Application of Phyconanilitic Theory in Spirited Away

Spirited Away was Best Animation Award of Oscar in 2003, and it also was the first win the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival as a animation. It is majorly made by Miyazaki Hayao who is a very famous Japanese animator. This movie talks about the girl and her family enter a new world during the trip. Parents become pigs due to their gluttony. When the girl is desperate, she gets the help of her friends. She works hard in Soup House for finishing projects. Finally, she helps her friend to find himself, saves her parents, and then she goes back to reality with family.

The movie shows many connections with Phyconanilitic Theory. The first one is about overall background and childhood. The whole story is happening between the reality and the new world. Hollywood has a lot of this kind of plots in movies. Main characters will enter a new world and have some expectations which let them find themselves again or remold their self cognition. Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst, has proposed a theory called Mirror theory. He considers that the mirror stage occurs at the age of 6 to 18 months in the life. During that time, babies Will be identified with self-identity. Their compete and self consciousness appears. Thus, the plot of Spirited Away is similar as Mirror Theory. Although Ogino Chihiro (Main female character in Spirited Away) is ten years ago in the movie, when she enters into the fantasy world, for different moments on the attic clock have hinted that this is not the real world. Therefore, her former cognition of herself in the real world disappeared. In the new strange world, Chihiro can not find a way, and later she meets Nigihayami Kohakunushi(her friend, main male character in Spirited Away). Chihiro can only listen to Nigihayami Kohakunushi, and she passively accept the effects of the outside world on her. After she enters the new world, her actions are just like baby. It also includes the gradual disappearance of Chihiro 's body in the film. It means she is starting to know herself again.

Chihiro‘s body returned to normal by Nigihayami Kohakunushi’s help. It means she begins to get consciousness again. In this important part of life, her mother dose not play a important role, but Nigihayami Kohakunushi dose. Meanwhile, they both get very complex relationship in the end of movie, which is between lover, family and friend. In a way, I think it can also have relationship with the 'Narcissus complex'.

Another plot in the movie is about “soup house”. Yubaba is the top manager of the soup house, and she controls all the people in the soup house. Everyone work in the soup hose will lose their name, if they forget their name during that time they will work for Yubaba forever. Thus, when Chihiro go to work in the soup house, Yubaba gives her new name, Sen. This part also shows that Chiniro needs to find herself. If she loses herself and gets lost in the new world, she will never get out again. Both in this part, the customers of the soup house, No face, shows his relationship with ego, super ego and id in Phyconanilitic Theory. No face is seems as a genie who has no face, and he can not talk, but very mild. However, then he eats and kill other genies because he wants to talk. He says he is lonely. That is his voice of subconscious. Super ego makes him being timid, and he wants to use some small actions to attract Chihiro’s attention. Id controls him to be angry in the end.