Contains Spoilers – If you have not seen this film I suggest seeing it first then reading the analysis below.
This film depicts the case of a child’s depersonalization and repression after the loss of her mother. Depersonalization and repression are all aspects of a dissociative disorder. The disorder manifests in the child due to the psychic trauma brought on by her mother’s death and her father’s reaction to her during his grief stricken state. The aunt, divorced with no children of her own having repressed feelings about her own needs, tries to get both of them to forget her altogether and “move on” as if to take the mother’s place which I think triggers regressive behavior as the child has a new mother figure to whom she is becoming attached and so regresses to an earlier state of mind as shown in her choosing to stay in the room that was once a nursery. In this process the child has to adapt herself to her aunt as the dominant female figure in her life while she is still grieving the loss of her real mother.
In a fugue state the father moves himself and his daughter to a new town. The child begins to act out her growing resentment at her deceased mother by dropping her mother’s picture on the floor after her father stops his sister from commenting about the child’s likeness to her mother and chastises her for not doing as she is told. Further into the film, while in a dissociative trance, Ann discovers an empty room in an unused part of the house, from which she thinks voices are calling to her and where she seeks solace from her aunt and father with her dolls through fantasies in an attempt to console herself. She repeatedly dissociates and projects her feminine consciousness onto her dolls and aunt which both the father and aunt fail to recognize. The condition persists because of the father’s narcissism while still grieving the loss of his wife and his constant rejection of his daughter. The child claims to hear the dolls speaking to her but it is her own voice she hears. In a final dramatic scene near the end of the film, the aunt goes into the upstairs room to talk to Ann and in the process experiences a presence in the room which sends her screaming back down the stairs. The aunt has identified with Ann’s fantasies she has transferred to the aunt, also as if there were a ghostly presence in the room rather than what they really are and this process is called projective identification. In a more conscious state, the aunt would have recognized the origins of the presence and voices. She could then have reoriented the child to her dissociated memories and her feminine self as a good and wanted little girl, rather than convincing the father another geographical change would cure the child’s problems which is really Ann’s desire anyway, even though the aunt was more supportive of the child’s needs than the father at the time.
And in Lenin's Theory he states, "it is clear that where there is suppression there is also violence, there is no liberty, no democracy'", and this follows what Bohm and Peat state with regard to the suppression or oppression of one's creativity or the exploitation of one's creativity for monetary gain. So even Lenin recognized that oppression destroyed man's creative potential.
All in all, well acted and a fairly good story about the condition although I am not sure that was the intent and deserves more in depth treatment.
Handbook For The Assessment of Dissociation, A Clinical Guide, Marlene Steinberg
