Home of the Brave and Freudian Concepts -the psyche version
Treating Psychosomatic Illness in Home of the Brave (1949)
A paralyzed African-American soldier, Private Peter Moss begins to walk again only when he confronts his fear of forever being an "outsider". The soldier's compatriots include his lifelong friend Finch, whose death leaves him racked with guilt, a racist loudmouth Corporal, and Sergeant Mingo, all white. In one of the film's crucial scenes, the camp doctor attempts to force Moss to overcome his paralysis by yelling a racial slur at him, in an attempt to recreate the traumatic event at the root of the paralysis. Moss suffers a somatic illness, paralysis of the legs. This occurs after he is forced to leave a wounded friend to save the maps they had come for. Complicating this was an argument, had moments before the friend was shot, where his friend almost used a racial epitaph. Though unsaid, the damage was done; Moss understood and was hurt and angry. When his friend is shot Moss suffers survivors guilt from different avenues. First, Moss felt guilty for leaving his friend behind and especially because he was awarded for the good work of retrieving the maps. He also felt guilty because he was glad he had survived but Moss does not immediately recognize this.
Treatment in Home of the Brave was considered successful because Moss could walk. Supposedly from this point on, Moss will never again kowtow to prejudice. The apex of the film is not the discovery that fears of not being accepted are at the root of Moss’ inability to walk, as the film would lead you to believe, but in the moment the character accepts that he is just like everyone else despite the way others may see him. It is in the final scene that this occurs. Sergeant Mingo and Moss are waiting for transport home; they discuss Moss’ treatment. Moss finds freedom from his neurosis with the epiphany that he is “just like everyone else.” Not only is the back-story of the somatic paralysis valuable for elucidations on Freud’s thoughts on repetition required in treating traumatic neuroses but also it provides a platform for examining the scene with the doctor where the evolution of 25 years of psychoanalytic practice takes place within the framework of one sequence (18).
Moss was sent to a psychiatric doctor because other doctors could find nothing physically wrong with him. The nature of somatic illness is a physical representation of a psychological problem. The Doctor knows he will only have Moss under his care for a short time so he attempts to give him tools to combat his “illness”. Moss’ illness is manifested rage at his own feelings of inferiority and of not belonging because he is black; Finch, his lifelong friend, called him Nigger. Somatic illness is the projection of internal threats outward; one is more vulnerable to internal threats because one has no means of fortifying against oneself as one could against an external threat. Moss was better able to deal with the loss of his walking ability it was an acceptable outward threat to replace the internal, more difficult internal threat of truly being inferior (30). The interaction between Moss and the Doctor is wrought with the tension of the memories being experienced by Moss as the internal threat touches upon the borderline between repression of his fears and acknowledgment of them.
This scene is just after the hypnosis where the Doctor discusses what Moss remembers. The Doctor questions Moss and corrects the answers when Moss recounts incorrectly. Early psychoanalysis consisted of interpretation according to Freud. This is clearly the Doctor having full control of the session, decoding for the patient the diagnosis as he sees it to be. “Do you remember how you got out?” the Doctor fires the question rapidly, Freud points out the “art” was to uncover resistances to the diagnosis as quickly as possible (18). “Mingo” answers Moss. “NO. Not Mingo it was TJ. TJ carried you”, the Doctor informs him. “Oh Yeah” Moss replies weakly. He continues to question Moss about his feelings when Finch used the racial slur and tells Moss this is the cause of the paralysis. He explains Moss was angry at Finch and was glad he was shot, but not in the way Moss feels so guilty about. Moss feels guilty because he thinks his feeling of gladness was because of what Finch said. He was glad it was Finch who was shot and not he. These mixed feelings of guilt and shame cause Moss to feel he should not have been able to leave Finch; the somatic conversion occurs and Moss could not physically leave due to paralysis. After explaining all this to Moss, the Doctor tells him that he is not so different in an attempt to bring the crux of the problem to the light for Moss, the objective being to bring what was unconscious into the conscious mind (18). He tells him many soldiers feel the same way when they see a buddy die or injured. He asks Moss to repeat the explanations and Moss does. Repeating is an important step in therapeutic success and it plays a number of roles in this film as discussed further on in this essay. The Doctor then asks him if he believes the explanation. Moss merely replies, “I want to”. He explains, “Sure I believe it up here (points to head) because you say so but I don’t really know if I really believe it up here (points to heart). I’m sorry Doc.” It is not enough, as early psychoanalysts did, to tell the patient what is wrong with them (18). The patient can only be cured when they have as Freud puts it “conviction of the correctness of the construction that has been communicated to him”; he believes and understands the diagnosis (19). Freud’s use of the word “construction” makes clear that the actual work of putting together the cause with the effect is still being done by the analyst. Now it is the patient’s work to understand the steps needed to free his conscious mind from the repressed desire building upon the initial work of the therapist.
This is where Hollywood movie making apparatus take creative license with the psychoanalytic process because the Doctor recreates the traumatic event by using a racial slur to anger Moss into walking, moments after explaining the diagnosis. This repetition is important but not exactly the impetus to making everything all better. Moss relives the moment of anger instead of remembering it. Because the patient did not believe his guilt was related to surviving but was related to his guilt over his anger, the traumatic event treated was the betrayal of his friend. The traumatic event of experiencing prejudice over ones ethnicity that results in feelings of shame and inferiority are deeply entwined with Moss’s desire to be like everyone else. War itself is another event that affects our main character and cannot be separate from the others because the natures of the traumas are the same, shame and guilt. The overlapping causes for Moss’ condition is another element of repetition. Because remembering places the traumatic event in the past, it is in remembering that healing begins to take place. Identifying the events causing the problem is, again, the “construction” work. Repeating the event in “real time” emotionally with enough force to generate movement in his limbs is in conflict with Freud’s view that the analyst must ensure the patient “maintains some aloofness” (19). There is no aloofness in this scene so Moss should not have been able to walk.
Not only should Moss continue to be unable to walk but also the act of transference needs to take its final steps, relinquishment of the doctor from his role as proxy. The treatment is only beginning although the movie cures Moss for entertainment purposes. The Doctor took on the roll of Finch, as aggressor, in using the racial term against Moss and a proxy for the justified anger Moss felt toward Finch but could not display because Finch was dead and he had left him there. This transference, as it is called when the doctor takes on the role of the “other” during treatment, is a tenuous line to walk because as these bonds are built to encourage abandonment of the resistances to treatment the patient may exhibit (18). Transference is another form of repetition needed to create a bond of trust between the analyzed and analyst. However, in order for treatment to be fully realized the patient must be able to de-realize the analyst.
When simply interpreting the diagnosis for Moss does not work, the Doctor then uses the next evolutionary step Freud outlines and asks the patient to confirm the doctor’s construction from his own memory (18). This repeating, alluded to earlier, is not as negative as the previous version where the patient is reliving a traumatic act. In this scene repetition is also used as a therapeutic tool. Moss is told repeatedly by the Doctor that he is “no different, no different at all.” This is said in a few ways but the message is the same and clear, the Doctor is trying to impress upon Moss that his problem lies within his ability to believe for himself that he is no different from others. Again, just telling him over and over that he is no different could only illicit the response that Moss “want[s] to” believe.
Litany is used, as a rhetorical tool several times throughout the film, to introduce the audience to the emotional intensity the character is experiencing. In the scene just before Moss encounters Finch, Moss cries woefully as he drops to his knees chanting “Nigger, Nigger, Nigger, Nigger” pounding his legs with his fists. The film offers the audience the cause of his “illness” in this moment if they can see it without the onscreen explanation to come. When Moss cradles the dying Finch in his arms he rocks him back and forth whispering in despair, “No God” repeatedly. Moss presents for the audience yet another chance to experience his pain when he finds he cannot walk. His distress is palpable as he first says, “No, I can’t leave him” referring to leaving Finch so they can rendezvous with the rescue boat, then increasing as he realizes that he cannot physically leave. Moss utters excitedly, “I can’t move, NO! I can’t. I can’t walk. I can’t move, I can’t.” He is ultimately carried to safety. The litany of the Doctor is no different from that of Moss. The Doctor says to Moss, “Listen to me. You are no different” and that is submitted to the audience to understand and believe, thus curing society of the malady of racial classifications.
This brings us to the final step in the evolution of psychoanalytic practice covered in the movie and the final scene, the moment of conviction. In this scene Moss is talking with a liberal Sergeant Mingo about his treatment. Moss tells Mingo that treatment is an ongoing process and Mingo claims he understands just how Moss felt. He told him he has often felt grateful that it was the guy next to him that got shot or killed instead of him. This moment in the scene highlights the epiphany Moss experiences immediately. Excitedly, Moss asks Mingo to “ repeat what you just said Mingo.” Mingo repeats several lines and at insistent prompting from Moss, he finally repeats, “Sure I’ve felt like that, everyone has”; elaborating he repeats the sentiment that every soldier, in that situation, has a moment where he is glad it was not his turn to die. This above all the Doctor’s exaltations provides Moss with the “conviction” necessary for cure. His buddy Mingo had echoed the thoughts that had shamed Moss, causing him guilt. This single moment of solidarity released Moss from his guilt about surviving because other soldiers had the same experience and this proved he was like everyone else. The shame of feeling inferior is also relinquished because now Moss is able to absorb the rest of the doctor’s construction because of his newfound solidarity with humanity. Because Moss could believe he was no different than anyone else he can appropriately place his anger at Finch’s careless words in the past, in its safe position of remembering not reliving.
Psychoanalytic elements of repetition are replete in the film Home of the Brave. The use of litany in the characters dialogue supports the sense of work needed to combat traumatic neuroses. The audience participates in the therapy of Moss. The audience is reminded, as Moss is told repeatedly, that Moss is no different from any other soldier, black or white. In the time the film was produced, 1949, this message would have met an audience who lived segregation daily. The audience would have to work in viewing this film to combat the traumatic event of racism present in their own world. Moss is compelled into repetition of the initial trauma of recognizing his difference when his friend points it out; the audience is guided through repetition in order to liberate the repressed thoughts of racial inequalities in a safe manner, leading to healing for both. The guide, the Doctor for Moss, is also the psychoanalytic device of repetition in the form of litany for the audience. The evolution of psychoanalytic treatment follows the natural steps one takes to resolve repressed impulses. The interpretation of the neurosis by the analyst, the presentation of the diagnosis to the patient, and the final epiphany the patient must come to are paralleled by the occurrence of the initial traumatic event, recognizing the compounding, loosely related subsequent traumatic events, and finally the epiphany experience of understanding and believing the truth or falseness of the perceptions. Home of the Brave was billed as a “psychological thriller” and indeed it offers a wealth of Freudian concepts to explore.
Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: WW Norton, 1961.
Robson, Mark. Home of the Brave. Stanley Kramer Productions. 1949. University of California, Berkeley. Media Resource VHS: 999:3670.
A paralyzed African-American soldier, Private Peter Moss begins to walk again only when he confronts his fear of forever being an "outsider". The soldier's compatriots include his lifelong friend Finch, whose death leaves him racked with guilt, a racist loudmouth Corporal, and Sergeant Mingo, all white. In one of the film's crucial scenes, the camp doctor attempts to force Moss to overcome his paralysis by yelling a racial slur at him, in an attempt to recreate the traumatic event at the root of the paralysis. Moss suffers a somatic illness, paralysis of the legs. This occurs after he is forced to leave a wounded friend to save the maps they had come for. Complicating this was an argument, had moments before the friend was shot, where his friend almost used a racial epitaph. Though unsaid, the damage was done; Moss understood and was hurt and angry. When his friend is shot Moss suffers survivors guilt from different avenues. First, Moss felt guilty for leaving his friend behind and especially because he was awarded for the good work of retrieving the maps. He also felt guilty because he was glad he had survived but Moss does not immediately recognize this.
Treatment in Home of the Brave was considered successful because Moss could walk. Supposedly from this point on, Moss will never again kowtow to prejudice. The apex of the film is not the discovery that fears of not being accepted are at the root of Moss’ inability to walk, as the film would lead you to believe, but in the moment the character accepts that he is just like everyone else despite the way others may see him. It is in the final scene that this occurs. Sergeant Mingo and Moss are waiting for transport home; they discuss Moss’ treatment. Moss finds freedom from his neurosis with the epiphany that he is “just like everyone else.” Not only is the back-story of the somatic paralysis valuable for elucidations on Freud’s thoughts on repetition required in treating traumatic neuroses but also it provides a platform for examining the scene with the doctor where the evolution of 25 years of psychoanalytic practice takes place within the framework of one sequence (18).
Moss was sent to a psychiatric doctor because other doctors could find nothing physically wrong with him. The nature of somatic illness is a physical representation of a psychological problem. The Doctor knows he will only have Moss under his care for a short time so he attempts to give him tools to combat his “illness”. Moss’ illness is manifested rage at his own feelings of inferiority and of not belonging because he is black; Finch, his lifelong friend, called him Nigger. Somatic illness is the projection of internal threats outward; one is more vulnerable to internal threats because one has no means of fortifying against oneself as one could against an external threat. Moss was better able to deal with the loss of his walking ability it was an acceptable outward threat to replace the internal, more difficult internal threat of truly being inferior (30). The interaction between Moss and the Doctor is wrought with the tension of the memories being experienced by Moss as the internal threat touches upon the borderline between repression of his fears and acknowledgment of them.
This scene is just after the hypnosis where the Doctor discusses what Moss remembers. The Doctor questions Moss and corrects the answers when Moss recounts incorrectly. Early psychoanalysis consisted of interpretation according to Freud. This is clearly the Doctor having full control of the session, decoding for the patient the diagnosis as he sees it to be. “Do you remember how you got out?” the Doctor fires the question rapidly, Freud points out the “art” was to uncover resistances to the diagnosis as quickly as possible (18). “Mingo” answers Moss. “NO. Not Mingo it was TJ. TJ carried you”, the Doctor informs him. “Oh Yeah” Moss replies weakly. He continues to question Moss about his feelings when Finch used the racial slur and tells Moss this is the cause of the paralysis. He explains Moss was angry at Finch and was glad he was shot, but not in the way Moss feels so guilty about. Moss feels guilty because he thinks his feeling of gladness was because of what Finch said. He was glad it was Finch who was shot and not he. These mixed feelings of guilt and shame cause Moss to feel he should not have been able to leave Finch; the somatic conversion occurs and Moss could not physically leave due to paralysis. After explaining all this to Moss, the Doctor tells him that he is not so different in an attempt to bring the crux of the problem to the light for Moss, the objective being to bring what was unconscious into the conscious mind (18). He tells him many soldiers feel the same way when they see a buddy die or injured. He asks Moss to repeat the explanations and Moss does. Repeating is an important step in therapeutic success and it plays a number of roles in this film as discussed further on in this essay. The Doctor then asks him if he believes the explanation. Moss merely replies, “I want to”. He explains, “Sure I believe it up here (points to head) because you say so but I don’t really know if I really believe it up here (points to heart). I’m sorry Doc.” It is not enough, as early psychoanalysts did, to tell the patient what is wrong with them (18). The patient can only be cured when they have as Freud puts it “conviction of the correctness of the construction that has been communicated to him”; he believes and understands the diagnosis (19). Freud’s use of the word “construction” makes clear that the actual work of putting together the cause with the effect is still being done by the analyst. Now it is the patient’s work to understand the steps needed to free his conscious mind from the repressed desire building upon the initial work of the therapist.
This is where Hollywood movie making apparatus take creative license with the psychoanalytic process because the Doctor recreates the traumatic event by using a racial slur to anger Moss into walking, moments after explaining the diagnosis. This repetition is important but not exactly the impetus to making everything all better. Moss relives the moment of anger instead of remembering it. Because the patient did not believe his guilt was related to surviving but was related to his guilt over his anger, the traumatic event treated was the betrayal of his friend. The traumatic event of experiencing prejudice over ones ethnicity that results in feelings of shame and inferiority are deeply entwined with Moss’s desire to be like everyone else. War itself is another event that affects our main character and cannot be separate from the others because the natures of the traumas are the same, shame and guilt. The overlapping causes for Moss’ condition is another element of repetition. Because remembering places the traumatic event in the past, it is in remembering that healing begins to take place. Identifying the events causing the problem is, again, the “construction” work. Repeating the event in “real time” emotionally with enough force to generate movement in his limbs is in conflict with Freud’s view that the analyst must ensure the patient “maintains some aloofness” (19). There is no aloofness in this scene so Moss should not have been able to walk.
Not only should Moss continue to be unable to walk but also the act of transference needs to take its final steps, relinquishment of the doctor from his role as proxy. The treatment is only beginning although the movie cures Moss for entertainment purposes. The Doctor took on the roll of Finch, as aggressor, in using the racial term against Moss and a proxy for the justified anger Moss felt toward Finch but could not display because Finch was dead and he had left him there. This transference, as it is called when the doctor takes on the role of the “other” during treatment, is a tenuous line to walk because as these bonds are built to encourage abandonment of the resistances to treatment the patient may exhibit (18). Transference is another form of repetition needed to create a bond of trust between the analyzed and analyst. However, in order for treatment to be fully realized the patient must be able to de-realize the analyst.
When simply interpreting the diagnosis for Moss does not work, the Doctor then uses the next evolutionary step Freud outlines and asks the patient to confirm the doctor’s construction from his own memory (18). This repeating, alluded to earlier, is not as negative as the previous version where the patient is reliving a traumatic act. In this scene repetition is also used as a therapeutic tool. Moss is told repeatedly by the Doctor that he is “no different, no different at all.” This is said in a few ways but the message is the same and clear, the Doctor is trying to impress upon Moss that his problem lies within his ability to believe for himself that he is no different from others. Again, just telling him over and over that he is no different could only illicit the response that Moss “want[s] to” believe.
Litany is used, as a rhetorical tool several times throughout the film, to introduce the audience to the emotional intensity the character is experiencing. In the scene just before Moss encounters Finch, Moss cries woefully as he drops to his knees chanting “Nigger, Nigger, Nigger, Nigger” pounding his legs with his fists. The film offers the audience the cause of his “illness” in this moment if they can see it without the onscreen explanation to come. When Moss cradles the dying Finch in his arms he rocks him back and forth whispering in despair, “No God” repeatedly. Moss presents for the audience yet another chance to experience his pain when he finds he cannot walk. His distress is palpable as he first says, “No, I can’t leave him” referring to leaving Finch so they can rendezvous with the rescue boat, then increasing as he realizes that he cannot physically leave. Moss utters excitedly, “I can’t move, NO! I can’t. I can’t walk. I can’t move, I can’t.” He is ultimately carried to safety. The litany of the Doctor is no different from that of Moss. The Doctor says to Moss, “Listen to me. You are no different” and that is submitted to the audience to understand and believe, thus curing society of the malady of racial classifications.
This brings us to the final step in the evolution of psychoanalytic practice covered in the movie and the final scene, the moment of conviction. In this scene Moss is talking with a liberal Sergeant Mingo about his treatment. Moss tells Mingo that treatment is an ongoing process and Mingo claims he understands just how Moss felt. He told him he has often felt grateful that it was the guy next to him that got shot or killed instead of him. This moment in the scene highlights the epiphany Moss experiences immediately. Excitedly, Moss asks Mingo to “ repeat what you just said Mingo.” Mingo repeats several lines and at insistent prompting from Moss, he finally repeats, “Sure I’ve felt like that, everyone has”; elaborating he repeats the sentiment that every soldier, in that situation, has a moment where he is glad it was not his turn to die. This above all the Doctor’s exaltations provides Moss with the “conviction” necessary for cure. His buddy Mingo had echoed the thoughts that had shamed Moss, causing him guilt. This single moment of solidarity released Moss from his guilt about surviving because other soldiers had the same experience and this proved he was like everyone else. The shame of feeling inferior is also relinquished because now Moss is able to absorb the rest of the doctor’s construction because of his newfound solidarity with humanity. Because Moss could believe he was no different than anyone else he can appropriately place his anger at Finch’s careless words in the past, in its safe position of remembering not reliving.
Psychoanalytic elements of repetition are replete in the film Home of the Brave. The use of litany in the characters dialogue supports the sense of work needed to combat traumatic neuroses. The audience participates in the therapy of Moss. The audience is reminded, as Moss is told repeatedly, that Moss is no different from any other soldier, black or white. In the time the film was produced, 1949, this message would have met an audience who lived segregation daily. The audience would have to work in viewing this film to combat the traumatic event of racism present in their own world. Moss is compelled into repetition of the initial trauma of recognizing his difference when his friend points it out; the audience is guided through repetition in order to liberate the repressed thoughts of racial inequalities in a safe manner, leading to healing for both. The guide, the Doctor for Moss, is also the psychoanalytic device of repetition in the form of litany for the audience. The evolution of psychoanalytic treatment follows the natural steps one takes to resolve repressed impulses. The interpretation of the neurosis by the analyst, the presentation of the diagnosis to the patient, and the final epiphany the patient must come to are paralleled by the occurrence of the initial traumatic event, recognizing the compounding, loosely related subsequent traumatic events, and finally the epiphany experience of understanding and believing the truth or falseness of the perceptions. Home of the Brave was billed as a “psychological thriller” and indeed it offers a wealth of Freudian concepts to explore.
Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: WW Norton, 1961.
Robson, Mark. Home of the Brave. Stanley Kramer Productions. 1949. University of California, Berkeley. Media Resource VHS: 999:3670.
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