Psychogenic fugue

From Lost Highway

Revision as of 07:19, 24 May 2007

Definition

Psychogenic fugue, also known as "dissociative fugue" and "fugue state," 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.

Role in making of Lost Highway

David Lynch and Barry Gifford have given seemingly contradictory 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 suggests 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."

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.

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 interpreted as a case of psychogenic fugue. That is, if Fred is interpreted as being locked in a jail cell while imagining that he is Pete Dayton at Arnie’s garage, then Fred's condition does not fit the the criteria that define psychogenic fugue:

Nevertheless, the transition from the world of Fred and Renee to the world of Pete and Alice is enabled by the assumption of a new identity and by the amnesic forgetting of the past. As well, the identities of Fred and Renee return at the same time that the new identities are exposed as lies (see the relevant section of Narrative Method and Plot Development above).

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 see Angelo do a fugue on a pipe organ, you know? [Laughs]

Roughly stated, a fugue elaborates a set of variations on a musical theme. A fugue introduces the theme and then develops it by re-articulating, modifying, and re-configuring its elements. A fugue presents and re-presents its theme continuously and aims to never re-present the theme in exactly the same way.

• The portion of the fugue that introduces the theme is called the "exposition."
• The following section is called the "development." Various techniques can be used to modify and develop the theme while ensuring that it remains recognizable. For example, the melody might be flipped upside down, a technique known as "inversion." Or the note values of the theme might be doubled, known as "augmentation."
• The final section of a fugue, sometimes known as the "recapitulation," consists of a final statement of the theme in the key in which the fugue began. It acts as a kind of synthesis of the whole piece while also providing a resolution or conclusion to the work.

Lost Highway's central thematic elements can be interpreted as being Fred’s fears and fantasies regarding his wife Renee, and Lost Highway can be interpreted as repeating, reconfiguring, and developing these elements in much the same way that a fugue does, complete with three main sections Introduction and General Overview and Narrative Method and Plot Development above):

• exposition (from the beginning to Fred’s transformation into Pete)
• development (ending with Pete’s transformation back into Fred)
• and recapitulation (from Fred’s return to the end of the film)

The film introduces its themes via the world of Fred and Renee, develops them through the world of Pete and Alice, and recapitulates them through a return to the world of Fred and Renee.

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

Psycho-genic

Third, "psycho-genic" is a particularly apt word because the narrative that the film unfolds is psychologically driven.