Analysis of the movie “If you go crazy, don’t fall in love”

An analysis of Carl Rogers’ person-centered approach.

By Bruno Ricardo Pereira Almeida

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Original title: It’s Kind of a Funny Story

Director: Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden

Main actors: Zach Galifianakis, Emma Roberts, Lauren Graham, Viola Davis, Jeremy Davies, Keir Gilchrist, Jim Gaffigan, Mary Birdsong, Zoë Kravitz, Cheryl Alessio, Aasif Mandvi

Year of manufacture: 2011

Duration: 101 minutes.

Trailer:

Carrying out an analysis that does not allow analytical-based concepts is always a great challenge, but for that I would like to start by quoting:

“Rogers modified his view of the unconscious, suggesting that unconscious organismic processes do, and should, guide much of our behavior. Such processes are not antisocial and impulsive in the Freudian sense; they are reliable guides to achieving personal fulfillment and developing warm interpersonal relationships. Rogers seems to be saying: Trust your unconscious.” (CAMPBELL; HALL; LINDZEY, 2000, p.386).

According to FADIMAN, FRAGER (1986) Rogers defines psychotherapy as the release of capacity present in a latent state. That is, the customer has the potential and competence necessary to solve their problems.

As in the beginning of the film Craig, a teenager with suicidal ideation tries to commit suicide on the bridge, but ends up giving up and looking for a hospital to solve his problem. For that:

“Rogers wrote that behavior is basically the intentional attempt by the organism to satisfy its needs as experienced, in the field as perceived. This position, referring as it does to needs in the plural, does not contradict the notion of a single motive. While there are many needs, they are all subservient to the organism’s basic tendency to maintain and improve.” (CAMPBELL; HALL; LINDZEY, 2000, p.370).

In the humanist view, the focus is to analyze what Craig has experienced, and what makes him look at his reality in this way, not for a single reason, but for his integral experience. Craig arriving at the hospital is a little incongruous to say that he is suicidal and the attendant is on the phone and says: Answer this questionnaire. Without even worrying about the individual present there, but only with his task of registering the data in the computer. He is just a given, not a person who needs attention. The incongruity is clear, the distance that individual (attendant) sees the other (Craig).

While staying in the waiting room, he meets a patient who is dressed as a doctor named Bobby, there is a brief exchange of dialogue between the two and then he is called by the doctor to diagnose him, it is noteworthy that the doctor is a clinician who does not focus only on the symptoms, unlike the attendant, the doctor is humanist, asking:

Doctor: So, how long have you been suicidal?
Craig: – I don’t know. I’ve been depressed for about a year now. And I’ve thought about it before, but never like this. You know, never so real.
Doctor: – Did anything happen today in particular to trigger these feelings?
At this point Craig reflects before answering: Sometimes I wish I had a simple answer to why I’m depressed. That my father beat me. Or that they sexually abused me. But my problems are less dramatic than that. Like, my dad always asks the wrong questions. When we’re having lunch he says, “So, Craig, how’s Intro to Wall Street going?”
Craig: But I do have a problem with stress vomiting. And sometimes my friends look at me like I’m from another planet.

In this sense, it is important to highlight two fundamental concepts of Carl Rogers’ personality structure: the organism and the self. “The organism, psychologically conceived, is the focus of all experience. Experience includes everything that is happening within the organism at any given moment and that is potentially available to consciousness. This totality of experience constitutes the phenomenal field. the phenomenal field is the frame of reference of the individual that can only be known by the individual himself. How the individual behaves depends on the phenomenal field (subjective reality) and not on stimulating conditions (external conditions).” (CAMPBELL; HALL; LINDZEY, 2000, p.368).

The self is “a portion of the phenomenal field gradually differentiates itself. It’s the self. The self, or self-concept. In addition to the self as it is (the structure of the self), there is an ideal self, which is what the person would like to be.” (CAMPBELL; HALL; LINDZEY, 2000, p.368-369). So Craig in his self is a student at one of the best schools in New York, has a family in which his father is a businessman, his mother who is apparently caring and affectionate, however, she is fragile, and his younger sister who according to Craig himself she’s a little genius. He has friends and is in love with his friend’s girlfriend.

In this sense, Craig’s ideal self is to be an intelligent student, as all his friends are intellectuals, are good at sports and have many award-winning curriculum activities, but he does not. Her friend’s girlfriend, he was already in love with her before, and now he has to live with the couple’s presence at his leisure. He would like to have a girlfriend, and be happy.

According to Campbell; Hall; Lindzey (2000) in Rogers’ theory are implicit two manifestations, one of them is congruence or lack thereof between the subjective reality of the individual and the external reality (the world as it really is). The other is the degree between self and ideal self, if the discrepancy is large, the person becomes dissatisfied or maladjusted. As is the case with Craig.

After joining the psychiatrist ward at the hospital, the nurse suggests that Bobby show him the ward, and also his roommate Mutada who didn’t get out of bed for nothing. Craig realizes that when he sees the number of mentally ill people and he has only one case of suicide, taken by his anxiety, he seeks out Dr. Minerva and says she’s better now and she has to leave, because she has class tomorrow, but she has to stay, because it’s mandatory for at least five days. And Dr. Minerva says:

– Depression is a medical illness. If you were diabetic, would you be embarrassed by this?

Dr. Minerva in a condition of unconditional positive regard in the session, and Craig then begins to reflect his questions saying that before trying to throw himself off the bridge he was depressed, anxious and stressed. Because his father would like him to go to summer school, so he would get into a good college, have a good job, a good lifestyle, get a girlfriend. Otherwise, he would feel depressed and look like Mutada, but Craig can’t expose that. And he says it’s just hard to say what he feels. For that FADIMAN, FRAGER (1986) says that the evaluation tends to restrict the behavior respecting some things and punishing others, since the unconditional positive consideration allows the person to be really what it is, no matter what it may be.

The next day Craig, having breakfast, Hubble asks Craig for a burrito, and Bobby says to return it, but Hubble does not return it, so Bobby takes it and returns it to Craig’s plate, but Craig says he was not hungry. So Bobby hands the burrito back and leaves very angry about it and kicks a chair.

Then comes the group, or rather, saying Meeting groups in the psychiatric ward that according to Rogers (2009, p.5):

“Encounter Groups (or Basic Encounter Group) – This aims to enhance personal growth and the development and improvement of communication and interpersonal relationships, through an experiential process.”

Rogers (2009) proposes 15 steps in the process of developing an encounter group: 1. Phase: Hesitation and walking around. 2nd Phase: Resistance to pressure or personal exploration. 3rd Phase: Description of past feelings. 4th Phase: Expression of negative feelings. 5th Phase: Expression and/or exploration of material with personal meaning. 6th Phase: Expression of immediate interpersonal feelings in the group. 7th Phase: Development of a therapeutic capacity in the group. 8th Phase: Acceptance of the Self and beginning of change. 9th Phase: The cracking of facades and masks. 10th Phase: The individual is the target of reaction by others. 11th Phase: Confrontation phase (in giving and receiving direct interpersonal feedback). 12th Phase: Begins an interpersonal helping relationship, outside the group sessions. 13th Phase: The basic encounter appears. 14th Phase: Expression of positive feelings and greater intimacy. 15th Phase: Behavioral changes in the group. These phases are not necessarily rigid or sequential, as in the film we only see a few.

Thus, in the development process in the group, it is possible to observe that at the beginning, that is, at the moment Craig joins the group and Dr. Minerva suggests that someone start telling what happened that morning (Bobby was upset). The therapist’s non-directiveness is clear, expecting the members of the group to identify themselves. According to Campbell; Hall; Lindzey (2000) successful client-centered therapy, performed under optimal conditions, means that the therapist was able to establish an intensely personal and subjective relationship with the client – ​​relating not as a scientist to an object of study, not like a doctor, hoping to diagnose and cure – but like a person with another person. It does not hide behind a defensive facade, it means that the therapist is able to let go, transmit some of his empathy to the client, and is completely at ease in this relationship. When one of the members says it was Bobby. And he thinks he did it because Bobby is stressed about the interview. And he doesn’t have a nice sweater to go. So Craig suggests he could borrow a shirt from his dad. Craig’s empathy seems to be the element that makes it possible to put oneself in the other’s shoes, a necessary quality to be a Rogerian therapist.

The group experience is not an end in itself, but its meaning is more important when it resides in the influence it has on behavior outside the group. It is where the true changes and influences in the life of each individual can be seen, summed up in several cabling, whether at a personal, vocational, professional, intellectual, philosophical level, among others, which can mean changes in the quality of communication between parents and children, at school, in business, in short, in life.

After the first contact with the group, Craig starts to establish a constant dialogue with Naomi outside the group. Because they both attempt suicide (even in different ways) they are congruent and empathetic about it, so much so that only at the end of the film does Craig ask why she tried to commit suicide.

Also attending an art therapy session that refers to a self-actualization of his feelings, as he managed to draw a brain map, what at the age of five was a failure when trying to draw a map, at that moment he feels satisfied for doing it in the here now. According to Rogers (1992) every human being is driven by a tendency towards growth – the actualizing tendency – and postulates that, given certain suitable conditions, the human being…