Abnormal Psych Paper
Maggie Halverson
Abnormal Psychology
4/20/2014
Media Project: Shutter Island
In the movie “Shutter Island”, the main character, Andrew Laeddis struggles with recognizing reality because he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. The movie is set in 1954 at Ash Cliff, a treatment facility on Shutter Island for the “criminally insane”. Laeddis believes he is a U.S. Marshall who has come to the island with his partner, Chuck, to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients. As Laeddis continues the investigation, he reveals that he is actually investigating the island because he suspects that there is a plot happening in which all of the staff is involved. He suspects that clinicians are conducting inhumane experiments on patients and sending them back into the world as “ghosts” with their memories erased due to brain surgery. Laeddis often links this to the Nazi experiments on human subjects and is really angry when he thinks of this because of his experiences fighting for the United States in World War II. Throughout the film, Andrew Laeddis refers to himself as Edward ‘Teddy’ Daniels and believes that Laeddis is a man who killed his wife, Dolores, in a fire. At the end of the film, the psychiatrist tells him what’s going on and that there is no missing patient that he has been looking for the whole time, but only that Andrew created this fantasy so that he would not have to remember that his wife was manic-depressive and murdered his children, and that he murdered her. Laeddis refuses to believe this and takes extreme measures to disprove it, grabbing what he thinks is his gun and tries to shoot Dr. Cawley; but his firearm is a toy pistol and snaps in his hands. Chuck, the man he thinks is his partner comes in, revealing that he is actually Laeddis’ psychiatrist, Dr. Sheehan. He is told that Dr. Cawley and Sheehan have come up with this treatment to allow him to live out his elaborate fantasy, in order to confront the truth, or else undergo a lobotomy
Abnormal Psychology
4/20/2014
Media Project: Shutter Island
In the movie “Shutter Island”, the main character, Andrew Laeddis struggles with recognizing reality because he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. The movie is set in 1954 at Ash Cliff, a treatment facility on Shutter Island for the “criminally insane”. Laeddis believes he is a U.S. Marshall who has come to the island with his partner, Chuck, to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients. As Laeddis continues the investigation, he reveals that he is actually investigating the island because he suspects that there is a plot happening in which all of the staff is involved. He suspects that clinicians are conducting inhumane experiments on patients and sending them back into the world as “ghosts” with their memories erased due to brain surgery. Laeddis often links this to the Nazi experiments on human subjects and is really angry when he thinks of this because of his experiences fighting for the United States in World War II. Throughout the film, Andrew Laeddis refers to himself as Edward ‘Teddy’ Daniels and believes that Laeddis is a man who killed his wife, Dolores, in a fire. At the end of the film, the psychiatrist tells him what’s going on and that there is no missing patient that he has been looking for the whole time, but only that Andrew created this fantasy so that he would not have to remember that his wife was manic-depressive and murdered his children, and that he murdered her. Laeddis refuses to believe this and takes extreme measures to disprove it, grabbing what he thinks is his gun and tries to shoot Dr. Cawley; but his firearm is a toy pistol and snaps in his hands. Chuck, the man he thinks is his partner comes in, revealing that he is actually Laeddis’ psychiatrist, Dr. Sheehan. He is told that Dr. Cawley and Sheehan have come up with this treatment to allow him to live out his elaborate fantasy, in order to confront the truth, or else undergo a lobotomy