Black Swan

Black Swan: A Study in Hollywood Psychology The film Black Swan was noteworthy in the way it explored the dark side of ballet, including eating disorders, psychological manipulation, and how the pressures of achieving perfection can wreak havoc with the developing psyche of a young woman. The central protagonist Nina is a rising star in a prestigious city ballet company. She is given the task of dancing the lead role of Swan Lake. This is one of the most technically and emotionally demanding of all roles in ballet.

The White Swan Odette, is supposed to embody purity, while the Black Swan Odile, embodies all that Odette is not and thus temporarily seduces the prince and the audience with her sexuality and bravado. Nina is told early on in the film by the ballet company director that while she is technically proficient she lacks the qualities needed to embody the Black Swan.

The company head is also shown letting an older principal ballerina go, illustrating the short nature of a ballerina’s career and the pressure to get ahead quickly. Like many Hollywood films about dance, Black Swan suggests that there is a fine line between artistry and madness. Whether this is true or not, of course, is much disputed. Furthermore, when a number of psychologists and psychiatrists were asked to review the film, they noted that its treatment of the dancer’s psychology was problematic as well.

“The film took liberties with a host of anxiety disorders: anorexia, bulimia, cutting and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)” said one psychiatrist (James, 2010, par.23). Rather than focusing on a single disorder, the film preferred to use a constellation of them. Ballet is shown as giving rise to a variety of psychoses in a diffuse manner. This paper will provide an overview of possible diagnoses for Nina and also note why they are problematic to fully explain the behavior she exhibits on film.

Schizophrenia Given the dissociative nature of Nina’s disorder, schizophrenia might seem to be the most logical explanation for her most outlandish behavior. Schizophrenia often develops when someone is a young adult, particularly after going away to college or experiencing another traumatic or high-pressure event. Nina is dancing her first major role. Moreover, she is continually pitted against Lily, her rival in the company who is much less disciplined but appears to innately embody the Black Swan’s qualities.

Nina feels anxious and depressed early on in the film, rather than happy, and pressured by her mother, who lives with her and wants her to succeed as a dancer. Nina deliberately tries to lose herself in the role of the Black Swan Odile, taking greater risks in her personal life to ensure that her performance is adequate. She comes to identify with both the swan and with Lily.

She is at first convinced at the end of her opening night performance that she has killed Lily but later the viewer realizes that she has actually cut herself. This does not necessarily come as a surprise dramatically, given that Nina is repeatedly shown cutting herself throughout the film as a form of stress release. But cutting one’s self is not necessarily a behavior typically associated with schizophrenia, at least not in the manner in which it is depicted in the film (James, 2010).

Rather than a psychotic break, Nina is shown using cutting as a method of stress release. The film does—accurately, according to psychiatrists who viewed the film to critique its accuracy—suggest that Nina’s use of the club drug Ecstasy helps trigger her psychotic break (James, 2010).

The fact that Nina is asked to play a dual role, that of the two swans, would seem to satisfy a Hollywood trope of psychosis being a breakdown of the psyche into different compartments or personalities, although it should be noted that multiple personalities is not a symptom of schizophrenia (James, 2010). Anorexia and Bulimia Eating disorders are very common among dancers, given the extreme thinness demanded of the ideal ballet body type.

The film shows Nina following a restrictive diet, although her weight is not a continual preoccupation in the film, since her lack of appetite appears to be spawned more by her nervous anxiety than by calorie-counting. On the other hand, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder often accompany calorie restriction (Tyagi, et al., 2015). OCD is a symptom of eating disorders and also a frequent comorbidity of eating disorders.

The obsessive perfectionism embodied by Nina throughout the film would suggest that her eating habits have a role in triggering her mental breakdown, even if she does not have all of the typical clinical features of an ED. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) Personality disorders are one of the most controversial diagnoses in modern psychology, particularly that of BPD. Many of the behaviors exhibited by Nina in the film might warrant a diagnosis of BPD, including her eating disordered behavior, cutting, and unstable sense of self.

Borderline personality disorder has been much debated in terms of validity, given that it is often seen as kind of a garbage can or catch-all term for patients with symptoms that are very difficult to classify. “The frequent development in borderline patients of characterologically based depression, rage attacks and affect storms in general, pervasive anxiety, and dissociative symptoms” are said to be characteristic of borderline patients, as well as attention-seeking behaviors such as self-harm and taking drugs (Kernberg & Michels, 2010, par.9).

Nina’s unstable sense of self is fueled both by her lack of an independent self from her mother, her sheltered upbringing in the world of ballet, and the encouragement of the ballet director to lose herself in her role, rather than to retain a strong sense of self. Borderline patients are also often said to continually seek validation from external sources, including significant others and adults.

Nina seeks validation from the ballet director, the company, her mother, and even from Lily, whose friendship she initially seeks out as part of her quest to become Odile. Conclusion Of all the potential diagnoses, borderline personality disorder would seem to be the one which most closely matches Nina’s symptoms. But that should not necessarily be seen as automatic validation of a diagnosis of the central character as a borderline type, given that she also exhibits features of several other disorders. Ultimately, of course,.