps on his bed, wears Amy’s old tunic, his diet sucks since he doesn’t eat actual meals. His behavior shows us that he still has not made peace with the traumatic event he witnessed. The movie clearly depicts how he developed DID after the trauma he suffered. DID ties into Freud’s theory because his theory is that the mind is made of three different parts; the id, the ego, and the superego. Id’s job is to fill the initial pleasure of life instantly; it seeks pleasure and avoids pain. While id seeks pleasure it needs the …show more content…
Ego-ideal focuses on rewards for morally good behavior and conscience focuses on punishments for morally bad behavior. The theory explains the self-control that Rainey has at least at first. Shooter is the other personality Rainey created out of anger and being overwhelmed by not being able to satisfy his id. Rainey is scared of feeling guilty and bad from all his intention towards Amy, he needs a way to escape the guilt. If Rainey would have killed Amy right when he catches Amy with Ted, his conscience would have made him feel guilty. Instead he creates Shooter in his head to do all the activities he can’t bring himself to do. When Shooter takes over Rainey does things unconsciously because split personality’s characteristic is that is unconscious. As this happens, the host cannot remember anything but according to some scientists memories do transfer from one identity to another. I think DID does exist because our mind is our own and I don’t think anyone has to right to tell us what our minds can do. Just like Rainey sometimes we can’t bare the heart ache that our mind tries to help us by creating another personality. Even though we think we have control of our thoughts and actions sometimes our

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