Anyone that cares about accurate descriptions of mental illnesses should skip this one. A shrink never tells you to support the delusion. (Around 30th minute.)
It sucked to know about the topic. It ruined the movie for me. Ryan Gosling was good too.
Ugh, I hate this *beep* argument. Every court movie, cop movie, gangster movie, war movie,... sucks because some wiseguys happen to know "that's not how it goes in the real world". (And she wasn't even a shrink.)
shareI wonder where it was that the makers of this film claimed in any way to portray an accurate description of mental illness...
On the other hand, there are very few accurate descriptions possible of mental illness, since, generally, each and every person suffering from one displays a different set of characteristics and symptoms. And thus different approaches to its therapy. GENERALLY, consensus in psychatrists is that one should not support the delusion, but sometimes, when it is deemed necessary, the delusion is supported to a degree.
And, given the fact that psychiatry is not a science, an 'accurate' description of a mental illness always involves a lot of vagueness, speculation and overlap with other mental illnesses.
Consciousness turns moments into tangible components of the Unity that is (in) everything
That depends on the shrink. In the 80s you NEVER fed a delusion (but then the rate of people WITH delusions getting better was very very low with that approach). However in the 50s, a delusion was occasionally played into in order to know WHY it existed, to get into the mind of the sufferer.. and more... to expand the world of that delusion so it is no longer all about what is is ONE person's head. Delusions are often about control, and you can;t control the entire world. Delusions can't survive a big world, in which ones control of the fantasy is no longer complete.
Of course there is the worry of reinforcing the delusion.
Delusions go beyond the level of "pretend". They can start out that way (as a comping mechanism) and then go WAY past that. But the main point of his "Doll Delusion" was to feel safe; in control - in a scary world.
However when a NON-BELIEVER in fact a whole town of them played along with the delusion (which was all about control, and only resided in one man's head) - that took the entire thing OUT of his control. At that moment it could no longer "fit the bill" as a coping mechanism for his fears. With other REAL humans involved, he was not in perfect control of everything (playing scrabble, vs going to the dance).
A delusion that is no longer 1 person's coping mechanism, either becomes a TRUE shared delusion (and I have seen this in real life) ... or it crashed ans burns because of the conflicts that having more than one person will create.