PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSIDERATION OF ROMANCE IN THE MOVIE FILM: SOMEWHERE IN TIME

By: Dr. Franklin S. Helsinger © June 26, 2005

Background of Movie
This writing addresses the romance that was depicted in the movie, Somewhere in Time, by Richard Matheson, based on his novel, Bid Time Return. The leading male character in the movie, directed by Jeannot Szwarc, is Richard Collier, and the female, Elise McKenna, based on Maude Adams, the real life relative of the two Adams Presidents. She was a reclusive, Victorian and early 1900's actress of the American Theater. Maude appeared in J. M. Barrie's The Little Minister and Peter Pan. Richard Matheson fell in love with Maude when he read her biography and saw her photograph —a theme that he transfigured in Richard Collier. There is no question of Matheson's romantic persuasion, and his philosophical proclamation of mysticism. The romance is a variation on many tragic stories told throughout the ages, including Abelard and Heloise; and Romeo and Juliette. Jay Gatsby was killed trying to shape Daisy Buchanan into his idealized image of her from his self-constructed memory —the way Pygmalion created Galatea. Don Quixote could not have possessed Dulcinea in any way other than through his decaying, chivalric mind. There are innumerable movie romances where separated or improbable lovers are cast in a supernatural, mystical fashion, such as those depicted in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir; Always; and Ghost. But, Somewhere in Time is singular. It is a genuine work of art, with visual splendor and sumptuous scenery and costuming, in the style of French Impressionism, especially Georges Seurat —and above all, the magnificent Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan. The composers, John Barry and Sergey Rachmaninoff, are unsurpassed in romance-inducing, mood-intoxicating music. The actors were perfect. We identified with them and temporarily became Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. It was surprisingly easy to suspend reality and accept the uncanny plot, even beyond the writer's grounding of time-travel in mind only, through “self-hypnosis.” While women are usually drawn to romance movies, and men not, this movie is the exception, because males have proven to be a strongly represented group of fans, according to Bill Shepard, Founder of International Network of Somewhere in Time Enthusiasts (INSITE). Guys may like it because the story is told through a male adventurer, Richard Collier, who must overcome adversity in his travels, reminiscent of the heroism that was portrayed by Homer in The Odyssey. But enough of accolades and review —that's been done before ...and often. My purpose here is to bring romance to the laboratory table, and learn why so many of us succumb to it with the passion that we do.

The Psychologist and The Psychology
I have been a practicing clinical psychologist for forty-three years at this writing. But, it was early in my career when I sought to discover the roots of universal emotional disturbance, that I turned my attention to study the role of supernatural and mystical thinking. This study became part of my career and led me to world travel. If you'd examine my private library you'd think that I were a religious person —but that would be erroneous. I read this type of material to learn how people are programmed, and to learn our culture's philosophy and ethics, including what bogey-men will strike in the night. I have learned of man's fears and yearnings for love and security. Unlike Mr. Matheson, I arrived at zero belief in anything supernatural or spiritual. Yet, I enjoy books and
movies, such as Mr. Matheson's works by carving-out belief from the fiction that I read and enjoy —and I can still experience the romance of it all. The fiction acts as a catalyst to my insight and creativity, and to a calm encounter with my emotions. Azar Nafisi, in her book, Reading Lolita in Tehran said, “...what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.” I couldn't agree more. It is by this process that we, then, are able to find new meanings and new emotions, sometimes in a blaze of rewarding insight. The same thing applies to theater. When we read and when we observe performances, our minds do multiple tasks: we identify with the characters, and we call upon our own memories and experiences, and weave them into what we are observing. We are them, and yet we are still our own unique selves. Actually, a new me is created, because new information has impinged upon our brains, changing us. Heraclitis said, “We never step into the same river twice.” We think, and we emote, in an ever-changing mind-mix-master; and most of the process is unconscious. People like to wallow in their emote part. I teach my patients that they can, and should, taste the elixir of fantasy and emotion, while maintaining the conscious ability to return to reality and rational thinking in an instant. This is the process of stepping away from emotional disturbance —being able to recognize that stimuli from the emotional centers of the brain can be dismissed —not merely controlled —by the thinking brain. I was doing a call-in radio psychology show around the time the movie was released on cable TV, so I found myself using the movie as a reference to help my love-sick or jilted, or even suicidal, callers. I saw Somewhere in Time, perhaps as many times as the number of years that I have been in practice. (And I thought that my kids were silly teenagers when they saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show dozens of times, dressed, no less, in the garb of the movie characters.) My wife and I stayed at the Grand Hotel, and yes, I tracked-down all the locations and scenes that I saw in the movie, bumping into other nuts who were doing the same thing ...and, of course, taking pictures. I was Richard Collier.

Moods Created by Theater
Love and passion must be understood as two, disparate (sometimes desperate) entities. They originate in two separate areas of the brain —love from the cerebrum —passion from the hypothalamus, located in the limbic system of the lower brain. Love is a conscious, calm, sober thought process; while passion is an emotional response. Most audiences are moved to emotion. This is the desideratum of the writer and the director. It is triggered or enhanced by music, which slips into our unconscious and steers the emotion, so even dummies will be sure to get the director's point; and so all of us will be swept away from our ordinary lives, and be transformed into the characters that we see on the screen. Richard Wagner was the first to give the world mood-manipulating —mood-demanding music in his operas. So, we sit there, in the dark, with one greasy hand in the popcorn bag, and the other holding the clean hand of our date, anticipating the promised emotion. People spend lots of money at amusement parks to get thrills; equally so at showings of horror and romance movies. Despite that all emotions are irrational, we seem to love them. But, I know you'll say that we want the good ones and not the bad ones —whatever that means. I still contend that all emotions are irrational, whether we like them or not. When we feel passion or lust, or arousal, it is a limbic system function, emanating from the hypothalamus. It feels good, but it's irrational. Let me quickly add that I am not condemning these feelings —my formula for using them best is to consciously dip into them at will, knowing where the escape doors lie.

Richard and Elise
So what about Richard and Elise? Did you like it when the big and handsome Richard abjured all material things, all danger, prior life, career —just to reunite with his beloved Elise? YES! the ladies scream —YES, YES, YES! like Meg Ryan feigning a public orgasm in When Harry Met Sally. And men —of course we'd rise to the occasion in true macho fashion, to surmount any danger —any time barrier —any William Robinson —just to claim the gorgeous, and feminine Elise —whose beauty, elegance, and stunning clothing dissolve into a tender, yielding woman, whose hairdo falls upon her revealed shoulders when we look into her eyes and caress her ... as the door to room 117 ...slowly closes.

The Yearn for a Mate
The clinical word for connecting to someone (or something) with a passion, is cathect. We cathected to our mothers when we were infants, and probably continue to do so for the rest of our lives. We cathected to other family members, then to an expanding social universe, finding friends, lovers, and mates. We seem, right from birth, to yearn for another...perhaps a symbolic mother, as though we are not complete until we do. We want to be in a dyad, which is two separate parts (moieties) that act as one unit, such as two oxygen atoms, or a loving couple. When we feel that we cannot live without another, we have developed an emotionally dependent cathexis. It occurs to me that humans actually need (cannot live without) mother or mother surrogate when we are babies, but we incorrectly distort that actual survival need into a want, as we mature, when we no longer face sure death without a care-taker. This is what causes emotional disturbance in romance, as well in all life in general. It would be emotionally healthier, then, to say I want rather than I need, in most cases. But that isn't as romantic is it? If we don't have a mate, we seek one—sometimes frantically. I have been clinically involved with cases of suicide over lost relationships. I contend that the answer to our security is not, as romance books and movies suggest, to have a mate. At its deepest root, this yearn began within us —something that even pre-dates our mothers —our primitive, ideal selves. But we are loath to be satisfied with self because we are, by nature, herd animals, trained and imprinted by our culture, and we feel that we need a mate, further driven by our sexual instincts to satisfy them intimately with another person.

Why We Fall In Love
When we like or dislike somebody, it is due to projecting an idealized image of what we think we want or don't want in another, and this stems from our primitive selves, and real life experiences or those that we imagined. When other people live up to our expectations, we like or love them, and we believe they are perfection, or some degree of it. I know that I am a bundle of changing variables —a truism for each one of us. Therefore, I always puzzle over how, with all of our constantly changing aspects, can we ever match up with the many vagaries in another? Ah, but in the idealized part of our imaginations, there exists steady perfection and we project it onto another. If that individual measures-up to our expectations, our emotional brain in the limbic system generates feelings of pleasure, brought about by increased flow of dopamine and oxytocin, and we want to return to that state, again and again —falling in love. This is what addicts experience with their drugs. The earliest sensations in the womb and afterwards —tender contact with loving people —set the conditioned process in motion. The fulfillment of affection is reinforced by receiving social approval, then puppy-love, then romance and sex. Our culture reinforces our desire for affection and romance. Literature and theater create memes —man-made cultural styles or behaviors that society generally accepts and integrates into our personal and collective thinking and feeling, including romance, belief, material desire, and patriotism —just to name a few. Somewhere in Time added to our idealized, romantic meme. When the other person fails to meet our standard or our expectation, it is because he or she is not acting within our idealized framework. The other person really isn't failing at all: our expectation is simply not being fulfilled —not that we're not entitled to set any standard that we choose, but idealized expectation may doom a relationship. In romantic relationships, then, we are really projecting an aspect of ourselves onto another, and asking that person to respond accordingly. This can't work in real life, because nobody can be us. It works in literature and theater, because the simplistic, idealized standard is made clear to the audience, who is complicit in it. The complexities and less attractive aspects of real life can never be fully, or even nearly, demonstrated in the play, as they are in real life —aspects that reduce the idealism in relationships. What we see on screen is the ideal; the illusion —Elise and Richard, and they each see perfection in one other. We love perfection on the stage, but would probably hate it in real life, because we'd eventually realize that the idealized other is just an aspect of us ...how boring. The idealized lover has to remain a god-like creature, out of reach —immortalized, the way that the movie ended —the couple reaching dyad status only by being mystically reunited in heaven. Elise was unattainable in real life because she lived in a prior time. This fact, plus her beauty made her idealized. Richard, the amazing man who could will himself back to her in time, was also an idealization. We converted them into mystical, supernatural beings by combining our genetic and nurturing instincts of affection, with paradisial qualities —the reasons that we, in the real world, with our irrational emotions, fell in love with the characters and the concept of the movie, and why we ever fall in love in real life.

Can We Experience Romance Like in the Movies?
Richard had to be swept back to real time, from 1912 and leave Elise. Romeo and Juliette had to die; and Heloise had to enter the nunnery. In books and films, we fall in love with unattainable, idealized others. It is because they are unattainable that they remain perfection, and an object of our desire. Add physical beauty and romantic music, and the scene is set for the seduction of our emotions —something totally irrational, but sooo enjoyable —so addicting, that we return to it as often as possible —through film, theater, literature, music, dance, and art. My female patients often ask me if the romance that we see in the movies is truly attainable. It is, but not the fictionalized, mystical version that we see on the screen. It can be created if each member of the dyad is willing to consciously work on the relationship every day —to maintain awareness that the other is the center of one's life —to apply mental involvement with the beloved in everything one does, even in the physical absence of the mate. If each does this, the fact that we are constantly changing, renews the relationship, and keeps it refreshed and exciting. You may not actually hear the rhapsodies of John Barry or Rachmaninoff, but your sensations, now wrapped with sound reality, will surpass what you see in the movies.