Study of Psychoanalysis: Jungian Psychology in Vanilla Sky

Crowe's Vanilla Sky carefully details the human ordeal of having to come to terms with one's daunting unconscious mind. David, the protagonist in Vanilla Sky must continually confront the dark and tumultuous nature of his psyche in hopes of attaining individuation/self-realization. David is brutally wounded emotionally and physically, and this dire and painful endeavor is crucial because it allows him to undergo a complete life change where he is transformed into a much better being and is able to live a much more fulfilling life, as a result of his self-realization. In Vanilla Sky, David experiences his monumental life change when he becomes disfigured from a car accident and must cope with the traumatic consequences of this psychological tribulation

In Vanilla Sky, David, a narcissistic and superficial man, undergoes a psychologically and physically traumatizing life experience when his face becomes disfigured from a car crash. This experience although painful, is necessary in order to prompt David to really scrutinize his true self, face his psyche, and ultimately come to terms with himself. In the opening scene we first see how David is so absorbed with the pettiness of his looks. David is walking into the restroom, admiring his good looks in the mirror and meticulously searching for and plucking any stray white hairs he finds on head. David is obsessive about his appearance and even more so when his face is destroyed and he can't seem to accept the disfigured face as his very own. David who drives a Ferrari, inherits his father's magazine publishing corporation, and revels in his superficiality and wealth, is precisely someone who Jung would say has "lost their soul". Jung notes that the soul is our true nature, our primitive self which we have lost through methods of conditioning ion society. David has lost touch with nature and has been conditioned to prioritize non-significant material things such as wealth and business, but this turning away from nature only makes it more difficult to come to terms with oneself. "But the meaning of life is not exhaustively explained by one's business life, nor the deep desire of the human heart answered by a bank account." (Jung 93).

In the film a fatal car accident leaves David alive but physically disfigured and also emotionally devastated. But as seemingly devastating as this event is, it is also positive opportunity that allows him to delve deep into the horrors of the unconscious mind and accept his true self, not the persona or mask he has been in disguised in. "We must conclude that a 'montage' of all the images that constitute the ego-group constitute what Jung calls the persona, or mask of personality, that we present to the world." (Babcock 29). David is at first disgusted, saddened, and angered by the realization that he has lost his good looks. He struggles with this painful realization and has trouble accepting his new self. "The persona always resists and rebels. Because the whole of life as we know and experience it is represented in the countless images of self and others, of things and places, that make up each one's ego-group; and in this medley there must be factions that resist and rebel, that embrace and enjoy, that glorify and degrade." (Babcock 31). A blanket of superficiality had enveloped him in a false sense of security, and that is why he is threatened by this horrible incident, he misses his good looks, his wealth, and getting all the girls. Thus David's persona resists and rebels because it cannot at first accept the changes taking place; he is vulnerable without this persona and it is difficult for his to come to term the weaknesses of his true self.

David attempts to repress the accident in his mind and hide his facial appearance behind a prosthetic mask, since he is trying to physically and psychically erase the past and return to his usual self. He wears the mask in order to hide his hideous face from himself and others. In Jungian terms, the mask/persona is not truly himself but the substitute self he chooses to show himself and others. "David's persona-the role he plays-is that of an irresponsible, carefree playboy who has inherited the controlling share of a magazine publishing empire, along with a fantastic amount of money, from his father."(Cavagna 2). In one scene David and his best friend Brian are in a club, and Brian urges David to take off the prosthetic mask so that he can see his real face: "Take off that mask, man. It's freaking me out!" David quickly refuses and says: "It's my face, man. This is my face." Brian sees deep beyond physical appearance, and has realized that no matter how ugly David's real self may seem, it is still better than having a synthetically beautiful imitation. Sophia, David's lover, also commands him to take off his mask and bare his real face, not the disguise he is wearing: "Take off that mask, David. You'll see your face is perfect underneath." While David at first has difficulties accepting his true self, because he is frightened by how scary it is, and would much rather live in disguise, his closest friends are able to notice that the man underneath the mask is who David really is, not the man he has pretended to be all along. David is self conscious about his appearance while removing the mask, he asks Sophia how he looks, and she responds: "It's perfect", meaning she is immensely satisfied with David having stripped off the thick layers of the mask of superficiality and bared his naked and true identity.

Julie, David's casual sex partner, who's responsible for his disfigurement, is a continual and painful reminder of his near death experience and of the lifetime physical effects he must cope with. Julie reflects a difficult and scary section in David's psyche. Through memories that David tries so hard to repress, Julie inevitably comes back to taunt and torture him, leaving him emotionally and mentally distraught each time. The unconscious "represents or personifies certain instinctive data of the dark, primitive psyches, the real but invisible roots of consciousness." (Jung, ken 79). According to psychoanalysis, when dark and painful memories are repressed and forcefully pushed into unconscious mind, they later reappear in a darker nature. Julie pops into David's mind, even in the most inopportune times, as when he is with Sophia. "There is more to the self than the conscious mind, which is ultimately why David starts rejecting elements of his reality and he begins to see apparatus of Julia."(Cavaglia 3). David tried to repress frightening memories of the accident and of Julie, but they mercilessly reappear to haunt him. In one scene we see David and Sophia making love and suddenly David has an apparition of Julie, he is really looking into Sophia's face yet he sees and hears Julie talking to him. This delusion is enough to madly drive David to put a pillow over Sophia (whom he thinks is Julie) and suffocate her

"David's disfigured face, which he sometimes hides with his mask, represents his shadow." (Cavagna 3) David is struggling to accept an ugly side to his personality, a new self emerging, and what's most difficult is the acceptance of his negative qualities, because they are ego-bruising realities that leave him emotionally shattered. David hates his ruined face because he misses his lost attractiveness and is forced to introspect himself, and put his physical appearance aside, but naturally he is overpowered by the shadow elements of himself. "Dr Jung has pointed out that the shadow cast by the conscious mind of the individual contains the hidden, repressed, and unfavorable aspects of the personality." (Henderson 110). David is overwhelmed by the life change that caused him to lose his attractive face, his self-esteem, and almost his wealth when co-workers battle over ownership of the business. "When an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow he becomes aware (and often ashamed) of those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in other people." (Von Franz 174). Brian, David's best friend, represents another aspect of David's shadow. Although David is not fully consciously aware of it, he envies Brian's maturity and responsible nature. David takes little, if any responsibilities in his work and personal life, and Brian points out his flaws to him. In the film, Brain warns David: "You can do whatever you want with your life, but one day you'll know what love is, it's the sour and the sweet." David is stubbornly incredulous and he just laughs off Brian's remark since he dislikes being told how he should live his life, but Brian is trying to tell David that he is irresponsible, naïve and that all his wealth has blinded him, but one day he will realize he was wrong. Inevitably, Brian is right and David must learn about his flaws by living through a traumatic situation, which causes him much pain but also enlightens him about himself. When our friends point out our flaws to us, naturally we find it difficult to admit that they are true, because it lowers our self-esteem, but in order to come to terms with ourselves it is essential that we accept all our weaknesses and faults. "If you feel an overwhelming rage coming up in you when a friend reproaches you about a fault, you can be fairly sure that at this point you will find a part of your shadow, of which you are unconscious."(Franz 174)

David's anima, or buried female side is represented in Sophia. "His attraction to her is irresistible because she is his anima, his archetypal dream lover, the personification of the feminine nature in his own unconscious. Jung posited that all men carry an ideal image of a woman in their heads and unconsciously project that image onto 'the person of the beloved'." (Cavagna 2). David finds in Sophia not only a genuine lover and companion, but most significantly the female side of himself. "An inherited collective image of woman exists in a man's unconscious, with the help of which he apprehends the nature of a woman. This inherited image is the third important source of the femininity of the soul." (Jung 203). The balance of opposites is necessary to achieve a totality of self, and is what Jung refers to as the hermaphroditic self "Wholeness consists of the union of the conscious and unconscious personality. Just as every individual derives from masculine and feminine genes, and the sex is determined by the predominance of the corresponding genes, so in the psyche it is only the conscious mind, in a man, that has the masculine sign, while the unconscious is by nature feminine." (Jung/Kerenyi 94)

Despite David having been overwhelmed at first by the dark and scary nature of his unconscious, he is able to finally accept his weaknesses, battle his psychological demons, and ultimately reach a totality of self. David, who we first hear has a great fear of heights, ends up plunging himself from a skyscraper fearlessly. One reason why he does this is to wake up from the "dream world" that L.E corporations has enclosed him in; all this time he has been dead, just living in a sort of dream world. This action is monumental since it is at this point in the film that David realizes he no longer wants to live in the dream world he has been living in all along, he faces his deepest fears in his unconscious mind and learns to deal with them. His having thrown himself off a huge building has more than simply a literal meaning, symbolically it means that David has finally confronted his fears and has attained individuation. His old self will die, and his new self will take over; it is essentially a rebirth. Jung refers to individuation as a re-birth, a death of our old selves, and a birth to a new, more complete and fulfilled self. It is essentially reaching our full potential as humans. "The goal of the individuation process is the synthesis of the self." ( Jung/Kary 83). The process is very difficult to undergo and one must accept the death of their old self, they must be willing to undergo a complete change of self. In Damien, Hesse so perfectly describes that in the process of individuation: "Nothing can be born without first dying." (Hesse 160). The journey is a solitary and difficult one, but it is necessary to reach our full potential as human beings.

Crowe's Vanilla Sky carefully details the human ordeal of having to come to terms with one's daunting unconscious mind. David, the protagonist in Vanilla Sky must continually confront the dark and tumultuous nature of his psyche in hopes of attaining individuation/self-realization. David is brutally wounded emotionally and physically, and this dire and painful endeavor is crucial because it allows the character to undergo a complete life change where they are transformed into a much better being and live a much more fulfilling life, as a result of their self-realization.

Works Cited
Babcock, Winifred. Jung, Hesse, Harold .New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1983.
Cavagna, Carlo. Vanilla Sky. AboutFilm.com December 2001.
Hesse, Herman. Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth. New York: Buccaneer Books, 1976.
Franz, Von M.L, Henderson, Joseph C, et al. Man and His Symbols. New York: Dell Publishing, 1964.
Jung, C.G. The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung. New York: The Modern Library, 1993.
Jung, C., Kerenyi, C. Essays on a Science of Mythology. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972.