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Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, is a film about an average man, so average that he doesn't even even have a name; in the credits, he is referred to as "The Narrator". He lives a monotonous life where everything is "a copy of a copy of a copy" (Fight Club). It isn't until the day where he meets Tyler Durden while traveling on a plane for a business trip that his life gets stirred up. Tyler is everything the Narrator isn't, and everything the Narrator wishes to be. The Narrator focuses on material things, like how much he can buy from an Ikea catalog, while Tyler lives his life with the belief that "the things you own end up owning you" (Fight Club). Played by Brad Pitt, Tyler embodies the sex appeal that the Narrator (played by Edward Norton) wishes for, and as he works various odd jobs to get by, he isn't tied down to a big corporation like the Narrator is. The big "twist" at the end of the film is that we find out that the Narrator and Tyler Durden are the same person. From a Freudian stand-point, Tyler represent the Narrator's id, which is all of his unconscious wants and desires (Cherry). Throughout the entirety of the film, we see how the id, ego, and superego play out in the Narrator's mind, and how Tyler represents every desire that he has suppressed, whether that be from childhood or adulthood.
Sigmund Freud's study on the psychoanalysis of the mind is where we find what the id, ego, and superego are. Psychology author Kendra Cherry simplifies the definitions for us as follows:
- The Id: The id acts as our unconscious and is where we get all of our "instincts" from. The id also contains a "pleasure principle", where we have this need to fulfill all of our desires, whether they be sexual or primal (Cherry). If we do not fulfill these needs, the result can cause us tension (Cherry).
- The Ego: The ego is where our conscious lies, and this is the part of our brain which deals with reality. Essentially, the ego takes into consideration what the id wants, and will act upon it in the most socially acceptable way (Cherry).
- The Superego: This idea of social acceptance is where the superego comes into play, as it represents our morals and our sense of "right and wrong" (Cherry). There are two different components to the superego, which are 1.) the ego ideal, which are the ideas of "good behavior" that have been instilled in us by our parents or guardians, and 2.) the conscious, which are the ideas that our parents or guardians tell us are bad and we shouldn't do (Cherry). This is the part of our brain that makes us realize that if we do bad things, we will be punished and there will be consequences to our actions (Cherry).
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Within the id is where the Oedipal Complex occurs, because the male child unconsciously desires his mother, while also wanting to take the father's place (Group Psychology 439). Freud writes, "At a very early age, the little boy developes an object-cathexis for his mother, which originally related to the mother's breast and is the prototype of an object-choice on the anaclitic model; the boy deals with his father by identifying himself with him" (The Ego and the Id 20). In Fight Club, we get a small glimpse into what the Narrator's childhood was like, as well as what his relationship with his parents was like. At one point, Tyler says, "Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?" (Fight Club), which tells us that the Narrator's father abandoned him at one point in his life (we know this because Tyler and the Narrator are the same person). Then we also have the Narrator saying, "Except for their humping, Tyler and Marla were never in the same room. My parents pulled this exact same act for years" (Fight Club), which tells us that his parents had a dysfunctional relationship that revolved mainly around sex and zero communication. Now that we have that background information, we can make more implications towards the narrator's relationship with each individual parent, which can show us how he examines traits from the Oedipal Complex.
As the film is called Fight Club, of course fighting is going to be a large part of it. Tyler and The Narrator form a club where men of all different types can come and beat each other up for a couple of hours every week to make themselves feel alive. After their first fight together, Tyler and The Narrator have an interesting conversation in the bathroom when The Narrator asks Tyler who he'd fight if he could fight anyone he wanted, and Tyler says he'd fight his dad (Link to video scene here) (Fight Club). From this scene, we're able to see that the Narrator has hostile feelings towards his father, and that he acknowledges that he is in fact a boy that was raised by a woman--his mother. The fact that he calls himself a "boy" rather than a "man" implies a reference to the Oedipal stage. As Freud says, "The little boy notices that his father stands in his way with his mother. His identification with his father then takes on a hostile coloring" (Group Psychology 438). This scene is integral to the analysis of The Narrator and the Oedipal complex, because Tyler says that his father is the one person he'd want to fight the most. Again, we know that Tyler and the Narrator are the same person, but the fact that it is Tyler who is saying these hostile words shows us that the hostility that a child feels toward their father is strictly unconscious, because that's what the id is, and that's what Tyler is.
Furthermore, as I quoted Freud earlier about object-relation (mainly breasts), breasts play a large (no pun intended) role in this film. First and foremost, there's Bob. Bob is a character that the Narrator meets at a group therapy session for people who suffer from testicular cancer. The Narrator does not have testicular cancer, but he goes to these meetings because upon complaining about how he was in "pain" from the insomnia he felt he had, his doctor says, "You wanna see pain? Swing by First Methodist Tuesday nights. See the guys with testicular cancer. That's pain" (Fight Club). So the Narrator goes to a meeting, and that's where he meets Robert "Bob" Paulson. We learn that Bob used to be a "champion body builder" (Fight Club), but he developed testicular cancer after using a lot of steroids. His testicles had to be removed and he developed "bitch tits", as the Narrator refers to them, because he had too much testosterone, and so his body overcompensated with too much estrogen (Fight Club).
(image source: http://www.leavemethewhite.com/caps/displayimage.php?album=130&pid=50217#top_display_media)
The Narrator soon learns that the only way he can fall asleep at night is if he cries, and the only way he can cry is at these group therapy sessions. His first big cry and his best night of sleep, though, comes from the source of Bob and his "bitch tits". The way I think Freud would look at this is that the Narrator recognizes the breasts to be something that his mother had, as they were his source of food as an infant. He finds comfort and solace in Bob because he has breasts just like his mother did.
While analyzing more of the ego, Freud writes, "It is noticeable that [...] the ego sometimes copies the person who is not loved and sometimes the one who is loved. It must also strike us that in both cases the identification is a partial and extremely limited one and only borrows a single trait from the person who is its object" (Group Psychology 439). We see this in the film as the narrator slowly picks up little habits that Tyler has and slips them into his conscious, every day life. Before he met Tyler, he never smoked cigarettes. After meeting Tyler, you see him slowly start smoking more and more throughout the film, even a scene where, to his boss's dismay, he's smoking at work. It's important to note that there are only little character traits which come upon the surface from Tyler with the Narrator. His superego is still in tact, as he's fully aware of what is right and what is wrong. For example, there is a scene where Tyler puts a gun to a convenience store worker's head, and makes him promise that he'll go back to veterinary school, or else he'll blow his brains out. The whole time the convenience store worker is pleading for his life, the Narrator keeps begging Tyler to cut it out, because he knows this is a messed up thing to do (link to video scene here) (Fight Club).
(image source: http://www.leavemethewhite.com/caps/displayimage.php?album=130&pid=50681#top_display_media)
While analyzing more of the ego, Freud writes, "It is noticeable that [...] the ego sometimes copies the person who is not loved and sometimes the one who is loved. It must also strike us that in both cases the identification is a partial and extremely limited one and only borrows a single trait from the person who is its object" (Group Psychology 439). We see this in the film as the narrator slowly picks up little habits that Tyler has and slips them into his conscious, every day life. Before he met Tyler, he never smoked cigarettes. After meeting Tyler, you see him slowly start smoking more and more throughout the film, even a scene where, to his boss's dismay, he's smoking at work. It's important to note that there are only little character traits which come upon the surface from Tyler with the Narrator. His superego is still in tact, as he's fully aware of what is right and what is wrong. For example, there is a scene where Tyler puts a gun to a convenience store worker's head, and makes him promise that he'll go back to veterinary school, or else he'll blow his brains out. The whole time the convenience store worker is pleading for his life, the Narrator keeps begging Tyler to cut it out, because he knows this is a messed up thing to do (link to video scene here) (Fight Club).
(image source: http://www.leavemethewhite.com/caps/displayimage.php?album=130&pid=50681#top_display_media)
Later in the film, the members of fight club come up with a new idea to wreak havoc all over town by doing things like destroying a capital building like Starbucks. They call this group Project Mayhem . Because the Narrator's superego is so strong, he's able to understand that a lot of what the members of Project Mayhem are doing is wrong, and they're most likely going to get themselves into serious trouble. Therefore, the id, Tyler, catches on to this and focuses more of his attention to a different member of fight club, appropriately named Angel Face. When the Narrator sees that Angel Face is getting more affection from Tyler than he is, he says, "I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection" (Fight Club).
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From a Freudian standpoint, this kind of jealousy can be looked at as kind of homoerotic. Freud writes, "The study of mild cases of homosexuality confirms the suspicion that in this instance, too, the identification is a substitute for an affectionate object-choice which has taken the place of the aggressive, hostile attitude" (The Ego and the Id 27). The Narrator later examines hostile behavior when he is pitted against Angel Face in a fight during fight club, where he takes it too far and ends up putting Angel Face in the hospital after beating him to a bloody pulp where his face is nearly unrecognizable. If we decide to stay on the homosexuality train and stay with this theory, we can conclude that the Narrator's hostility comes from a sexual desire for Tyler, which he has otherwise suppressed. This sexual desire isn't in the form of the Narrator wanting to be with Tyler, rather it's in the form of him wanting to be Tyler. To him, Tyler represents all of the Narrator's sexual desires, which we later see with Marla Singer.
(image source: http://www.leavemethewhite.com/caps/displayimage.php?album=130&pid=50285#top_display_media)
"If I had a tumor, I'd name it Marla" (Fight Club) is what the Narrator says of her. She likes to go to support group meetings too, because "It's cheaper than a movie and there's free coffee" (Fight Club). The issue there is that the Narrator can't cry if he knows there's another faker in the room, and if he can't cry, he can't sleep. So he begins to hate Marla; he thinks she's disgusting. Eventually, they spark up a deal to split up the meetings so they never have to see each other again, and that's supposed to be the end of it. However, Marla eventually meets Tyler, and so she spends almost every night having sex with him, much to the Narrator's dismay. Of course, we know that Tyler and the Narrator are the same person, so while Tyler, the id, loves having sex with her, the narrator, the ego, is disgusted when he sees her in the kitchen every morning, wondering how Tyler could ever want to be with her. In Freudian terms, the Narrator is subconsciously attracted to Marla, because Tyler is attracted to Marla, and Tyler has sex the way that the Narrator wants to have sex. Freud writes of "erotic object-choice", and I believe that object to be Marla. He writes:
"From another point of view it may be said that this transformation of an erotic object-choice into an alteration of the ego is also a method by which the ego can obtain control over the id and deepen its relations with it--at the cost, it is true, of acquiescing to a large extent in the id's experiences. When the ego assumes the features of the object, it is forcing itself, so to speak, upon the id as a love-object and is trying to make good the id's loss by saying, 'Look, you can love me too--I am so like the object" (The Ego and the Id 20).
I think that this quote can be applied to either Angel Face or Marla. The Narrator wants to show Tyler that he's just like him, so he deserves his affection as well. So when the Narrator destroys Angel Face, it's his way of saying, "You still have me! I'm just as good!" Yet with Marla, when The Narrator interacts with her as though he hates her, this may interfere with the feelings she has with the id, Tyler. Therefore, this proves Freud's idea of how it may alter the id's experience.
Using Freud's theories of psychoanalysis, we're able to see how Fight Club focuses around the id, ego, and superego. More than that, we're able to see how the Oedipal complex fits in with the id and how the Narrator's childhood resurfaces throughout the film because of it. Marla ends up serving as the focal point for Freud's idea of sexual suppression and desire, which we've learned is often strong with the id. The atmosphere of the fight club is a hostile one all in it's own--it does have to do with fighting, after all. But the atmosphere reflects upon the people in it, and the hostility we see from Tyler and the Narrator ends up combining in order to form a perfect sense of destruction and so much suppression that Freud would love.
(image source: http://api.ning.com/files/sNGui7dfNNYQzSkPZKUwiEbZJ2Hg2dlO03VOMc*u8THpiRWKyYfE-Os4rybcwzdpSn7KQeCWMk9TnrjY4rooxo6IfKqVUiXz/fight_club_galaxy_3_wallpaper_by_jizzy2007d3814ni.png)
Work Cited
Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. Fox 2000 Pictures, 1999. DVD.
Freud, Sigmund. "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego." Literary Theory: An Anthology. By Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. N. pag. Print.
Freud, Sigmund, and James Strachey. The Ego and the Id. New York: Norton, 1962. 18-29. Print.
Cherry, Kendra. "What Did Freud Really Believe about Personality and the Id, Ego, and Superego?" About.com Psychology. About.com, n.d. Web. 04 May 2014.
(image source: http://www.leavemethewhite.com/caps/displayimage.php?album=130&pid=50285#top_display_media)
"If I had a tumor, I'd name it Marla" (Fight Club) is what the Narrator says of her. She likes to go to support group meetings too, because "It's cheaper than a movie and there's free coffee" (Fight Club). The issue there is that the Narrator can't cry if he knows there's another faker in the room, and if he can't cry, he can't sleep. So he begins to hate Marla; he thinks she's disgusting. Eventually, they spark up a deal to split up the meetings so they never have to see each other again, and that's supposed to be the end of it. However, Marla eventually meets Tyler, and so she spends almost every night having sex with him, much to the Narrator's dismay. Of course, we know that Tyler and the Narrator are the same person, so while Tyler, the id, loves having sex with her, the narrator, the ego, is disgusted when he sees her in the kitchen every morning, wondering how Tyler could ever want to be with her. In Freudian terms, the Narrator is subconsciously attracted to Marla, because Tyler is attracted to Marla, and Tyler has sex the way that the Narrator wants to have sex. Freud writes of "erotic object-choice", and I believe that object to be Marla. He writes:
"From another point of view it may be said that this transformation of an erotic object-choice into an alteration of the ego is also a method by which the ego can obtain control over the id and deepen its relations with it--at the cost, it is true, of acquiescing to a large extent in the id's experiences. When the ego assumes the features of the object, it is forcing itself, so to speak, upon the id as a love-object and is trying to make good the id's loss by saying, 'Look, you can love me too--I am so like the object" (The Ego and the Id 20).
I think that this quote can be applied to either Angel Face or Marla. The Narrator wants to show Tyler that he's just like him, so he deserves his affection as well. So when the Narrator destroys Angel Face, it's his way of saying, "You still have me! I'm just as good!" Yet with Marla, when The Narrator interacts with her as though he hates her, this may interfere with the feelings she has with the id, Tyler. Therefore, this proves Freud's idea of how it may alter the id's experience.
Using Freud's theories of psychoanalysis, we're able to see how Fight Club focuses around the id, ego, and superego. More than that, we're able to see how the Oedipal complex fits in with the id and how the Narrator's childhood resurfaces throughout the film because of it. Marla ends up serving as the focal point for Freud's idea of sexual suppression and desire, which we've learned is often strong with the id. The atmosphere of the fight club is a hostile one all in it's own--it does have to do with fighting, after all. But the atmosphere reflects upon the people in it, and the hostility we see from Tyler and the Narrator ends up combining in order to form a perfect sense of destruction and so much suppression that Freud would love.
(image source: http://api.ning.com/files/sNGui7dfNNYQzSkPZKUwiEbZJ2Hg2dlO03VOMc*u8THpiRWKyYfE-Os4rybcwzdpSn7KQeCWMk9TnrjY4rooxo6IfKqVUiXz/fight_club_galaxy_3_wallpaper_by_jizzy2007d3814ni.png)
Work Cited
Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. Fox 2000 Pictures, 1999. DVD.
Freud, Sigmund. "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego." Literary Theory: An Anthology. By Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. N. pag. Print.
Freud, Sigmund, and James Strachey. The Ego and the Id. New York: Norton, 1962. 18-29. Print.
Cherry, Kendra. "What Did Freud Really Believe about Personality and the Id, Ego, and Superego?" About.com Psychology. About.com, n.d. Web. 04 May 2014.
