Butterfly Effect Psychology

ABSTRACT

Repressing a memory can be recalled through therapy or hypnosis, etc. It is interesting to see that the brain allows us to repress things without our conscious knowledge. In a way our unconscious mind can be more powerful than our conscious mind. The emotional understanding would be that one’s past is what shapes who they become.

The Butterfly Effect is a film about a boy named Evan who as a child and teen experienced blackouts during traumatizing situations. Evan is a young man blocks out harmful memories of significant events of his life. As he grows up, he finds a way to remember these lost memories and a supernatural way to alter his life. Due to these blackouts he is asked by his psychologist to keep a journal

It happens on two occasions, once when he is in school and then later when he is at home with his mother. In both situations nothing traumatizing happens; and the film simply explains the blackout to be due to his future mind returning to set an example or an attempt to change something but it failed. Evan returns to the kitchen with his mom to try and get to the point when he is forced into child pornography but is unable, then he revisits the school in order to return to the present with a scar as proof of what he can do. So although these events contribute to the movies over all story they are an incorrect example of Evans dissociative

It is interesting to see that the brain allows us to repress things without our conscious knowledge. In a way our unconscious mind can be more powerful than our conscious mind. The emotional understanding would be that one’s past is what shapes who they become. Although Evans past is harsh every time he tries to fix the lives of him and his friends, someone always ends up in a bad scenario. It is human nature to want a happy life for everyone including ourselves.

In “The Butterfly Effect” he feels guilty for all the bad things that are happening to all of the people he cares about. This causes Evan to give up the reality in which he suffers with no arms and no functioning legs, but all of his friends are just fine. It is our unconscious mind that protects our emotional feeling from overwhelming tragedies that would subconsciously destroy us. The movie “The Butterfly Effect” gives a good example of dissociative amnesia, repressed memory, but as shown there are still flaws in order to make the film a