What secrets hides the film “Chocolate”? The opinion of the psychologist
What do we know about our shadow? About what is supplanted, hidden, but continues to live inside us, controlling our speech and actions? With psychologist Sasha Makhova, let’s talk about the temptations, secret passions and the film “Chocolate”. And we will also find out what practice helps to find your depressed desires.
Open the chocolate on the eve of the Great Lent in the God -fearing Catholic province? This is exactly what Vienn Rocher does, the heroine Juliet Binosh in the film “Chocolate”. And she also does not go to church and is friends with the gypsies, against which the local mayor spreads leaflets under the auspices of the fight against immorality. With one of the nomads, she even starts a novel. In general, in every possible way it challenges the old foundations and annoys orthodox.
You will ask, what does Jung have to do with it?
A fight with a shadow
The whole atmosphere in the city seems to be created to combat living human needs. The mayor of the city is hunger, but secretly from the servant eagerly sniffs jam, and the local widow still worses the husband who died in the First World War, although the film takes place in the 1950s. The inhabitants of the city seem to resist themselves and expect the same from others.
A little theory. Who is this shadow?
The ancestor of the theory of the shadow was a psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology Karl Gustav Jung. He defined it as an autonomous part of the personality supplanted into the subconscious.
Speaking in a simple way, a shadow is such manifestations and desires that we do not recognize in ourselves. These are we are, which we consciously do not choose. The shadow makes itself felt when the professor’s daughter falls in love with an experienced womanizer, and the priest notes that he involuntarily looks at the chest of the parishioner.
The shadow lives in the subconscious and sends its messages through erotic dreams and nightmares. This is what we don’t want to be. She is where the “devil” hesed and “I do not understand how this could happen to me”. Often it manifests itself in condemning others. For example, when a lady 40+ touched by male attention is talking about high morality and hates “these women in short skirts”.
A ticket for deportation in the shadow can receive not only lust or aggression, but also love with tenderness, if for some reason they do not undergo ethical censorship (forbidden relations, unequal social status of lovers). Love was born, but for the reasons of morality, it turned out to be crushed in the cradle of the subconscious.
A little more about conviction
As a rule, any fierce struggle – with fallen women, debauchery or conditional “chocolate”, as in the film – is primarily a struggle with yourself. A good example is people exhausted by a diet who hate “fat and burning” and by force of thought trying to suppress hunger in themselves.
Dark story
Long before Jung, philosophers and theologians wrote about the shadow. First, as the cohabitation of the animal and human in one organism (recall, for example, a minotaur or Egyptian gods with the heads of animals). Then as a divine and devilish (biblical plots).
And later, as a psychological duality in the consciousness and subconscious of a person (recall the famous story of Stevenson about Dr. Jackile and his shadow side – Mr. Hayde).
Bright your shadow
Sweets, cakes and londs become a “loud for the shadow”. Thanks to Vienn and her chocolate, the shadow comes into light.
Tired spouses suddenly recall what passion is, the scored wife leaves the Tyran’s husband and rejoices in freedom, and the lonely elderly gentleman understands that he is in love with that very widow. One by one, the inhabitants repent of confession in tasting desserts in the new confectionery. It seems that chocolate becomes a medicine for hungry for the pleasure of shower.
In my opinion, the film “Chocolate” is a wonderful illustration of what happens to people and societies, when the suppression of desires becomes the cult and norm of morality. Losing control of the situation, the mayor tries to set up the inhabitants against the main character, speaking of how painful he was to look at her illegitimate daughter. In despair, he climbs into her cafe to trample and chop all the goods with a knife, but the shadow takes his. The next morning he is found with overgrowing sweets that have come to unconsciousness.
The plot demonstrates how sooner or later supplanted desires make themselves felt. And it doesn’t matter if we are talking about cinema or life.
Workshop. Working with shadow
What to do if you notice the habit of suppressing desires and deny some of your manifestations? I suggest you do a small exercise that will help to better understand yourself and will continue to get acquainted with your shadow. If necessary, you can ask you to help you with this to whom you trust, or do it yourself using a pen and paper.
- Imagine a person who annoys
you very much.
- Describe in detail his image.
- Answer the question: what exactly is in it so much annoying you?
- Now put yourself in his place. Popytazy: what is it to be them? Speak like him? Act like him? Move like him?
- Ask him why he became such that this preceded.
- Now answer the question: how its qualities can be useful in life? What they can help, and what to interfere?
- Describe how your sensations have changed.
December – a month of summing up. Perhaps now is the time to turn to your repressed desires and change life for the better. Do not forget that any of your part has the right to life and implementation. Moreover, it is in it that great creative potential and strength for new achievements are hidden.