Black Swan Essay -- Film Analysis, Nina Sayers

The main character in the film Black Swan, twenty-eight year old female Nina Sayers, displays signs of numerous disorders through her abnormal behavior. Nina’s life is consumed by her occupation: professional ballerina/dancer. Nina resides with her mother and rarely socializes with others. She has difficulty concentrating, is restless, irritable, suffers from muscle tension, and sleep disturbances from nightmares. Nina also feels very uncomfortable in social and intimate situations. She appears to be unable to successfully interact with those around her. The interaction that Nina has with her fellow dancers appears to be strained and superficial. Nina exhibits behavior that indicates she views all other dancers as competition instead of potential comrades’ or friends. Being very introverted and unable to share any part of herself with those around her, even her mother, who appears to be the only person that has been remotely close to Nina, causes her to seek companio nship with parts of herself instead of healthy relationships with others. Nina exhibits signs of generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and paranoid personality disorder through these abnormal behaviors. Nina has also blacked out on several occasions and shows signs of mutilation to her body without her knowledge: bruises, cuts, and scratches. According to her mother, Nina used to self-mutilate when she was a child, but it has recently started happening again. Nina sees images of herself, but a different and â€Å"evil† version of herself. This could be the awakening of an alter personality or sub-personality. Nina’s stress level with the new performance in her ballet comapny may have played a part in this change. Dissociative identity disorder is said... ...ed with extensive amounts of individual psychotherapy. Free association must be applied in these therapy sessions; free association is when the therapist has the patient describe any thought, feeling, or image that comes to mind (Comer, 2011). Nina will hopefully relive past repressed feelings from her childhood, this is called catharsis, and it is extremely important for the progression of treatment. Catharsis is paramount for Nina to settle her internal conflicts and overcome her problems. Hypnotherapy should be applied during regular therapy sessions to combat Nina’s dissociative identity disorder. Her sub-personality must be integrated and merged into a single personality, before other sub-personalities appear. If these therapies and medications are continued consistently and Nina cooperates in treatment, the likelihood of a successful recovery is high.