Narcissism and Repressed Memories in "White Oleander"

“White Oleander” is a movie filled with many different psychological concepts. The plot of the movie focuses on a mother, Ingrid, and her daughter, Astrid. Ingrid and Astrid live a happy life until Ingrid begins seeing Barry. He ends up cheating on her and she flips out. She poisons him with the sap of white oleander flowers and ends up going to prison for it. This forces Astrid to be sent to a series of foster homes. She has good and bad experiences at each, which causes her to learn more about herself. She keeps in touch with her mother through letters and visits to prison, which allows Ingrid to keep a hold on her daughter until Astrid finally has enough and begins a life of her own with her boyfriend.

Ingrid is one character from “White Oleander” that has a psychological disorder. Ingrid is a narcissist, meaning she has “an unrealistic sense of self-importance, cannot take criticism, manipulates people, and lacks empathy” (King, 2008, p. 556). Narcissism describes excessive self-love; narcissists value themselves far more than normal, average people; their egos are also inflated much more because they are so self-centered. Ingrid displays many of these characteristics throughout the movie, especially when it comes to the relationship with her daughter.

During this clip there is a scene (about 4 minutes and 45 seconds in) of Ingrid sitting on the roof with Astrid. Astrid asks her mother if she’s going to Parent’s Night, to which Ingrid replies she forgot and made plans to do something with a friend. Astrid tries to make her mother want to go by telling her that all the other parents go and Ingrid simply says, “What can they tell me about you that I don’t already know?” This one scene shows Ingrid’s narcissistic side. By forgetting about Parent’s Night, she shows that she views herself as a far more important and superior person. This scene also shows how arrogant Ingrid is because she believes she knows everything about Astrid and wouldn’t learn anything new about her by going to Parent’s Night. Everything Ingrid says in this scene represents a characteristic of a narcissist, making it clear that she is a narcissist herself. There are other scenes throughout the movie that re-confirm the fact that Ingrid is a narcissist. These scenes are mostly the ones where Astrid visits her mother in prison.

Freud’s ideas about the unconscious are another psychological concept presented in “White Oleander,” though it affects Astrid, not Ingrid. Freud believed that thoughts and feelings we find difficult or almost impossible to attend to are kept at the unconscious level. These thoughts are kept at the unconscious level because they cause too much anxiety if remembered. Part of the unconscious is the repression of memories. Certain memories are repressed into the unconscious because they’re too painful. The act of repressing certain memories also takes place in the unconscious, meaning there is no memory of repressing the memory. In the clip below (about 1 minute and 15 seconds in), Astrid sits down and begins drawing the face of a girl. One of the other girls she’s living with asks Astrid who the girl is because Astrid draws her all the time. Astrid replies by saying, “I think her name was Annie. She’s someone I remember. I don’t know who she was.” Annie is in fact a repressed memory. When Astrid was very young, Ingrid left her with Annie for a year. The memory of this was very painful to Astrid and makes Astrid fear abandonment from Ingrid; therefore she repressed all memories of Annie. Astrid doesn’t remember repressing these memories of Annie though there is still a part of her conscious that remembers someone named Annie was once involved in her life.

When Astrid visits Ingrid in prison for the last time in the movie, she asks her mother about Annie and the truth comes out. It is at this point that the audience learns who Annie was and why Astrid could only remember a face and vaguely a name without remembering the role Annie played in Astrid’s life.