Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] You're listening to The Love Vox with psychotherapist Amynah Dharani.
Hello, everyone. I'm your host, Amynah Dharani, and I am very excited to be here with you today. This is the podcast for people who are passionate about the human condition by people who are equally passionate voices in their field. If you are a new listener to our podcast, welcome to the show.
Spooky season is coming to a close this week with Halloween around the corner. And something that I've enjoyed during this month of October is horror films. In the horror genre, subliminal messages permeate narratives and fear is used as a storytelling tool.
Being a fan of gothic stories, my favorite subgenre of horror films is psychological horror. Not so much the slasher type.
And for me, the father of psychological horror movies is Alfred Hitchcock.
Alfred Hitchcock borrowed deeply from the realm of gothic literature. One of his most significant influences was Edgar Allan Poe. Their thematic choices align closely, weaving a rich tapestry of fear, madness, and the human psyche. Alfred Hitchcock's body of work stands as a testament to the intersection of cinema and mental illness as Hitchcock's films navigate various psychological disturbances.
In my opinion, Hitchcock is the direct influencer of true crime TV shows and documentaries that are so popular today.
As a side note, the popularity of true crime will definitely be the topic of another episode on our show.
But more than being a member of the TV and film audience as a psychotherapist, I am curious about the person, Alfred Hitchcock, whose mind and creativity gave birth to psychological horror films.
I want to know what his childhood was like, what his parents were like, where he grew up, did he have friends, and what was going on in the world during the time he lived.
And did any of this influence his storytelling? I mean, how could it not? Right.
Well, our guest will be sharing her perspectives, so let's go meet her.
Hello, friends. I have here with me Katarzyna Szmigiero. She is an associate professor at the Department of English Studies at the University of Social Sciences in Lodz, Poland. Her research interests concentrate on medical humanities, especially cultural representations of psychiatry and gender and genre fiction, as well as mythological retellings. Kasia, welcome.
[00:02:55] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Hello. Wonderful to be here.
[00:02:58] Amynah Dharani: Kasia, why are you interested in Alfred Hitchcock?
[00:03:01] Katarzyna Szmigiero : It's my father's favorite director, so I was exposed to Hitchcock as a child, and I watched Hitchcock all the time. So m. It's, in a way, it's grown on me.
[00:03:11] Amynah Dharani: As a psychotherapist, I am very interested in a, uh, person's childhood. Alfred Hitchcock was born in East London on August 13, 1899. He came from a very ordinary background. What was his childhood like?
[00:03:26] Katarzyna Szmigiero : We don't really know much about it. I would generally say we don't know much about Hitchcock's life in general because he was a very private person. But it seems that he had an absolutely ordinary childhood. The only exceptional thing was that his parents were Catholic, and he was Catholic in a predominantly Protestant England. But apart from that, nothing unusual, nothing strange. His father died when Hitchcock was in his teens, but he came from a wealthy, loving family.
[00:03:55] Amynah Dharani: What's his relationship like with his parents and specifically his mother?
[00:03:59] Katarzyna Szmigiero : We don't know much about his relationship with his father, but if his mother is concerned, they were definitely close. Some people would say too close, because Hitchcock recalls that as a boy, or even a, uh, young adult, he would every day talk to his mother in the evening and tell her, uh, about all the things that happened to him. And some people think it's too close, which, if they both enjoyed it, why not?
[00:04:31] Amynah Dharani: That's your perspective. Okay. Did he suffer from mental health? You know, I kind of think about his movies and the themes of mental health.
[00:04:38] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Did he suffer from mental health?
I think, personally, he didn't. If you think of, you know, Freud's criteria that if you're able to work and love, that's fine. He definitely was able to work. He made over 50 movies. And again, he himself formed a very loving family. He was married to one woman all his life. He had a child, a daughter he bought it on. He had three grandchildren. He had dogs. He seemed to be a fulfilled person.
So I don't think he had any mental health issues myself.
[00:05:16] Amynah Dharani: M. Okay. What about other ailments?
Any other health issues?
[00:05:21] Katarzyna Szmigiero : We do know he was overweight and being overweight, seriously overweight. I mean, uh, at the highest, he, uh, weighed about 300, uh, pounds. And he was a short guy. So obviously his weight had an impact on his joints, on his circulation, and he had some health issues. But relatively late in his life, in his 60s, in his 70s, he also tended to abuse alcohol later on, but probably as a painkiller. Again, for a man with such an unhealthy lifestyle, he was surprisingly physically healthy.
[00:05:59] Amynah Dharani: Interesting. And, uh, regarding his weight. He's being overweight. I'm curious as to how early he had weight issues. I think I'm wondering if the weight issues were. If they were early on, let's say, in his childhood, that could potentially have an influence on people making fun of him or bullying him. Do we know anything about that?
[00:06:19] Katarzyna Szmigiero : I think he was always chubby. Uh, he definitely was chubby. As a small boy. One of the first pictures you could see of Hitchcock is Hitchcock being like three or four sitting on a pony. And the pony doesn't look very happy. And uh, he doesn't look very happy either. I mean young Alfred, and even in his early 20s he is fat. And later on in life he's obese. He lost weight when he was in his mid-40s. He went on a very strict diet and managed to lose nearly half of his weight. But he put it on quickly. He put it on very quickly.
[00:06:54] Amynah Dharani: Now how did he get into writing and filmmaking? It wasn't his first profession.
[00:06:58] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Right, it wasn't his first profession because he started working as a very young, um, man in his teens. And he studied engineering at night classes. And his first job was uh, for a cable company or electric company if I remember well. But he was responsible for advertising that, not for the technical things. And he also was drawn to art. He loved drawing. And when he was in his uh, late teens, he decided to apply to an American company that was opening their offices in London.
Movie industry was just, you know, a baby at those days. So nobody really expected anybody to have any expertise or previous experience. And Hitchcock was young, he uh, was artistically gifted and he was very, very eager. So they employed him because they were impressed with his eagerness more than, you know, any, any other skills he possessed.
[00:08:02] Amynah Dharani: Interesting. And so he, he makes a movie. What is his first film?
[00:08:08] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Again, it's difficult to say because he collaborated on several movies and the rumors say that there were a few movies that he in fact directed, although the official director was somebody else, because the official director prepared boozing and um, spending time with a woman that wasn't his life. Pretending to his wife that he was working. And poor Alfred had to do his job. But I think his proper film was the larger, I mean the proper film that he was really responsible for that has this characteristic stamp of Hitchcock's. All the themes, motifs that would later on appear in his movies are present.
[00:08:47] Amynah Dharani: In the Lodger as he's making movies. The, as you say, the Alfred Hitchcock stamp, the specific themes, when do they start showing up in his movies? Was it quite early on? I mean, do they, do they have that Hitchcock esque stamp?
[00:09:06] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Yes, most of them, yes. We must remember that A, Hitchcock's films were frequently adaptations of other literary sources. So he would be influenced by that. And B, uh, especially when he was working in Hollywood under Selznick. Selznick, uh, had a lot to say. So sometimes Hitchcock wanted to change something like add elements of black humor, for instance, to Rebecca. But Selznick would say no. So not all his films probably are fully his films. But most of them would have very, very similar traits. Like, for instance, a person that finds himself or herself in completely new, unusual circumstances. A person that suddenly has to prove, ah, their innocence, who is falsely accused of something absolutely bizarre, like being a terrorist or being a murderer. So these themes are, I would say, can be found in nearly every film of his.
[00:10:11] Amynah Dharani: Well, he takes, uh, great influence from Edgar Allan Poe in terms of the gothic genre. And then my interpretation is that there is then the added detective genre.
How is all this together with the themes of perversity and eroticism, which are really at the forefront of his movies? How is this being digested by the audience in those days?
[00:10:39] Katarzyna Szmigiero : I would say surprisingly well. Uh, I think we notice more perversity in his movies than the audiences back then because they are very subtle. Like, if you think of. You mentioned perversity, there is hardly any nudity, for instance, in Hitchcock, you may watch Psycho over and over again, wanting to see something, but he will not see anything. I'd, um. The only scene in Hitchcock where you see actually some nudity is his, one of his last films, Frenzy, from 1972, I think. So she would shock people.
Not on their visual level that much.
[00:11:22] Amynah Dharani: On the more psychological level.
[00:11:23] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Right, psychological. Or things would be rather hinted or Jungian would say that you saw something happening, but it's more your imagination than what you already see.
[00:11:36] Amynah Dharani: Right. And I think that's the magic of Hitchcock as well. That allowed unhearing, is it allowed him to be accepted in those years, in those decades. And he's still obviously very popular today. Now, the dominant theme, some of his dominant themes of mental illness or madness and psychiatry that are in his films. Why do you think he was so interested in that?
[00:12:03] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Well, I would say that first of all, film is a great tool of probing human psyche, especially aberrant psyche or unusual behavior. And as you mentioned, he was heavily indebted to Poe and the detective genre. And of course, psychopathic killers are Poe speciality.
And again, other filmmakers in the 1940s, 1950s, early 1960s were also, um, intrigued by psychiatry, especially psychoanalysis, because this pop version of psychoanalysis was very popular in the States due to the Second World War. A lot of doctors, psychiatrists with Jewish background immigrated to the United States, and psychoanalysis dominated American psychiatry for the next few decades, much more strongly than, let's say, in Europe. In a way, he was not unusual in that respect.
[00:13:02] Amynah Dharani: So, what is Hitchcock’s view on psychiatry and how does he show that?
[00:13:07] Katarzyna Szmigiero : I think it's very ambiguous because on the one hand he seems to pay lip service to the dominant ideas. Like if you think of Spellbound, this is attribute to psychoanalysis. If you think of Marnie, again, psychoanalysis is used. So the theme of somebody um, being locked up in a mental asylum for various reasons appears in Vertigo, appears in the Wrong Man. But at the same time I think Hitchcock would be very skeptical of any kind of scientific authority that claims we can explain every aspect of human behavior. I think he preferred it was closer probably to the way he looked at life, to leave this shadow of a doubt, to use the uh, title of his film to leave the room for um, surprise, for the unexpected and for. So for the metaphysical. If science can explain everything, what's the purpose of art?
[00:14:07] Amynah Dharani: That's very well put, very well put. Now the mother figure is large in some of his movies, specifically as a dysfunctional dynamic of the mother child relationship.
[00:14:20] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Ah.
[00:14:20] Amynah Dharani: And in my view that, you know, that often provides the foundation of a psychopathy.
[00:14:25] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Uh.
[00:14:27] Amynah Dharani: What is he saying about the maternal figure?
[00:14:31] Katarzyna Szmigiero : If you think of Hitchcock's American films, probably because of these dominant theories that blamed the mother for psychopathology of the child, there are quite a few deeply uh, disturbing or unpleasant mother figures in his films. Of course everybody would say Psycho, but in fact Psycho is tricky because we don't see the mother figure. We don't know what Norma Bates was like. We only know how her son tried to reconstruct her. But whether it's an accurate depiction or not, will never learn. But if you think of for instance, Strangers on the Train, the mother that is over, protective, lenient is present there. Also a mother who doesn't want to acknowledge that her son in his 30s or 40s is a, uh, grown up man. And the fact that he is interested in other women is not that he's abandoning her, but that's the natural thing to happen. So mothers that try to keep their boys close and do not allow them to form any grown up relationships. Such a mother appears in the Birds, for example, or in Notorious, where Sebastian, who is no 40s, he lives with his mom, who is this big formidable woman criticizing him. I mean she's right actually in that film because Ingrid Bergman place an American spy that just pretends to be in love with him. She shouldn't know it, right? So it's not really why she opposes to that marriage. She's simply jealous that her boy wants a different woman, that she will be.
[00:16:12] Amynah Dharani: Replaced his view being that the mother is an overbearing mother.
[00:16:16] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Yes, she's definitely overbearing.
[00:16:19] Amynah Dharani: What about the other female figures? How does he portray them?
[00:16:26] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Also quite. Quite a few really loving, kind, wise mothers. But what's interesting is that these mothers are not very typical mothers. These are. I think many people say that Hitchcock didn't like women, but I disagree. I think the positive mother figures are usually the mothers that are not only mothers that have other tiers of life that are theirs, that they enjoy doing career or friends. And being a mother is not their only sole occupation and identity. Such mothers are happy mothers because they are not restricted by just one role in life, like, for instance, a Trouble with Harry or A Man who Knew Too Much, both the British and the American version. These women seem to be, as I said, loving mothers, but at the same time, not just mothers. Yeah, their identity, uh, is not restricted to being a mother or a housewife. Right. So that's important.
[00:17:28] Amynah Dharani: Does he have specific views on the different male figures that he represents in his movies?
[00:17:33] Katarzyna Szmigiero : I don't think he's really very interested in men. I think we can talk a lot about women in Hitchcock's films, like the cool, uh, icy blonde figure or this maternal figure, but men do not seem to interest him much.
[00:17:48] Katarzyna Szmigiero : That's my opinion.
[00:17:49] Amynah Dharani: Unless. Unless they're. Unless they're psychopaths.
[00:17:51] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Unless they're killers. Right. Or spies.
[00:17:55] Amynah Dharani: I'm curious, what's your favorite Hitchcock movie?
[00:17:57] Katarzyna Szmigiero : And, um, I love, uh, the Trouble With Harry because it's a black comedy that is set in the small American, um, town, or even village, where everybody seems to be very nice and kind and loving, but at the same time, everybody would be a killer, and they don't really mind that much.
So it's a black comedy, which is a little bit perverse, but at the same time, it has this kind of warmth about it.
[00:18:31] Amynah Dharani: You're a professor and you have students that you educate on Alfred Hitchcock. I'm curious what you would like our listeners to take away about Hitchcock that might not be so well known.
[00:18:46] Katarzyna Szmigiero : I think, generally speaking, that modern audiences might have a problem with older films because it's a completely different way of telling a story, different way of filming, much slower, much subtle, but at the same time, at least to me, much more real. Because a lot of films now I find incredibly artificial. And I think there is some kind of, um, authenticity about human behavior and what really matters in light.
Because if you look at Hitchcock's films, you would say they are thrillers or even horror films or detective stories. But they are predominantly love stories because his films are about relationships between people. And what really matters and saves us from the chaos of life or politics is our, um, affection we feel to one another.
[00:19:46] Amynah Dharani: Wow. I never would have thought about Hitchcock as telling a love story. I'll have to rewatch some of these movies with that understanding.
He's a very provocative storyteller. I think, for those times, he was pretty provocative. There's so much, as you say, he says or he shares about the human psyche, and that's so much implied.
[00:20:09] Katarzyna Szmigiero : I think now we do not really notice the novelty of many of Hitchcock's films because he was the first. And we've seen so many imitations, uh, that when you know the imitations and when you see, um, the original, you don't notice that the original is really so ground groundbreaking. Like, for instance, when you think of Psycho, I read somewhere that it's the first film in which people see a toilet being flushed. And that was apparently shocking that you see the insides of a bathroom and the toilet is flushed. Not on any, let's say, a biological matter, but a piece of paper. But still, it was too private, too even obscene to be shown in a movie.
[00:20:58] Amynah Dharani: And again, those are the subtle commentaries, um, that are so important to understand and why you were here to share with us. I'd like to thank you for being here.
[00:21:10] Katarzyna Szmigiero : Thank you.
[00:21:11] Amynah Dharani: And I hope you will join us again.
Welcome back. So what do you think about Alfred Hitchcock now having heard from our guest?
Hailed as the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock intricately weaves tales that, uh, not only thrill, but also reflect profound psychological themes.
During the 20th century, the fields of psychiatry and cinema began to intertwine. Films emerged as powerful cultural phenomena. They were not merely sources of entertainment. They often reflected societal attitudes.
Movies have the ability to serve as educational tools for understanding complex psychological themes. They often simplify difficult concepts, making them more accessible.
And of course, movies also distort the understanding of mental illness.
Alfred Hitchcock's films plunge into the human psyche. They bring to light various mental disorders evident in themes like obsession, trauma and dual identities. Hitchcock's body of work is particularly intriguing. His films tread the fine line between entertainment and genuine educational insight. For instance, the movie Spellbound illustrates dissociative fugue, showcasing a character grappling with identity. And the movie Psycho alludes to dissociative identity disorder through the complex character of Norman Bates.
Yet it's critical to note that these representations are dramatizations, and the narratives are, in fact just stories. Damn good stories.
In wrapping up, I'd like to say that I started my Alfred Hitchcock exploration wanting to dig for what might be beneath Hitchcock's exterior. And of course, I learned that he kept a private life, and that, I believe, further adds to his personal mystique and to the genius of his productions. M It's important to note that much of what we go digging for is part of our own self.
If you'd like to learn about my private practice, you can go to thelifeinterupted.com in the meantime, please connect with The Love Vox on Facebook, Instagram, and X. And if you'd like to contribute to the show, please visit the show's website, thelovevox.com where you can leave voicemails that can be featured on the show, and you can also contribute to stories we're looking to feature. Until next time, stay passionate, Stay curious.
