Watching The Film "What Lies Hides" With A Psychologist - Relationships, Reviews

• "What lies behind." USA, 2000
• Director: Robert Zemeckis
• Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, Harrison Ford

A happy married couple finds themselves in a strange situation. The wife begins to see the ghost of a woman in trouble. People around her consider her words hysterical or insane, and her husband even declares that she maliciously wants to distract him from his scientific career

Claire (name of the heroine) begins an independent investigation, which leads to unexpected results. And she herself no longer knows whether she wants to know the truth … Stop or reach the end?

The truth is not always easy to accept. Reality can be both frightening and sad … It doesn't have to conform to our expectations. You can be angry about bad weather, but it won't change it. The weather doesn't depend on our interests. The same applies to other facets of reality: they are governed by a multitude of cause-and-effect relationships that are little dependent on us and our interests. Therefore, reality can cause many painful experiences.

And then the protective mechanisms of the psyche turn on, they want to save us from emotional pain. Among them are denial and ignorance. They "help" not to see what is unpleasant. Sometimes it comes to absurdity. For example, the mother of one of my patients diagnosed with drug addiction said: "I found syringes, ampoules, burnt spoons, tourniquets at home … But I could not even think that he was a drug addict!"

There is a psychophysiological phenomenon of the dominant, which our great compatriot A. A. Ukhtomsky wrote about 100 years ago: we see what we want to see, we expect to see. Similarly, we ignore what we don’t want to see; we completely deny or do not attach importance, we forget …

As in the joke:

- You only hear what you want to hear!

- What? Wine and chocolate? Of course I will!

Seeing reality and accepting it can be difficult, it takes courage. The heroine of the film decided on this "feat". And you?

Self-study exercise

Investigation of the ignore mechanism

Answer your questions:

• What in your life do you tend not to notice, what to forget?
• What is the benefit of this mechanism, what are you saving yourself from in this way?
• What happens if you do pay attention to this part of your life?
• What specific steps can you take to change the unpleasant situation or to accept?