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Black Swan: A Clinical Perspective


Roshnee Mrinalini Chatterjee

Remedial for Missed Quiz 8

Black Swan is a psychological thriller starring a ballerina called Nina. The film documents the gradual transition she undergoes throughout the journey of preparing for her lead role in the ballet performance of Black Swan. She is a very rigid perfectionist, so preparing for her role was difficult in the sense that she was not able to embody the character of the Black Swan easily. She had a dual role in the performance, where she played twin swans: White Swan and Black Swan. The White Swan's character was very close to that of her own- very downplayed, timid and fragile. However, the Black Swan was a character which was completely foreign to Nina, as she was lustful, seductive and twisted. 

Nina has a very overbearing, manipulative mother who takes care of her every need like a child- to the point where she feeds her, clothes her and tucks her into bed each night. Nina's father is nowhere to be seen or heard of. She is obsessed and overly attached to her profession as a ballet dancer, where she is nothing short of a perfectionist. She devotes her entire life to dance and perfecting the moves to the point where she becomes almost a robot that executes moves perfectly with no mistakes, but also with no passion. She overworks herself to the point where her health is affected. She also has bouts of vomiting brought on my stress, although it is up for speculation as to whether this is due to her inability to deal with stress or a side effect of the industry she has chosen to be a part of. Nina herself is very shy, non-confrontational and submissive with a meek personality.

There are different speculative diagnoses which are used to describe the symptoms that Nina shows throughout the film, the most common of which is paranoid schizophrenia. This seems to be the most fitting diagnosis considering that Nina has both delusions and hallucinations. She is unable to function adequately in her day to day life by the end of the movie because her delusions interfere with the reality around her. Her sense is reality is tremendously warped. Though the time period of the movie is not specified, large ballet companies take months to prepare and practice for such performances, it may not be too far off to say that Nina had been experiencing these symptoms for several months at least, if not more than six. 

Nina handles stress very poorly, which translates into herself having intrusive thoughts and results in her being paranoid. Throughout the movie, her paranoia presents itself in different ways and at different degrees- such as when she thinks her co-performer (Lily) is out to steal her role. Her hallucinations and delusions depict her worst fears, such as that of Leroy and Lily having sexual relations, resulting in Leroy choosing Lily over her. 

There were also multiple instances of an internal conflict within Nina as she tries to channel the Black Swan and the White Swan pitted against each other. Frequently in her delusions and hallucinations, she sees an alternate version of herself, most likely the Black Swan alternate ego, who commits actions which Nina would never normally do and leaves her in shock and disbelief. It is because of this phenomenon that we can also say that it a possible differential diagnosis for Nina to have been suffering from dissociative identity disorder, better known as split-personality disorder. In the end, Nina's perception of reality is so heavily altered that it causes her to kill herself by stabbing herself and leaving herself to bleed out while performing, though because of her delusions she believes that she had harmed her co-performer, not herself. The movie ends with her saying "I felt it. Perfect. It was perfect", thus bringing her obsession with perfection full circle and truly bringing the White Swan in her to the forefront right before she dies in pursuit of mastering her role. 
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