If you are wondering that it must be a write up or review of the movie K-PAX, relax! I am not going to bore you with the details. Its the thought process that the movie triggered that I am going to talk about now. For those of you, who have not seen the movie, the storyline is about an inmate(Kevin Spacey playing the role of Prote) of a lunatic asylum, who believes he is an alien of planet K-PAX and has come down to earth for a short duration. His psychiatrist's(Jeff Bridges plays Dr.Mark Powell) quest is to get Prote out of the illusion that he a resident of planet K-PAX. As Dr.Powell delves deep into the mystery of this man Prote, he comes face to face with the horrific past of his patient.
Turns out, a parolee out of the prison gets into Kevin Spacey's house and what starts out as a robbery, ends with Spacey's wife and daughter getting killed in the process. Spacey reaches home to see not only the bodies but the killer too present. Like a crazed man he ends up killing the murderer and tries to drown himself in the river, not being able to stand the agony of the deaths of two people he loved the most.
But, is instead, washed down the river with no memory of his former life. His claim now, is that he is an alien from the planet K-PAX in a distant constellation and has come down only to help his friend Robert(Spacey's original personality), who calls out to him in times of crisis. Now, as is obvious we can predict that Spacey suffers from a case similar to MPD or split personality.But the curious case is that we do not see the original personality of Robert emerge anywhere. There is only the new personality of Prote we get to see.
Now, what set me thinking was how the human mind works. The various intricacies of its working are way beyond me, but it sure does astound me. Its amazing, yet horrifying how it finds a work around for the trauma it encounters which are beyond the endurance of the body. We have all, at some time or the other experienced the deep shock of some unfortunate event in life where we are numbed by the situation. In case of physical incidents/accidents, its the body that numbs, leading to a weird calm that helps cope with the situation at hand, ensuring we don't get hysterical or lose our insanity. But when its an emotional trauma that is getting us bogged down, the mind tends to go into a limbo(not the actual limbo state, that would make us comatose), helping us to deal with the crisis when it gets beyond the body's limit to deal with the same. Its an amazing mechanism that lets the mind take over the body and deal with the situation at hand, with or without us realizing that.
But what happens when the trauma is so intense that the person is unable to identify with his real self and ends up identifying with another temporary personality that has been created by the mind/brain to ensure the person's sanity while dealing with the issue? Is there any way by which we can get the real personality back or in the least help the person realize about the problem without endangering their situation any further? Thats a question that will need some reading/research on my part, probably years of understanding too. But it does make for a good hobby to indulge in. There's a lot more to the layers of the mind than meets the eye.
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