South Australian Certificate of Education International

Assignment 2

Personality Movie Analysis

“ Split 2016 ”

Course code: 2PSC20

Student’s id: SAM20012

Student’s name: Tan Wan Sean

Lecturer’s name: Ms Nurshakirin bt Sulaiman

ASSIGNMENT TYPE 2 (AT2)
Personality Movie Analysis

“Split 2016”
Table of contents:

1. Introduction --------------------------------------Pg2

2. Concept 1 ----------------------------------------Pg2-4

3. Concept 2-----------------------------------------Pg4-5

4. Pros and Cons of concept --------------------Pg 4

5. Ethical -----------------------------------Pg 5-6

6. Suggestions --------------------------------------Pg 7

7. How to extinguish Little Albert’s fear of white furry

objects using classical conditioning? ——Pg 7-8

8. List of references--------------------------------Pg 9

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Introduction

Split is a 2016 American psychological horror-thriller film produced by M. Night

Shyamalan. The film is about a man, Kevin Wendell Crumb, with 23 different
personalities kidnapped and abducted three teenage girls in his basement. His
psychiatrist, Dr Karen is aware of his personalities but did not suspect him to be the
kidnapper of the three girls. Karen went to visit him after receiving several emails from
Barry and found out that Dennis is the kidnapper (Barry and Dennis are Kevin’s
personality). Dennis then reveals his 24th personality- the Beast (a strong being) and kills
Dr Karen and two teenage girls. The Beast wanted to kill Casey but stops after seeing all
the scars on Casey’s body and runs away. Casey is rescued and learns that she was being
abducted at the Philadelphia Zoo, where Kevin works. Based on the movie, Split, I would
like to analyse the character, Kevin Wendell Crumb, by using psychodynamic and
humanistic to explain his behaviour throughout the movie.

Psychodynamic concept

Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical

systems that determine his characteristics behaviour and thoughts. (Allport, 1961, p. 28).
The characteristics or a blend of characteristics that make a person unique (Weinberg &
Gould, 1999). The two definitions accentuate the uniqueness of the individual and each
person has a rare psychological structure and that some traits are only possessed by one
person. There are 4 different approaches and one of them is psychodynamic.
Psychodynamic was derived from clinical observations and it is based largely on the
theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. It states that occasions in our childhood have a
major impact on our adult lives, moulding our personalities. Events that happen in
childhood and remain in the unconscious, and cause problems as adults.

According to Freud, there are three stages of the mental process: Conscious (thoughts,
emotions and feelings that we are aware of), preconscious (can be called into conscious
when accessing them in response to some cues), unconscious (contents that are
unpleasant, such as feelings of pain). Sigmund Freud believes that how we behave is
heavily influenced by the unconscious mind. Our feelings and decisions are powerfully
influenced by our past experiences and stored in the unconscious. Psyche is made up of

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three tripartite – the id, and superego. The id is the instinctual part of the mind that
contains unconscious instincts, the super-ego works as a moral conscience, and the ego is
the realistic part that intervenes between the wants of the id and the super-ego.

Kevin Wendell Crumb, in the movie, Split chooses to repress the terrible childhood
memory into his unconscious mind. This can be seen when Barry, one of Kevin’s
personality, was in a session with Dr Fletcher, she talked about the incident when he was
at work. The two girls took his hand and put it on their chest and just ran off and laughing
to their friends. This incident upset him for a few days and brought up the memories
when he was a kid and abused. The memory of being abused by his mother is very
painful and shameful which cause him to store this memory in the enormous reservoir
that makes up the unconscious mind. He recalled the repressed memories because he was
triggered powerfully by the two teenage girls. This memory triggered Dennis, the
suppressed personality appeared to take the light so that he can protect Kevin because he
will not be taken advantages of. In another scene, Dr Fletcher went to visit Kevin after
receiving several emails from Barry. When they are inside, Dennis talks with her about
what his mother did to him. Dennis said that his mother had malevolent ways to punish a
three-year-old kid if he doesn’t keep everything perfect. Her overwhelming desire for
cleanliness causes Kevin to suffer and hence, keep the memories in the unconscious
mind. Therefore, he began to develop multiple personalities as his defence machine to
avoid knowing what his unconscious feelings are. Dennis, who is obsessed with
cleanliness, appeared to help Kevin survive. When Dennis is transformed into the beast,
Casey repeated his name, Kevin Wendell Crumb. The beast drops to the floor and
flashback to when he was a kid, he was hiding under the bed, his mother took a hanger,
kept on shouting his name and said he made a mess and asked him to come out so that
she can punish him. Her mother was abusive and Kevin choose to repress this memory
because they are too painful for him to face them consciously.

Carl Jung introduced a concept called archetypes, he suggested that archetypes are
universal, inborn human, behavioural, or personalities that play a role in shaping human
behaviour. He identified four major archetypes – persona, anima, animus and shadow.
Anima is the psyche of the man contains a feminine image, and the animus is the psyche
of the woman contains masculine aspects. The anima and animus reflects the “real self”

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rather than the image we show to others and operates as the primary form of contact with
the collective unconscious. It is spontaneous that Kevin develops anima in the movie, he
needed his anima, Patricia and Jade. When the girls are finding their way out, they saw a
woman talking to their captor through a crack in the door. She approaches the door, but it
is just Kevin wearing high heels and a skirt. This alter is known as Patricia, an elderly
woman who is calm and portrays a compassionate motherly figure. She tells the girls that
Kevin listens to her and will not bother them anymore. She is very polite and helps Casey
to comb her hair and offer them sandwiches. Moreover, we can see Kevin’s feminine
image in Jade. She appears on the video logs and after Casey called Kevin into the light.
In the video, she said that she suffers from diabetes and take insulin shot to handle it.
Although Kevin is a man, but we can see the feminine character in his alters, Patricia and
Jade.

Humanistic concept

Carl Rogers proposed the self-actualization theory. Self-actualization is about

psychological growth, fulfilment and life satisfaction. Humans have one basic motive,
that is the tendency to self-actualize, which is to fulfil one’s potential and achieve the
highest level of ‘human-beingness’ we can (Rogers,1959). He believed that for a person
to achieve self-actualization, the person’s ideal self has to be in congruence with his self-
image. Self-image is how you see yourself whereas ideal self is what you would like to
be. The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the greater our sense of
self-worth. The feelings of self-worth developed in early childhood and was formed by
the kid’s interaction with his parents. Kevin received conditional positive regards from
her mother. When Kevin was a child, his mother only loves him when he keeps
everything spotless. When he made a mess, his mother would yell at him as a child by
saying his full name and telling him he’s made a mess. We can see his mother was taking
a hanger and wanted to punish Kevin badly in his flashback when he made a mess. He
was brought up in an environment of conditional positive regard, in which love and
affection are received only under certain conditions. As a consequence, Kevin’s self-
image is incongruent with his ideal-self. His mother was abusive and made Kevin view
himself as a boy that is weak but his ideal-self is a man who is strong and powerful. He

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feels unhappy with who he is and hence he is unable to reach his highest potential and
actualize the self, to become a fully functioning person. Kevin began to develop the
personality, Beast to protect himself. The Beast is capable of almost incredible feats,
including the ability to scale the sheer walls.

Pros and cons of concept

The strength of the psychodynamic concept is that it focuses on the impact that childhood
experiences have on the formation of personality. It could be argued that Freud was the
first one to emphasize the importance of childhood in personal health, and today, this is a
concept commonly used. Moreover, it takes into account both sides of the nature and the
nurture debate. Nature is the id, ego and superego whereas nurture is the parents,
childhood and experiences. However, the biggest criticism of this concepts is that it is
unscientific in its study of human behaviour. Some of the ideas central to Freud’s theories
are subjective, and as such, hard to test scientifically. It is illustrated in the example
where Kevin experienced childhood traumas, but it lacks the empirical research evidence
needed and we are unable to empirically research his unconscious mind. Jung and Freud
also admitted that their theory was an abstraction of their own experience-generalized
their personality to the world. The psychodynamic concept also being criticized for
having a male, western bias. Freud assumed that women appeared to develop weaker
superegos and more vulnerable to anxiety than males.

The main strength of the humanistic approach to personality is that it reinforces an

individual’s role and autonomy. (“Humanistic Approach”, n.d.) It takes into account the
impact of the environment upon our perceptions rather than focusing solely on our inner
thoughts and wants. It reflects mainly on the inherently ‘good’ human nature and free
will that is relative to change. Humanistic fits most people’s perception of the meaning of
being human because it emphasizes personal ideals and self-fulfilment. However, it has
been criticised for being too optimistic and positive. It does not take into account why
‘good’ people may acquire negative personality traits, and transform ‘bad’ though it
receives support from existentialist and philosophical perspectives.

Personality disorder

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