摘 要

青少年犯罪问题，近年来日益凸显，引起了社会的广泛重视。已有研究表明行为与心理活动紧密相关，所以探究他们的犯罪心理对探究其犯罪原因大有裨益。本文主要通过心理分析法，运用弗洛伊德的人格结构理论来分析电影《一级恐惧》中主人公艾伦的内心世界。本电影中的杀人犯艾伦是典型的多重人格分裂症患者，不时在艾伦和罗伊两种人格中进行转换。而造成他人格分裂的原因主要是小时候的创伤性经历和罪前的不良生活经历，这些归根结底就是家庭因素和社会因素。本文的研究将让大众更加重视青少年犯罪群体并且注重青少年心理健康，为了预防类似的青少年犯罪以及治疗有心理疾病的青少年罪犯而创造一个良好的社会环境。

关键词：心理分析；人格结构理论；人格分裂；青少年犯罪

Abstract

The issue on juvenile crimes and delinquency which has aroused extensive attention of the public has kept heating in recent years. On the basis of previous studies, a person’s behaviors are closely correlated to its mental activities. Therefore, for analyzing the potential reasons of teenagers committing crimes, it’s considerably conducive to explore criminal’s inner thoughts at the outset. Employing the psychoanalysis, this paper mainly probes into the main character Aaron’s internal world of the film Primal Fear under the Freudian theory of personality structure. As a multiple personality-disordered criminal, Aaron transforms between himself and Roy occasionally. Actually, what cause his current mental disease are his early traumatic experiences and the later terrible life which can be concluded as family factor and social factor on the whole. This paper aims to turn the spotlight on the groups of juvenile criminals and alert the public of the significance of teenagers’ psychological health. Furthermore, it’s favorable for the public to create a harmonious society for the prevention of similar juvenile delinquencies and the psychotherapy of criminals with mental disease.

Key Words: Psychoanalysis; personality structure; multiple personality disorder; juvenile delinquency

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Introduction to the movie 1

1.2 Literature review 2

1.3 Freud's psychoanalytic theory--the personality structure 3

2 Roy's Psychology--the Id 5

2.1 An angry protector 5

2.2 A ferocious killer 7

3 Aaron's Psychology--the Ego 9

3.1 Helplessness in the jail 9

3.2 A coward without courage 10

4 Aaron's Multiple Personality Disorder 12

4.1 Transformation between Aaron and Roy 12

4.2 Victim of the society 14

5 Conclusion 16

References 18

Acknowledgements 19

A Psychological Analysis of Aaron in the Film Primal Fear

1 Introduction

1.1 An introduction to the movie

Directed by Gregory Hoblit, the film Primal Fear made its debut in 1996 in the United States. Actually, it belongs to a tension-filled crime-thriller movie which is based on the original novel written by William Diehl in 1993. Since its release, Primal Fear has received an Oscar nomination as well as other ten wins and eleven nominations. Although some critics on the website Metacritic declare that many deficiencies exist in the film, the overall story lines and those actors’ performances are overwhelming. According to the website Rotten Tomatoes, this movie has been given a 74% positive reviews from a number of critics. In addition, seven point seven out of ten has been scored on a website with high credibility abroad --IMDB, Internet Movie Database. Judged from the above-mentioned data, this film is worthy of appreciating and evaluating.

Most audiences are suffocated by the gripping plot of this film. At the beginning, a young altar boy, Aaron Stampler, is arrested in the crime scene where the archbishop Richard Rushman of St.Michael’s Roman Catholic Church in Chicago is brutally killed. Being accused of this savage crime murder, Aaron’s case turns to be sensational. A flamboyant and hot-shot attorney, Martin Vail, determines to take on Aaron’s defense without charge. As a homeless kid begging in the street, Aaron is adopted by the archbishop afterwards. Having convinced by Aaron’s innocent expression and stammer, Martin later finds a sexual video which involves Aaron and is filmed by the priest. This video tape turns out to be the motivation of killing Rushman. Simultaneously, the psychologist hired by Martin concludes that Aaron is suffering from multiple-personality disorder through the process of examining. Thus, Roy, another personality, is revealed. With subtle defense in the underway trial, Martin Vail wins the case and Aaron will be sent to hospital without sanction.

1.2 Literature review

Although its reception has been widespread since the release in 1996, the research into this movie is quite limited both abroad and at home. Searching on CNKI, we can only find three articles on the movie. Among them, one is an introductory article on newspapers and other two are journals in terms of law and justice. As Duan Haifeng argues, although lawsuit is the most appropriate approach to achieve justice, the conflicts brought by the process of lawsuit will influence the justice of the final result. The release of Aaron without any charge who indeed murders the archbishop disdains justice and appears like a shame of law(Duan, 2008). Besides, in the article of Chen Liqin, the definition of justice has been fully discussed in terms of one’s legitimate interests and the justice of Aaron’s self-defense towards the abusive behaviors of the archbishop has been pointed(Chen, 2012).

Searching on Ebsco, Springerlink and other websites, we can also find some brief introductory articles and movie reviews. Instead, the academic research is rare. Rita Kempley commentates on the Washington Post:”preoccupation with justice and the breakdown of the jury system has obviously influenced Primal Fear, which is issue-oriented and frequently preoccupied with ferreting out corruption in the courts, the church, the city and state governments”(Kempley, 1996). She highlights not only the lack of justice but also the corruption of religion as well as politics rather than Aaron’s murder.

Although some researches have been conducted, the psychoanalytical research of the movie hasn’t been conducted before. As a matter of fact, Aaron’s different personalities represent the counterpart id and ego in the view of Freud’s theory of personality structure. Aaron and Roy are the external images of the ego and the id in people’s consciousness. To a large extent, people’s consciousness influences and controls their action, expressions and verbal language. Therefore, it’s necessary to analyze the psychology of Aaron from the perspective of personality structure. Recently, the psychoanalysis of the main characters in other movies, TV programs, and literature works has emerged one after another. On the basis of Freudian theory of personality structure, these studies have provided essential inspirations and ideas for this paper. For instance, Zhao Qing’s article analyzes the changes of four characters’ psychology in the Heart of Darkness and elucidates the consequences of the imbalanced psychology(Zhao, 2008). Except that, in Ding Moyuan’s dissertation A Study on American Crime Drama Based on the Theory of Freud's Psychoanalysis from the Case of Criminal Minds, he thoroughly explores the the mental activities of those heinous criminals based on the supported theory of Freud’s psychoanalysis by listing adequate and convincing cases(Ding, 2015).

To summarize, this research is worthy of being studied from the perspective of psychoanalysis. It is conducive to the profiling of criminals in reality and favorable for readers to further explore people’s inner thoughts and heed teenagers’ psychological health.

1.3 Freud’s psychoanalytic theory----the personality structure

During a chronic course of therapy for mentally-disordered patients, the prominent Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud proposed the pioneering theory of psychoanalysis. After 1920s, psychoanalytical theory has been constantly amended and developed further towards perfection, which included an extremely significant theory--the personality structure. As Freud claims, personality ought to be regarded as an integration which composes of the id, the ego as well as the superego. In one of Freud’s epoch-making works, The Ego and the Id, the three above-mentioned components and the interactive relationships among them have been elucidated exhaustively(Huang, 2011).