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Bernardo Bertolucci's film The Conformist is discussed from the point of view of relational Winnicottian theory as offering a perspective on the development and dynamics of the fascist/authoritarian personality. In the context of the film, such an organization relinquishes agency in order to avoid guilt and to rely on external authority as a substitute for inner structure. The film uses editing, flashbacks, and visual elements to undermine the assumption of a coercive objective reality and to argue implicitly for the irreducibly subjective nature of human experience.
La discussion sur le film de Bernardo Bertolucci Le conformiste, à partir du point de vue de la théorie des relations winnicottienne donne une perspective du développement et de la dynamique de la personnalité fasciste/autoritaire. Dans le contexte du film, cette organisation renonce à l'instrumentalité afin d'éviter la culpabilité et de remplacer la structure interne par une autorité externe. Le film utilise le montage, les retours en arrière et les éléments visuels pour saper l'hypothèse d'une réalité objective coercitive et faire valoir implicitement la nature irréductiblement subjective de l'expérience humaine.
In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky (1880/1967) has the Grand Inquisitor say, "I tell you, man has no more agonizing anxiety than to find someone to whom he can hand over with all speed the gift of freedom with which the unhappy creature is born. But only he can gain possession of men's freedom who is able to set their conscience at ease" (p. 298).
In his great and complex film The Conformist, Bernardo Bertolucci tells the story of Marcello who, in a desperate attempt to escape a sense of himself and his past as grotesque and corrupt, becomes a Fascist. Above all, Marcello wants to be what he considers to be normal. The film's manifest narrative traces his struggle for normality through submission to external authority in a fruitless attempt to rid himself of a sense of agency, and in doing so, to obliterate his sense of guilt. The film also demonstrates the cost, and ultimately the impossibility, of such a solution.
Bertolucci has stated clearly that his films are heavily influenced by psychoanalytic thought. More explicitly, The Conformist can be seen as having the structure of a dream (Tonette, 1995; Kline, 1987) or of the free...