Davis and Lisa

David and Lisa

During the movie we were to observe the main two characters David and Lisa.

It starts out David getting dropped off by his mother at a private school/hospital for the insane. He has been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCDP). For the most part, I agree with this diagnosis.

First David’s obsession with clocks or time, the clocks were never on time or in his own words “Mickey-mouse” quality. While waiting for Dr. Swinford’s, David had walked over to the wall clock and mentioned that it is still broken, then he told his mom that the Dr. probably had a “Mickey-mouse”, referring to the quality of the make. I feel David is acting somewhat like his mom in putting on a superior front, which help keep distance from people.

I felt David was preoccupied with details, order and organization. The first night at the school while alone in his room, he is breaking out in tears as he straightens the pencils on the desk. One of the questions asked in class, why did David cry when the Dr left? I feel that he cried because he was scared, not only that he was in a strange place, but also because he was frightened that he knew something was wrong with him and he had no control over himself. His compulsion to arrange the pencils was a reminder of that fact.

David was intelligent and stubborn, while in his room he had begun to design a clock, his intention was going to make the perfect clock. He was devoted to this project, detailed orientated, and overly strict standards. He never finished.

David was over conscientious about being touched. Whenever someone touched him, he became deathly afraid of dying. Later in the movie I believe his obsession with time, was due to that fear dying. It was all explained in deeper terms by David when he stated, “to be touched is to feel, and to feel is to die.”

When David was eight-years-old his mother took him to a fair/carnival, there he saw a person called George/Georgina this unusually formed person scared David bad enough he’d ran out of the tent crying. His mother would tease him about this, even in front of her fiends. He learned through this reinforcement that it didn’t matter to his mother how he felt. Something that scared him so much became a point of ridicule and distain. His mother repeatedly showed she couldn’t be trusted with David’s feelings.

David was reluctant to play with the other students. So he never really liked the other kids. It seemed that Simion was a friend once he had became

One day entering the parlor David meet Lisa. Lisa was already staying at the hospital when David arrived. She was in the parlor with her therapist John, jumping around and rhyming. David had watched her, intrigued by her, he studies books on psychology and came up with his own diagnoses for her. He told John that Lisa is affected with adolescence schizophrenia. I would have to say that I don’t agree here. Lisa did not appear to have any delusions or hallucinations; her speech may rhyme, however it was her language. She may speak that way because of trauma from her early childhood. There is not a lot of information on Lisa’s family so I will assume that her mother died when she was really young and that is why she is attracted to the family in the train