Clinical psychology concepts and applications

Clinical Psychology

Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing, an expanded version of Episode 5 ("Though shall not kill") of Kieslowski's Decalogue, is a contemplation about random killing and government sanctioned killing. From the opening frame featuring a dead rat floating in water and a cat in a noose, killed by the hands of children, the movie begins its story with an ominous tone that lingers throughout the entire film until its final violent act. In this grim world that Kieslowski creates, we are introduced to Jacek, a mysterious vagabond who puzzles the audience with his despicable acts of cruelty -- specifically, a murder of a taxi driver that is executed with such detail that we are left perplexed at the sheer horror of his act, nearly forgetting altogether the randomness of it. "Jacek is motivated by an unutterable personal secret and an intrapsychic structure that prevent his grieving a lost love" (Rashkin 2009). It can be hypothesized after seeing the film that the murder Jacek commits is his way of becoming intimate with someone again because it is the only time in the film that Jacek does establish a certain amount of intimacy with another person. The murder itself takes nearly five minutes to be completed in the film and Kieslowski uses this time more as if he was filming a love scene than a murder. This is why one is led to believe that this moment of intimacy for Jacek is so all-consuming. From the beginning, we see that Jacek is in search of someone to have this connection with.

A Short Film About Killing was partly inspired by Albert Camus' The Stranger, a story that specifically deals with the topics of death and detachment. Camus' philosophical work deals with the impression that life is nothing more than an absurd existence where humans' lives have no convincing order. Because of this, the philosophy is that humans have trouble dealing with an irrational existence and so they try to create a life with meaning. This is the view that should be taken when considering Jacek's psychological state. While it must be noted that Kieslowski's film has resonations of some of Camus' themes, the movie does not illustrate the absurd; on the contrary, the film subverts the absurd and it seems to play out as more of a riddle than just a bouquet of random acts that culminates into a less than desirable ending for all of the individuals involved -- specifically, the taxi driver, and later Jacek.

Kieslowski shows Jacek through a very sad existence when one feels that his life does not have any real meaning. This can be thought of as absurd (as Camus exhibits in his work), but it can also be viewed as quite reasonable. We see through Jacek that there is randomness to existence, but that doesn't mean that life doesn't have any meaning. In fact, humans are what give life meaning and Jacek has the opportunity to do this if he wished to do so. He does not do this because it seems that he doesn't have the tools to realize that his life is not random if he doesn't want it to be. Individuals have the ability to give meaning to the world and to ourselves.

Jacek travels a certain path and his path crosses with the taxi driver, whom he ends up killing, but again, the random act and the notion of absurdity can be subverted if we think that Jacek, with all of his emotional baggage, was simply waiting for the right moment to act in an aggressive, murderous way. From watching the film, we may feel that Kieslowski is setting up a moment that is ultimately supposed to be viewed as fate, but once again, we are forced to come back to Jacek and the fact that he was always going to hurt someone at sometime.

Jacek, up to the killing, is portrayed as completely amoral. He simply wanders the street looking for ways that he can hurt others. He pushes strangers in the streets and throws rocks at care. When he decides that he wants to rob someone, he goes out and finds the taxi driver. This ultimately ends up with him murdering him. The killing is really just a drawn-out exaggeration of all the violence he has been committing throughout the film. Kieslowski never delves into the murderous motivations of Jacek, so it is left up to the audience to contemplate what psychological mess is going on inside of Jacek's head. Can we relate it solely to his lost love? What kind of a person goes around hurting others with no real sense of regret, shame, or concern?

Jacek appears to be depressed and completely antisocial, as witnessed by scenes of him aimlessly wandering the streets alone, dejected and angry. We learn at the end of the film when Jacek is waiting for his execution that his little sister was killed a few years earlier by his drunken friend, for which he blames himself. Is this one of the reasons that Jacek kills the taxi driver? The taxi driver, as we see over the course of the film, isn't the best man himself, but does he deserve to die at the hands of Jacek? Perhaps in Jacek's mind he does. The piece of information about Jacek's sister is the closest we ever get to learning of some kind of explanation or motivation for Jacek's actions.

Jacek deals with the meaninglessness of life by not playing the game; in other words, Jacek is a nihilist. He comes across as a foreigner no matter where he goes in the film -- so, it wouldn't matter if he had jumped in another taxi or have gone to another city because everywhere he goes, he will believe that life is pointless -- his life and others' lives. Simone de Beauvoir says in her book The Ethics of Ambiguity that Sartre, in describing Baudelaire, said: "Scorn alone liberated him. It was necessary for him that the universe which he rejected continue in order for him to detest it and scoff at it" (53). Though Jacek doesn't "play the game," so to speak, or at least, he scoffs at the game, he still needs the game in order for him to exist in the world or to bring some kind of meaning to his own life. This quote of de Beauovoir can be used to understand not only Jacek. Jacek needs the very thing that he feels contempt for in order for him to have a purpose: Jacek and his contempt for people. Jacek is a nihilist since nihilism in and of itself is an attempt to resolve the ambiguity of life.

But this will to negation is forever belying itself, for it manifests itself as a presence at the very moment that it displays itself. It therefore implies a constant tension, inversely symmetrical with the existential and more painful tension, for if it is true that man is not, it is also true that he exists, and in order to realize his negativity positively he will have to contradict constantly the movement of existence (de Beauvoir 54).

de Beauvoir would describe Jacek as a nihilist -- he has committed what she would call a "moral suicide" (54) Jacek has rejected his own existence and, according to de Beauvoir, he also has to reject the existences that confirm his existence (55). She says, "If he wills himself to be nothing, all of mankind must also be annihilated; otherwise, by means of the presence of this world that the Other reveals he meets himself as a presence in the world" (55).

Jacek fails to achieve freedom because he has rejected his own existence, but that does not mean that he can eliminate it. Jacek feels that he is personally to blame for his 12-year-old sister's death after Jacek's drinking buddy ran over her with a tractor. This single event created anxiety in Jacek that has fed his desire to be nothing, achieve nothing, and deny the world by denying himself. There is some sense that Jacek killed the taxi driver as a way of receiving punishment for the death of his sister, which he believed was his fault.

Phenomenology can be used to make sense of why Jacek killed the taxi driver. This doesn't mean that Jacek had a mental or cognitive intention to kill, but there is a conscious relationship between his guilt for his sister's death and his act of murder. Jacek's intent to kill was to bring punishment upon himself. Jacek seems to displaced in the past. It can be argued that Jacek doesn't exist in the present because of the incident that keeps his real self back in a time that he cannot get past. According to phenomenology theories, if there is something that a person feels ashamed of or guilty about, a person may be unable to rid themselves of the experience in question. In An Introduction to Phenomenology, author Robert Sokolowski states:

We are something like spectators when we reenact things in memory, but we are not just spectators and we are not like viewers of a separate scene. We are engaged in what happened then. We are the same ones who were involved in the action; the memory brings us back as acting and experiencing there and then. Without memory and the displacement it brings we would not be fully actualized as selves and as human beings, for good and for ill (71).

Jacek is very clearly stuck in a place in his mind where he believes that he was to blame for what really happened. He was there and he remembers it as such and so it is so. The other element that feeds this is his imagination. According to Sokolowski, memory and imagination are structurally very alike and it is easy for one to slip into the other. The question is whether or not Jacek sees his true self in that memory or if it is an imagined being of himself. This matters because if Jacek is not able to recognize himself in the past, then there is no morals associated with him. According to de Beauvoir, if an act is left behind, then it simply falls into the past and it becomes nothing but a mere stupid fact. In order to prevent this from happening, a person has to return to it in the mind and then justify it in terms of what the person is doing then in the present. Jacek must carry out the act of murder so as to relieve himself of what he feels he is to blame for in his past. In a sense, Jacek feels that he will achieve freedom if he can carry out the murder because he is embracing the past as he does it. This is why at the end of the film, while Jacek does feel regret for the murder, he also feels a sense of peace with the knowledge of his punishment.

Jacek's murderous act can be explained by looking at it with a humanistic psychological approach. While humanistic psychology does take environmental factors into account, it also focuses more on the individual and the individual's needs. Maslow, specifically, with his five levels of needs, explained needs as similar to instincts and they play a major part in behavior and what motivates behavior. That being said, some of the lower needs on the hierarchical chart are physiological, then security, and third, social. Jacek seems to be lacking in security and definitely in social needs. He has no place in society, no real relationships it appears, and his behavior is in direct opposition to the norms of society. Jacek is not even close to the fifth need, which is the most important and is called self-actualization. Maslow described the most important needs as knowing what you can be and then being that person. Maslow suggests that if certain needs are not met, one's motivation is directly linked to the person's need to satisfy them. The key to making sense of Jacek's actions is to understand what motivated him to act in such a way and what needs were not met that propelled the act.