Depth Psychological Interpretation of 'Black Swan'

This film depicts the main mental epidemic the whole modern world is going through and will be increasingly. This girl is totally devoid/split off of her shadow side, the black swan. The director exquisitely catches how while she fee... It's is a conspiracy against her, and the audience is taken along in this paranoia, it is all along she herself, her shadow, that is taking over the white swan. Her unconscious is conspiring to get rid of the white swan. Yet she is lost in her projections of her shadow on this shady girl who perfectly fits that bill of her own dark swan. Yet it is she herself that ends up killing her white swan pole, in order that the shadow side can take center stage. It is really a master piece which captures the main mental drama of the West. 




But so far indeed this story of the modern mind doesn't end good. There's no re-union of the 2 sides. Yet it is a high fidelity representation of how the western/modern world is having a psychotic episode. After many many years of practice with the problem of the shadow... This film really nails it. 
Films are dreams and we are in dire need of addressing this problem and and thus imagining and making films where there's some level of reconciliation with the shadow if this modern world is to survive itself.

Rumi on Projection

Fear for Yourself

Everyone's death is of the same quality
as himself;
to the enemy of God, an enemy;
to the friend of God, a friend.
Your fear of death in fleeing from it
is really your fear for yourself.
Pay attention, dear Soul!

Choice and Thinking

We find ourselves constantly doing what we don’t want to do. 

I say something which I regret later. We are driven and controlled by external and alien forces. 

But we have a choice. For instance to not let one silly traffic incident spoil the rest of our day. 

We even have a choice as to what we think. 

We can change what we think. 

We can become aware that what we are thinking about someone (which is classically a projection) is not true. And hence we can choose to think something else. 

We can choose to not think. 

(Free) Choice and will predate and fore-go thinking. 

They operate thinking and thus feeling. The work of touching the shadow and re-taking projections is actually not thinking anymore. 

It is consciousness.

Listening To Me Talking To Myself

We are constantly talking to ourselves via others. When talking to the other we tacitly see a part of us we prefer not to see within. A woman tells me: "You will tell me I'm a materialist...but ...and she continues to tell me how for her material security etc is of great importance." This is a part of her that she is experiencing in me; or thus projecting on me. This is the part of herself which feels she hangs too much to the materialistic side. Yet she prefers to not see this side in herself, and hence ends up experiencing it via me. Her less materialistic side she is projecting on me and hence subsequently blames me for her feeling materialistic. This leads to not owning the too materialistic bent and to rejecting the less materialistic side within.

This inner talk or (here) conflict is constantly raging in us; yet there's no way to solve the conflict if the person remains unaware of the fact that it is in them. The point is that there's one side of us that is at odds with our dominant side. When listening yet more closely to ourselves and others we find the conflict before it is projected. A woman wearing much higher high heals than accustomed to, says she is afraid of having heard a voice in her tell her, while she was walking down a stairway, that she will fall and break her neck. This side could also be played out in terms of projecting on the husband that he doesn't want her to wear high heals.

Yet here we catch it before it is projected. This shadow side or demon can toward extreme conflict in the person literally attack itself. A woman once reported that in front of a stop light she had all intention to step on the breaks and that her leg out of its own stepped on the gas ramming into the car in front of her. But it can also react to us in our body as for instance a man who is overly active in wanting and demanding too much sex from his wife turns impotent. A man wanted to give a hand in a funeral ended up kissing the family member of the deceased person.

If we listen fast enough to the shadow (unconscious), it can make us extremely proactive in using the shadow to create great balance in us. For what this voice of opposition in us is actually trying to achieve is to curb our one-sidedness. Only, toward extreme one-sidedness it reacts in an equally extreme form. But when we truly listen to it and give real consequence to it; that is act upon it; it becomes an incredible tool and compass in creating balance in our own behavior and decisions. Yet more pro-actively we catch it in our dreams, which is where it first emerges only to subsequently play itself out during the day. When this is done it leads to a shift in outlook where we stop being reactive and realize we are creating the patterns we keep stuck in.

So the way we feel the other is looking at us is a part of the way we are looking at ourselves.