Psychogenic fugue

From Lost Highway

Contents 1 Definition 2 Role in making of Lost Highway 3 Parallels to Lost Highway: psychogenic fugue 4 Parallels to Lost Highway: musical fugue

[edit] Definition

"Psychogenic" means "having a mental or psychological origin or cause" (Oxford English Dictionary). "Fugue" derives from Latin terms meaning "to flee" and "flight."

Psychogenic fugue, also known as "fugue state" and officially classified as "dissociative fugue" in the DSM-IV, is a psychological dissociative disorder.

The DSM-IV-TR lists the following diagnostic criteria for dissociative fugue:

The essential feature of Dissociative Fugue is sudden, unexpected travel away from home or one's customary place of daily activities, with inability to recall some or all of one's past (Criterion A). This is accompanied by confusion about personal identity or even the assumption of a new identity (Criterion B). The disturbance does not occur exclusively during the course of Dissociative Identity Disorder [formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder] and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance or a general medical condition (Criterion C). The symptoms must cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (Criterion D).

The DSM-IV-TR entry for dissociative fugue is reprinted here.

The Merck Manual provides the following definition of dissociative fugue, available here:

Dissociative fugue is one or more episodes of amnesia in which the inability to recall some or all of one's past is combined with either the loss of one's identity or the formation of a new identity. The episodes, called fugues, result from trauma or stress. Dissociative fugue often manifests as sudden, unexpected, purposeful travel away from home.

[edit] Role in making of Lost Highway

David Lynch and Barry Gifford learned of "psychogenic fugue" during the production of Lost Highway, after they had written the script. Gifford seems to have researched the phenomenon at this point, and it has clearly shaped his interpretation of the film. researched the phenomenon at this point, while Lynch did not. However, the differences between the script and the film are minor, and it remains unclear that "psychogenic fugue" played any role in the production of Lost Highway, though it may have influenced Gifford's thinking about the film. David Lynch and Barry Gifford have given information about the point at which they learned of psychogenic fugue and about whether the concept played a formative role in the writing of the script and the shooting of the film.

In an interview with Chris Rodley, printed in the paperback edition of the Lost Highway script, Lynch explains that he and Gifford learned of psychogenic fugue at some point during production and that psychogenic fugue did not play a role in the writing of the script. Lynch explains that the unit publicist, who works on location during production, came across the term "psychogenic fugue."

Chris Rodley: CiBy's pre-publicity for the movie encapsulates the entire synopsis in three words: "a psychogenic fugue." Were you aware that such a mental condition actually existed?
David Lynch: No. Barry and I didn't know what that was. Deborah Wuliger, the unit publicist on the picture, happened to find it in a medical journal or something. She showed it to us, and it was like Lost Highway. Not literally, but an interior thing can happen that's very similar. A certain mental disturbance. But it sounds like such a beautiful thing - "psychogenic fugue." It has music and it has a certain force and dream-like quality. I think it's beautiful, even if it didn't mean anything.
...
Chris Rodley: Given the near-perfect correspondences between a psychogenic fugue and Lost Highway, it's hard to imagine that you didn't read up on it when working on the script.
David Lynch: No, no, no, no. Certain things happen, ideas come along and they string themselves together and they form a whole and then a theme or something becomes apparent - if you wanna look for it. But if you're true to those ideas, you don't need to know....

In an article in Cinefantastique (Vol. 28, No. 10, Apr. 1997), Gifford was quoted as suggesting that psychogenic fugue played a formative role either in the writing of the script or in the shooting of the film.

[T]he question that Lynch originally posed, as Gifford recalls, was: "What if one person woke up one day and was another person?" Gifford said, "We had to create a scenario to make that plausible. We discovered a clinical, psychological condition which fit our premise - a 'psychogenic fugue.' It's as if you decided to change your life and showed up with a different name and entirely created a new identity for yourself and really grew to believe you were this new person. There are different kinds of fugue states, and a psychogenic fugue takes place only in your own mind - you don't really go anywhere. It's a mental fugue, for lack of a better term. This was something I researched with a clinical psychiatrist at Stanford, so we had some basis in fact here. After we found that freedom, more or less it was just a matter of creating this surreal, fantastic world that Fred Madison lives in when he becomes Pete Dayton."

However,

Barry may have his idea of what the film means and I may have my own idea, and they may be two different things. And yet, we worked together on the same film. The beauty of a film that is more abstract is everybody has a different take.

In fact, I never told people what it [Lost Highway]meant. I did mention this business about psychogenic fugue, as did David, in many interviews. We did agree that we would never explain the film, and we haven’t, to my knowledge. It’s for each person to make up his own mind about it. He’s absolutely right, except that that phrase was in fact used in the promotion in the film, so I wasn’t talking out of school.

More information is needed to reconcile these quotes from Lynch and Gifford. The script was completed in June, 1995, and filming began in Sep., 1995. It may be the case that Lynch and Gifford learned of psychogenic fugue during production, after writing the script, and that Gifford researched the phenomenon at this point, while Lynch did not. However, the differences between the script and the film are minor, and it remains unclear that "psychogenic fugue" played any role in the production of Lost Highway, though it may have influenced Gifford's thinking about the film.

[edit] Parallels to Lost Highway: psychogenic fugue

Lost Highway employs psychogenic fugue in the psychological sense, but only in a loose sense.

Strictly speaking, what happens to Fred Madison cannot be described as a case of psychogenic fugue. That is, if Fred is interpreted as being locked in a jail cell while imagining or believing that he is Pete Dayton working at Arnie’s garage, etc., then Fred's condition does not correspond to the diagnostic definitions of psychogenic fugue, which do not involve a loss of perceptual contact with one's surroundings or the psychological hallucination of alternative surroundings. If Fred's experience is interpreted in the above manner, his condition does not correspond to dissociative fugue or any other clinically recognized dissociative disorder. This, however, does not rule out interpreting Fred's transformation into Pete as a psychological or fantasy experience.

In a loose sense, the narrative of Lost Highway is similar to cases of psychogenic fugue in several respects. Similar to psychogenic fugue, the transition from the world of Fred and Renee to the world of Pete and Alice is triggered by traumatic, stressful events that Fred wish to deny; it is manifested as a form of wish fulfillment; and it is accompanied by the amnesic forgetting of the past and the assumption of a new identity. Also similar to psychogenic fugue, the identities of Fred and Renee return when elements of the forgotten past resurface and when the new identities are revealed as false.

[edit] Parallels to Lost Highway: musical fugue

The film also employs fugue in the musical sense, though the use of fugue seems to have been only partially intended. In the interview with Chris Rodley, Lynch addresses fugue in the musical sense.

Chris Rodley: More revealing than "psychogenic" - which basically means "having an origin in the mind" - the the definition of "fugue". Although it's primarily a musical term, it completely describes the picture: one theme starts and is taken up by a second theme in answer. And the term is used to describe a form of amnesia, which is a flight from reality. Don't both definitions perfectly describe the complex relationship between Fred and Pete?
David Lynch: Exactly. That's why I think they called it a "psychogenic fugue" because it goes from one thing, segues to another, and then I think it comes back again. And so it is "Lost Highway". And whether those people who have this illness come back again or not, or how long the fugue lasts, I don't know. But it gets pretty crazy with two themes churning, finding a way to separate and then come back together again.
Chris Rodley: You could therefore describe "Lost Highway" uniquely as a film that truly echoes a musical term. A real musical! Did you and Angelo Badalamenti discuss the score in terms of a fugue?
David Lynch: We never really got into that. Fugues make me feel insane. I can only listen to a certain amount of a fugue and then I feel like I'm gonna blow up from the inside out. You don't want to stay in your body. Or you'd want to if your body wasn't doing what it was doing. But I'd like to see Angelo do a fugue on a pipe organ, you know? [Laughs]

A fugue elaborates a set of variations on a musical theme. A fugue introduces a musical theme, develops the theme by repeating and modifying it elements, and ends by returning to the theme in its original key.

• Exposition: The section of the fugue that introduces the theme is called the "exposition."
• Middle entries: The following sections that develop the theme are called "episodes" and "middle entries." Various techniques can be used to modify the original theme, such as "inversion" (inverting all interval values, for example, a fourth up becomes a fourth down), "augmentation" and "dimunition" (respectively, lengthening or shortening the lengths of all notes), and retrograde (playing the melody backwards).
• Final entry: The subsequent section, which is sometimes the final section, is called the "final entry." The final entry presents a final statement of the theme in its original key as introduced in the exposition.
• Coda: Fugues often include a brief "coda." Any material that follows the final statement of the theme is considered to be the coda.

Lost Highway's central thematic elements can be interpreted as being the psychological dynamics of Fred’s relationship to Renee. Lost Highway can be interpreted as repeating and modifying these elements in much the same way a fugue does, complete with three main sections and possibly a coda:

• Exposition (from the beginning of the film to Fred’s transformation into Pete)
• Middle entries (ending with Pete’s transformation back into Fred)
• Final (ending with Fred's line "Dick Laurent is dead.")
• Coda (from Fred's line "Dick Laurent is dead." to the end of the film)

Lost Highway introduces its themes via the relationship between Fred and Renee, repeats, modifies, and develops them through the relationship between Pete and Alice, and then recapitulates them in a final entry that returns to the relationship between Fred and Renee.

Lost Highway is like a fugue not only in its overall structure but also in its technique of repeating and recontextualizing specific images, pieces of music, and lines of dialogue: see Scene Analyses.