Brief Movie Overview

The short film is about a person who is a PTSD victim. His PTSD developed when he was involved in a car accident, and he developed a guilt complex, that he did not save the man he hit with his car, in the accident. In his dreams, he revisits the scenario. And his conscience kills him, because he did not save the person he hit with his car. This short film portrays how the victims guilt complex & PTSD overtakes him whenever he sleeps.

Psychological Conditions & Their Effects, In Relation To The Movie

Guilt is an emotional experience associated with feeling responsible for some kind of wrongdoing. Most people tend to scrutinize themselves against an internally established code of conduct and can feel guilt for something said, done or even thought. In fact, feelings of guilt can act as our inner morality compass by alerting us to the fact that our thoughts, words or actions are in conflict with what we know to be morally right. However, some people feel guilty for no reason. They blame themselves for other peoples mistakes and for anything that goes wrong in their own lives or the lives of their loved ones. People who suffer from a guilt complex that is not based on any actual wrong-doing, actually destroy the possibility of joy in their lives.

Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, interpretation, philosophical and religious interest throughout recorded history. Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleepwhen brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung thought of dreams as an interaction between the unconscious and the conscious. They also assert together that the unconscious is the dominant force of the dream, and in dreams it conveys its own mental activity to the perceptive faculty. While Freud felt that there was an active censorship against the unconscious even during sleep, Jung argued that the dream's bizarre quality is an efficient language, comparable to poetry and uniquely capable of revealing the underlying meaning. The visual nature of dreams is generally highly phantasmagoric; that is, different locations and objects continuously blend into each other. The visuals (including locations, characters/people, and objects/artifacts) are generally reflective of a person's memories and experiences, but often take on highly exaggerated and bizarre forms. Dreams may be seen as projections of parts of the self that have been ignored, rejected, or suppressed. During the nightmare, the sleeper may moan and move slightly. The victim is often awakened by these threatening and frightening dreams and can often vividly remember their experience. Upon awakening, the sleeper is unusually alert and oriented within their surroundings, but may have an increased heart rate and symptoms of anxiety, like sweating. They may have trouble falling back to sleep for fear they will experience another nightmare.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) occurs after a person has experienced a traumatic event such as natural disaster, participating in combat, or being a victim of physical assault or rape. People who suffer PTSD often re-experience the event through intrusive thoughts, dreams, acting or feeling as if the event were reoccurring and/or intense distress. As an effect of psychological trauma, PTSD is less frequent and more enduring than the more commonly seen acute stress response. Diagnostic symptoms for PTSD include re-experiencing the original trauma(s) through flashbacks or nightmares, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, and increased arousalsuch as difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger, and hypervigilance. They tend to avoid stimuli associated with the event and have inability to recall aspects of the disaster. Thus, they develop hyper-arousal and tend to experience sleep problems because they deliberately wake themselves up in order to avoid having traumatic nightmares. When they do

sleep they often experience the exact replica of the traumatic event in a dream. These nightmares and recurring dreams are common symptoms of PTSD. Sleep disturbances usually begin immediately after the trauma, although in some cases upsetting dreams may not occur for days, weeks or even months. Typically, the PTSD patient has difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, fearing that something terrible may again happen to them if they relax their guard against sleep. PTSD victims are never able to quite "forget" the event which traumatized them. They think/dream about it intermittently throughout their waking (and sleeping) hours and often feel persecuted by their inability to repress the recurrent distressing images. These recurrent images of the trauma intrude upon the victim's sleep in the form of disturbing dreams and nightmares. Unlike normal dreams, which utilize symbolism, to conceal from consciousness the dreamer's actual life conflicts and concerns, PTSD dreams are often literal representations of the traumatic event. The starkly realistic presentation of the dreamer's traumatic experience reflects the psyche's inability to master, process and integrate these overwhelming stimuli, through the disguising processes of sublimation and symbol formation. Posttraumatic nightmares are repetitive and possess more memory intrusion of the traumatic event than ordinary nightmares. Their content is the exact replay of an actual scene from the disaster or traumatic event. The same post traumatic nightmare sequence involving the replay of the event can occur not only during various stages of sleep but during waking; thus called a flashback rather than a nightmare. The repetitive PTSD nightmare is a memory, in contrast to ordinary nightmares, that can intrude suddenly into the consciousness as if the event is happening all over again. The victim frequently feels a sense of dj vu as if reliving the experience, sometimes in the form of illusions or hallucinations, frequently when in physiologically altered states of consciousness such as those induced by alcohol, drugs or sleep.

Psychology
Final Project
(Short Film) Submitted to:

Mr. Azmat Ansari

Submission Date: 29th December 2011

Group Members:
Syed Ahsen Ali - 11150 Abeer Us Sausan Abdul Haq Esani - 11806 Zain Ul Haq Khan - 11885 Jawad Ahmed Siddiqui - 9643