Fight Club and Zigmund Freud.
"Fight Club" is a real Freudian drama. Film's plot, action, and relationships gain broader meaning in context of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis theory, and here is why:
According to Freud’s tripartite model of the psyche, the Id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends. Id or “It” becomes a “foundation” for two others, holds the energy for them. It is static; it doesn’t contact outside world or being influenced by the world; It doesn’t change trough whole life. This part of the psyche is primitive and disorganized; its main purpose is weakening tension state, increasing pleasure and decreasing discomfort. It is unconscious and includes primitive impulses, as well as intolerable and rejected thoughts.
The super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role. It is characterized as parental authority, self-control, ideals and conscience. Its main purpose is limiting, prohibition and condemnation of I and It in actions.
The ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the Id and the super-ego. The super-ego can stop one from doing certain things that one's Id may want to do. The purpose of I is harmonizing powers that influence I.
Freud also defines oral (0-18 month), anal (1,5-3 years) and phallic (3-6 years) phases of human libido development and stands that these phases, featuring biologically determined order. The main factor that defines human development is a sexual instinct, according to Freud.
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Diagnoses: dissociation. Decline occurs when the "Fight Club" protagonist meets Marla Singer, whose presence disturbs his bliss, so he negotiates with her to avoid their attending the same groups. Shortly after he meets his second identity – Tyler Durden, a soap salesman. Later protagonist understands that he gained dissociated personality and Tyler is a phantom, created by his own mind. Tyler represents the sexual power (It) that was limited by the super-ego.
Root: his Id is overcoming other parts of the psyche. Tyler is protagonist’s It that was hidden for a long time and sublimated with IKEA purchases. Unconscious sexual attraction to Marla caused Tyler’s appearance. Overcoming ego and super-ego, Id appears every time when he goes to sleep. His super-ego suffers sudden and strong repulse. He isn’t able to control what is happening in his life no more. Marla and Tylor become sexually involved and Tyler warns the narrator never tell Marla about him. Here we can see all strength of Id’s progression, and how Tyler is strong enough to play complicated mind-game with his host. Ego and Super-ego completely separated from each other on that stage. He suddenly sees Tyler in his room, and Tyler reveals that they are dissociated personalities in the same body. When the narrator has believed himself to be asleep, Tyler has in fact been controlling his body and traveling to different locations. The dissociation usually caused by childhood trauma, physical, psychological or sexual abuse. Narrator’s father left when he was very young and this could be a ground of his personality disorder.
Cure: at the very end, the narrator gets rid of Tyler by facing a shock, great physical pain that caused Tyler’s disappearance. In a moment when Tyler puts a gun in his mouth, he is completely passive; the moment might be characterized as an anal stage. But as longer they talk, the narrator gains power and his ego and super-ego gain their qualities back. He is not a passive and overcame by his Id anymore. He explains Tyler that he respects everything that it did for him, but he needs to move forward by himself. He realized a problem and tries to improve relations between three parts. When he understands Tyler won’t give up, he takes an extreme action – shoots himself in the face; Tyler dies and the narrator is cured.
Marla, Tylor and the narrator are representing three phases of individual’s sexual development, libido. Marla is very oral; she always talks loud, chews a gum and argues. Tylor is phallic; he is a dominatrix and a leader. And the narrator – for the most part, he is going through the anal phase, except the very end of the last scene. As soon as the narrator cures viewer sees his as calm and assembled person, he responds to the outside world normal, as all three parts of the psyche function as they should again.
