Video: Mr. Robot as Therapy

Disconnection, Integration, and the Multiplicity of Self

Post-script notes: This is a script for a video essay I wrote and made early last year. The script may not be exactly the same as the video (I think I have an entire extra section in here).

I was (and still am) early into my psychology studies, and plan to make any corrections as I become aware of them. In retrospect, I would have tied in Schema therapy as well, as the stated ideas under IFS are not unique to IFS. (I would also re-do my vocal recording.)

Anyways, here’s the script:

PREAMBLE

This is a video about psychology, therapy, and the TV series Mr. Robot. You don't need to have seen the series to watch and understand it. A fair warning: this script/video contains some (mostly indirect) spoilers, mostly surrounding the first season. I tried my best to stay away from major direct spoilers. If you haven't seen the show, or have only seen part of it, I hope this will inspire you to go watch it all the way through (trust me, I didn't spoil everything). It's well worth your time, especially with the following topics and themes in mind.

I’d like to start this off with a poem from the Sufi poet and scholar, Rumi. You might have heard it before. I hope what follows in this video/script can shed some deeper understanding on it. It goes like this:

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

MR. ROBOT AS THERAPY: DISCONNECTION, INTEGRATION, AND THE MULTIPLICITY OF SELF

What exactly is a "self"?

We often use phrases like, "she was not herself" or "I'm not feeling myself" or so on, but when are we truly our selves? Are we ourselves at work meetings? At home on the couch? When we're with our best friends or loved ones? What even constitutes our "self"?

We are not our clothes, our possessions, our friend groups, our ideologies, our body parts, or our thoughts. We can separate from any of these things and still the experience of "us" remains, in some form. And it's this continuous, congruent, separate, unique flow of experience that feels like our "self". As long as my experience of "self" continues, it is me… right?

Our experience of reality definitely feels like one distinct, unique, congruent flow of existence. But as we delve deeper into the nature of experience, as we study how the brain and mind work, as we truly observe our intake of reality as it is, we begin to notice something subtle, but rather important:

We begin to notice that our perception and experience of reality are not reality itself. Perception plays a series of tricks on us, and we mistake those tricks for reality. Take sight, for example. We assume that our vision takes in the world as one continuous, unbroken stream of sight, but cognitive science proves that we actually experience the world in a series of discrete moments, like frames of a film, which are soon after stitched together by the brain to give the illusion of congruency.

A similar deception of the mind occurs in how we make sense of objects. We look out on the horizon and see a "mountain", but that "mountain" is not actually one distinct thing; it's a pile of earth, rocks, trees, etc., each of which are made up of smaller things, like molecules and atoms. We automatically objectify these smaller parts into the larger idea of "mountain", and take that idea of "mountain" as the real thing.

We then pile more projections on top of these mental representations when our automatic, emotional reactions come into play. If, as a kid, we have a scary experience of being chased by a big dog, our experience of dogs from here on out is accompanied by an associated feeling of fear. We no longer simply experience the softness of fur, the shimmering coat, the wet-dog smell; we experience the projected mind-object of “big, scary dog”. The dog becomes our fear of the dog.

We do this with everything, all the time; it's simply how our brains make sense of an endlessly, incomprehensibly complex universe. Perception is a lens, and every lens is slightly warped by the character of our minds. And the more developed our minds become, the more our experience of the world strays further into this world of ideas and mental projections, further away from the raw sensory experience of these things. And we, unaware of this, begin to mistake this filtered experience of reality as reality itself.

This is a large part of what Buddhists refer to as Avidyā (अविद्या), or "ignorance"; that what we experience as "reality" is actually a series of mental filters, distortions, and preconceptions that more or less completely divorce us from reality itself, and that these distortions are what create our suffering. Instead of simply taking in the raw experience of reality as it is, we live in a world of stories, mental constructs, and idealized things that are never the full or accurate picture.

And the most cardinal of these distortions, according to Buddhism, is the distortion of our view of “selves”. Buddhism prominently begs the question of selfhood: what is the true nature of “self”, and how much of our conception of it is dictated by this warped lens?

You might see where I'm going with this (given the title of this video). But let's put a bookmark in the philosophizing and talk about my new favorite TV series, Mr. Robot.

I: MR ROBOT

Mr. Robot is about a lot of things. It's about a group of hacker revolutionaries bringing down the corporate overlords that run society (and consequently, the world economy). It's about the reality of anarchy and what mass destruction brings about to real, living humans. It’s about what those humans do in the face of social collapse. It's about the deceptive façades of society, what happens when those facades begin to erode. It’s about the political elites pulling the strings, and how far those strings reach. It's about control, the illusion of control, and losing control.

It’s also very much about disconnection. Disconnection is deeply interwoven throughout the film on multiple levels; in its composition, in its world and the people in it, in its plot, in how all of these things relate to each other. It’s continually emphasized by the visual language of the show, where characters are regularly shot off-center to communicate the feeling of separation.

But it’s a theme that’s most prominently exhibited through its primary characters. Elliot is profoundly disconnected from himself, his family, his friends, his past, and the world around him. Domnique DiPierro, consumed by her work as an FBI agent, is crushingly alone in her social and romantic life, reaching to chat rooms and Alexa for some semblance of social contact. We witness Angela become increasingly detached as she climbs the E Corp ladder while society crumbles around her, and Darlene become dissociated as she experiences the reality of her plans unfold. All of society is continuously depicted as deeply disconnected by the modern lifestyle.

And most of the show explores not only how this disconnection can and does play out for us, on both the personal and societal levels, but also how we can fix it. I think that, at its core, Mr. Robot is a story about self-discovery, integration, transformation, and healing.

The entirety of the story's wildly chaotic plot revolves around Elliot, a disenfranchised, detached, and dissociated kid whose well-meaning but heavy-handed plot to start a hacker revolution sends him careening into the depths of a criminal underworld that reaches far beyond his imagination. And that's all just in the first season. The story takes an unimaginable series of twists and turns in some of the most creative, stylistic, and unabashedly subversive direction in any TV show to date.

But underlying all of this outward chaos is Elliot's internal struggle to understand and come to terms with his own fractured self. And this is where, in my mind, Mr. Robot truly sets itself apart as a masterpiece of media, in both the depth and execution of this theme:  the incredibly realistic and profound portrayal of what radical, transformative healing can look like within a person.

ORGANIC UNITY

I’d like to take a moment here to fawn over this show a bit. As you’ll probably pick up while watching it, Mr. Robot is very different in its style and feel from most other shows. And if you read how the show was created, you’ll quickly figure out why: every single episode, aside from a few in the first season, is written and directed by the series creator, Sam Esmail. This is incredibly uncommon in a TV series; very rarely are we able to have a several-season long series (we're talkings 60 hours) under the complete creative control of one person. Usually television series are written by a team of people, filmed by a constant rotation of directors, and often overseen by a committee of execs before release.

Even Breaking Bad, a series universally praised for the singularity of its vision, had a huge team of writers and directors taking the helm at different times. But in Mr. Robot, Sam Esmail writes AND directs EVERY. SINGLE. EPISODE in Season 2 and beyond. He is given full creative control of the entire show, and the result of this is an end-product television series that, in my opinion, is absolutely unparalleled in its achievement of organic unity.

(Organic unity is a literary term that describes all of the “formal” elements of a work coming together to form a theme, meaning, or feeling. It’s the working-together of the separate parts of a work (such as the cinematography, the writing, the acting, the music) to create and enhance an organic whole. When each of these elements contributes to and builds on the themes and feel of the piece, the work is said to achieve organic unity.)

It’s something that usually requires a level of singular vision only found in the works of Kubrick, Hitchcock, or Tarantino. It usually requires a massive amount of people following the vision and direction of one person, and it’s an incredibly difficult thing to achieve even in a 2-hour long film. But here we have Sam Esmail doing 60 hours of it, and pulling it off in incredible fashion. It’s an outstanding, spectacular, incredibly rare achievement that stands out in an era of entertainment designed by committees.

And it's through Esmail's singular vision that Mr. Robot is able to so effectively communicate its thematic material.

Anyways, back to Elliot.

II: INTEGRATION

To understand Elliot's psychological journey, it's best to understand the therapeutic concept of integration, and its inverse, disintegration.

If integration is the cooperation of multiple parts towards a healthy, collective whole, then disintegration is the dysfunction of those parts, the separation of them, the inability of them to exist and work together. Integration could be said to be the goal of all therapy and medicine; the cohesive working-together of our body and mind. In psychoanalysis, integration is defined as (and I paraphrase):

the process by which a well-balanced psyche becomes whole […] by countering the fragmenting effect of defense mechanisms. (Oxford University Dictionary)

This is the key idea behind disintegration: the "fragmenting effect of defense mechanisms". This fragmenting often happens in response to trauma; unable to cope with the intensity of a situation, we dissociate (or, mentally separate) from it to subdue, stifle, and quiet the memory of it. But unfortunately, this suppression of traumatic memory does not make the trauma disappear from our minds and bodies. It remains very much a part of us, just segmented off and shoved into the dark basement of the subconscious, only resurfacing when we get reminded of, and consequently pulled back into, it (which we call “triggers”).

The key idea behind integration is bringing those fragmented, stifled parts back together so that they can resolve and heal. It’s a lot like removing a splinter from the body; traumatic material clogs up the healing system, and it’s only when we shed awareness on and learn how to properly dissolve it that the mind can begin to heal. Integration is absolutely foundational to how most effective modern therapies work.

Freud’s psychoanalysis, his ideas of the subconscious and sub-personalities that exist within it, laid the groundwork for the majority of our most powerful systems of therapy and mental health today. His “Id”, “Ego”, and “Superego” have been built on and expanded in countless ways, one of which shares a ton of commonality with the psychology found in Mr. Robot: Internal Family Systems.

III: INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS

Core to Internal Family Systems (IFS), or Parts Work, is the idea of sub-personalities, or “parts”. IFS, and the psychological schools that influenced it, do not believe that our “self” is one individual, irreducible personality, but rather a centralized network of sub-personalities that work sometimes together and sometimes in conflict. Integration, in this context, would be harmony between these parts, and disintegration would be conflict and chaos.

This multiplicity of self, this idea of our psyche not being one individual entity, runs contrary to many of our established ideas of our “selves”. We do, after all, refer to people as “individuals”; “not able to be further divided”. But nothing about a person is truly “individual”; we are, by nature, a system of body parts, organs, cells, and atoms working in synchronicity. To say that we are individual is a simplification, a convenient illusion. This same conclusion has become increasingly embraced about the brain and mind as the neuro and psychological sciences delve further into them; our minds are not one individual entity, but rather a complex system of neural and psychological networks, which often become manifest as personalities.

This multiplicity of personality exists within all people, not just people with personality disorders. A similar understanding was component to the reframing and redefining of what was previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) into Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The issue that people with DID face is not that they have multiple personalities, but that they occasionally or often dissociate from their “primary identity”, taking on a different personality that’s often unfamiliar to the people in their lives. They often have no memory of these episodes.

The primary problem in the case of DID, then, is that the person suffering from it lacks the ability to regulate these multiple personalities. A large part of IFS therapy surrounds learning how to regulate our ”internal family”. And the first step in this is learning about our parts.

IFS focuses primarily on 3 sub-personalities, in addition to a “central Self”. These 3 sub-personalities are Firefighters, Managers, and Exiles.

Firefighters are our deepest “coping/defense mechanisms”; the parts of us that try to calm us, distract us, or at worst, shut us down in response to trauma or overwhelming emotion.

Managers are the parts of us that instill order through caution, critique, and reprimand in order to prevent things from getting out of control.

Exiles are the parts of us that are deeply hurt and wounded, that we push away and suppress so that we’re not exposed to the intense feelings that they harbor.

Each of these Parts or Internal Family Members has a purpose that they were created for; firefighters protect us, managers maintain order, and exiles tell us what hurts need to be addressed. They all have our sustained well-being in mind, and can (and usually did, at one point) serve a positive purpose. Often that positive purpose was just to keep us alive and sane.

But often, these parts, these defense mechanisms, begin to carry a larger momentum, and take on a primary part of our “personality”. Left unchecked and unbalanced, they become magnified and begin to take over our lives, causing damage to ourselves and our relationships to others.

An overwhelming firefighter part can manifest as addiction; a manager part out of control can become a chronic self-hatred; an exile taking over can turn into an anxiety or stress disorder.

When this begins to happen, our natural reaction is to demonize them, to suppress them, to push them away, to fight against them. But, as with anything in the mind, this resistance only serves to aggravate the issue. As we witness in Elliot’s journey, our refusal to accept and work with these Parts of us only sews further discord and tension.

OK, I know that was a lot of information. Let's review real quick, since this stuff is pretty important to understand moving forward:

Integration is the harmonious working together of the separate parts of the body and mind. In psychoanalysis, this is brought about by undoing the emotional and psychological fracturing caused by our responses to trauma.

Internal Family Systems holds that the human psyche is composed of many subpersonalities working either together or against one another, and that the harmony of these subpersonalities is a large part of psychological well-being.

When our subpersonalities are in conflict with or cut off from one another, we become dissociated, depersonalized, and disintegrated.

IV: DISINTEGRATION

And it’s this state of total disintegration that we find Elliot throughout most of the story. In season one we get a portrait of Elliot as completely dissociated from the world around him. Despite what at first seems to be a relatively stable life, he regularly gets hit by episodes of immense, overwhelming sadness, in spontaneous bouts of sobbing, turning to drug abuse (namely, morphine) in order to stay numb.

He continuously, both consciously and subconsciously, distances himself from other people, and from himself. This comes out in his social anxiety, which keeps him from making and maintaining friendships, even with people who have been a part of his whole life. It comes out in his failure to remember large portions of his life. It comes out in his deep hatred of "society", which is less directed at any individual person than it is at the idea of society as a whole. And it's upon his idea of society that he acts out.

Elliot, unable to cope with his internal chaos, seeks to inflict that chaos onto the outside world. This is a direct portrayal of how disintegration causes us to lash out. Unable to carry the weight of our own suffering, we try to pull others into it. When our need for connection, to be understood, to be accepted and held isn’t met, we become destructive.

This usually brings about more pain and chaos. It can drive those we love further away from us, driving us further into our own loneliness, misery, and discord. We are sent into spirals of our own suffering, circling further down and away into darkness. Habitual lashing out can even become a Part of us in itself when these behavioral patterns become so ingrained as to be part of our identity.

This is the majority of Elliot’s journey in Mr. Robot: descending into chaos; witnessing the rippling, often catastrophic domino effects of his actions; getting thrown deeper into things far above his head and beyond his control, and further bringing out the darkness within him.

V: TRANSFORMATION

The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas says:

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

It’s the bringing out of this darkness within Elliot that ultimately allows him to begin to change. It's often only when we see our internal chaos mirrored in the outside world, after we inflict that hurt on others, that we are able to see it within ourselves. Awareness is a necessary first step in any journey of growth, and that awareness sometimes requires us reaching a dark, miserable place.

But more importantly, it almost always requires the wisdom and care of other people.  It’s only through the insights of Krista, Darlene, and even his enemies that Elliot can even tap into the trauma at the base of his disorders. It’s the mutual care and love for and in him that keeps him going in spite of a dismal and hopeless situation. It brings him back from madness, from near-death, from the darkest places his psyche could go. It gives him something to strive, hope, and fight for.

Elliot’s transformation is ultimately brought about by these two things: understanding and coming to terms with what’s inside of him, and the love of other people in his life. It’s through this love, care, and wisdom that Elliot comes to the most important breakthrough in his internal struggle: that growth and wholeness can only come through fully seeing, fully understanding, and fully accepting what’s inside of us.

This is perhaps the most powerful message of the psychology of Mr. Robot: we can only reach integration through acceptance. Elliot’s therapist, Krista, continually tries to communicate this to him throughout the show. Most of Elliot’s journey is him learning, wrestling with, and eventually coming to terms with this fact. Dissociation and resistance were at the root of his psychoses, and radical acceptance was at the root of his transformation.

It’s only when Elliot begins to accept and work with these alienated parts of himself that he’s able to accomplish progress and growth. It’s only when he learns that each part cares for him and is trying to work with him that he’s able to make peace with them. It’s only when he sits down, stays a while, speaks with them, hears them out, and embraces them, that he’s able to bring about healing.

This can work for any of us. By learning and familiarizing ourselves with our Parts, by giving them attention and watching how they come out in our waking lives, we can begin to see the patterns and habits that shape our feelings and actions. We can get to the roots of our behaviors, see what drives them, see how they’re trying to help us, and begin to work with them, instead of being blindly driven by them.

I’d welcome you to try this yourself; start noticing which of your Parts are controlling your life. What is lashing out in defensiveness? What is grasping on for control? What is living in fear? What is crying out for attention and acknowledgment? Can you give it care, treat it kindly, relieve it of its tension and stress, see what reason and purpose it exists for? I think you’ll find that, if you can do this, you’ll find the sort of profound release and peace that only comes from mending broken relationships; a return to wholeness.

And it’s this capacity for release that’s at the heart of this healing; the ability to let go of our constant resistances, to let go of our craving for ourselves to be different than we are, to accept and work with who we are, in this moment, in our entirety. To sit back and watch the mind, like a film, play out all of these stories and fantasies, these parts and personalities, to let them be and pass by ; to arrive and leave, without grasping onto them, pushing them away, or feeding into them. To welcome them, like a guest house.

All things, being and working together, in peace and acceptance. This is what radical healing and integration looks like.