Psychology is the examining of metal functions and behaviors of a person(s). With billions and billions of synapses in the human brain odds are that some things happen inaccurately or circumstances can affect a person in a peculiar way. Psychologists have countless concepts to explain each reaction, situation, or trend. But not only are psychologists interested in abnormal mental processes, literature as well as the media also finds an interest as well.
Fight Club, a 1996 novel written by Chuck Palahniuk was turned into a major motion picture in 1999. The book, as well as the movie, is about a man who is frustrated with his white-collar job, the effects of advertising and the media, and the consumer culture among other things. The narrator’s traveling for business as well as constant misery due to his life and the world around him resulted in what he believed to be insomnia. As the plot thickens, the narrator meets and begins to live with a man named Tyler Durden (a man who is everything the narrator in secret desired to be), they begin an underground fighting club and give up their attachment to all things materialistic or egotistical.
The narrator’s apartment blowing up lead him to live with Tyler, and his invention of the fight clubs generated many followers, and though the narrator seems content at last (now sleeping at night and free from all material connections) he is still working towards becoming the ideal person Tyler aspired him to be. Tyler was already enlightened, was together with a woman Marla, and wholeheartedly lived by the ideals of fight club. In the end, the narrator eventually figures out that Tyler is a figment of his imagination; a part of his personality literally brought to life by his mind to bestow the strength in him to become the person he truly longed to be.
Many psychological concepts play a role in this story, first and foremost is the idea characterized as negative reinforcement. This concept is shown over and over again; the narrator had such a true hatred for his job, his life, and the people in them. All of the forces that weighed on him daily drove him to this extreme reaction to reinvent himself to create personal happiness. From detecting his own dependence on material things, “the things you own end up owning you”, to hating the fact that his boss was addicted to caffeine, made the narrator fabricate subconsciously such a motivating character (also known as multiple personality disorder). Without the excessive negative reinforcements he would have never been driven enough to reaction so extraordinarily.
None of the switching between characters, from the narrator to Tyler and vice versa, would have been able to occur if it wasn’t for the misinformation effect. The narrator did not recall for months on end anything whatsoever regarding being Tyler. The narrator believed that he was fighting Tyler in the clubs, not himself, and thought that it was Tyler who chemically burned his hand to enlighten him. He trusted this information so strongly that he completely blocked out of his own mind the destroying of his whole apartment, and recalled being him only. To live the life that he wanted; getting the girl he liked, quitting the job he loathed, blowing up the furniture he was reliant on, he had to have faith in this misinformation to be the truth.
The last most relevant mental concept that is significant to this narrative is observation learning. The narrator knew exactly what he detested, and knew also precisely what he wished to become. From watching television, reading magazines and observing those around him, he concluded what he thought had befallen the world. Tyler, his alter ego understood perfectly how people thought and worked, and how companies operated and controlled, which not only greatly benefitted the narrator but also was so relatable to the other fighters of the club. He was an average Joe with typical problems and judgments on what he observed day to day. The narrator did not have a father or someone to teach him what he knew about society and consumerism, “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact, and we’re very, very, pissed off”, he observed it all himself.
The combination of the negative reinforcements in his life, with the misinformation effect allowing him to essentially be two different people, and his observational learning to perceive the world around him, made for mental calamity, or really in his case, somewhat of a miracle. How I think that this relates to society in general is although not many people create a superior self who functions as they sleep, many people are discouraged and frustrated with how their life has turned out at some point. I think a lot of people use observational learning to make apparent within them the importance of the forces around them, and additionally I know that some people are disgusted with consumerism. More than likely, a number of people must have reinvented their lives in some way to resolve their enslavement by the belongings that in actuality meant nothing to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment