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In Awakening, a number of sociological issues about life and human interactions are analyzed in depth. Dr. Sayer, due to his empathy and altruism, dedicates his work to the identification of a means of communicating with his catatonic patients. He eventually succeeds, although temporarily, but is able to get his patients out of their half-conscious condition using an experimental drug. One of his patients who stands out from the rest, whose name is Leonard Lowe, tries to adjust to a normal life after spending more than thirty years of life in a catatonic state. He eventually starts to develop higher level needs and forms relationships with those around him as the drug starts to have its effects. He, however, has to deal with the negative stigma associated with people dealing with mental health issues and aggressively tries to get permission to walk outside on his own. Through his interactions with his patients, Dr. Sayer is also able to overcome his shyness while the hospital staff learn to treat the patients with more respect. This paper highlights this case via a brief summary of the movie and an analysis of the actual case it is based on.
Brief Summary of the Storyline
Awakenings focuses on the work on Dr. Sayer, a consulting physician working in the Bronx area who specializes in the treatment of patients in a near vegetative state. His patients are not able to interact or communicate with other people by any typical means. This prompts Dr. Sayer to identify special ways of communicating with them. He carried out research that determines his patients can respond to certain actions and events, which can aid in providing more information about the patient and their perspective of life. He, however, meets Leonard Lowe, who seems unresponsive to most stimuli, but eventually responds to an ouija board.
While attending a conference on drugs for patients dealing with psychological complications, such as Parkinson’s, he identifies a drug that he believes can be effective on his group of catatonic patients and proceeds to test it on Leonard Lowe. The drug works as intended, leading to the awakening of the patient. Sayer then asks for financial aid that would help them get the drug to all his patients and awaken them from their half-conscious, jailed up state.
Leonard recovers quickly from the condition, and is even able to form healthy and seemingly productive relationships with those around him. He, however, feels constrained by the hospital and asks for the chance to leave as he pleases. He eventually confronts Sayer and other hospital staff, demanding more freedom. During this confrontation, Sayer discovers that the drug examined on the patients has temporary effects, as Leonard starts showing signs of remission. Sayer continues to pursue his goal of getting funding for the drug. The awakenings experienced by the patients had a profound effect on their lives and allowed for more extensive research into both the drug L Dopa, and the various conditions that may induce catatonia as a symptom.
Psychological Themes, Issues, and Concepts in the Film
The movie accurately analyzes the changing needs that people go through in their lives. While in a vegetative state, Leonard did not need much other than food and rest. After he receives the medication, Leonard is able to move and speak and soon his needs change. He desires higher level needs such as friendship and belonging and soon forms relationships with those around him. He eventually needs more freedom, which leads him to confront Sayer and other hospital staff on his ability to leave the hospital as he pleases.
The film also highlights the toll that psychological conditions have on patients. Patients portrayed in the film are in a catatonic state, cannot speak or interact with other people in a normal way. Leonard Lowe, for example, having been catatonic since he was a teen, deals with the condition for thirty years, and is only able to get temporary relief when Sayer gives him the trial medication.
Life-affirmation is also a key psychological theme that is explored in the film. Dr. Sayer has a positive outlook about the state of his patients and believes they will get better if he administers the right kind of treatment. The patient also feels optimistic and hopeful about his condition after their awakening and does his best to adjust to the life around them.
Opinion also plays an important role in this medical case and is portrayed within the film. These patients had lived for years being treated for their most surface level symptom. All of these patients were catatonic, and that is what the doctors could see. Their vitals and stats rarely, if ever, fluctuated, thus the doctors did not find it necessary to look further into their illness. Due to the opinions of the doctors before Dr. Sayer, these patients remained without anybody even attempting to assess what their underlying causes may be or whether or not they were correlated at all.
Sociological Analysis of the Movie
The functioning of human memory is one of the key factors analyzed in the film. Dr. Sayer believes that his patient still has their memories intact despite their catatonic condition. He tests his beliefs by stimulating the memory of his patients using different activities and events that the patient is aware of. He soon discovers that his patients are indeed able to respond to familiar experiences from their memory, irrespective of the state they are currently in.
The film also shows the empathic and altruist nature of Dr. Sayer. Despite being a bit of an introvert and limiting his interaction with people to a minimum, he becomes overly empathic about the condition of his patients and is greatly interested in their recovery. He spends a lot of time with them while carrying out experiments that were meant to stimulate their memories and convinces other hospital staff that they are still people despite their condition. He disagrees with the hospital administration regarding the administration of the trial medication and does his best to defend his position.
The film also shows the adjustments that society has to make when dealing with stigmatized groups. Due to their catatonic condition, the patients do not receive a lot of attention from those around them and they are not considered to be as human as other people would be. It is only after Sayer through his experiments discovers their human side that they begin getting attention from those around them.
As a result of his condition, Leonard Lowe feels trapped at the hospital, unable to live his life as he intended to. He is unable to get to his full potential as he believes he can and asks for help from Sayer and the hospital administration. He asks for permission to be allowed to walk outside without supervision, which seems to mean a great deal to him. This shows the lack of freedom that characterizes his life as a result of the condition. He gets angry and frustrated when the hospital declines to consent to his demands and decides to confront Sayer. His frustration is justified, as he feels confined in his present state and is expressing a natural human instinct of looking for freedom.
The actual awakenings of the patients also show the optimism and hope that they had along with Sayer regarding their condition. From the start, Sayer had been optimistic about the health condition of his patients and eventually resorts to an experimental drug to see if it has any impact on their condition. He does this despite the opposition of the hospital administration and medical rules that would have prevented him from doing so. Eventually, the trial proves to be successful in the case of Leonard and he starts making progress. The rest of the patients are also quite optimistic after they awaken and believe they will be better with time. Leonard maintains his optimism even after starting to develop signs of remission as the drug starts to wear off, and tells Dr. Sayer to film his condition, as it could be used as the basis for future research that would contribute to better treatment options. Optimism and hope irrespective of existing conditions are clearly brought out in the film, but were much harder to persuade others of in the real life study.
Due to their interaction with the patients, both Dr. Sayer and the medical staff in the hospital experience a sociological change in the outlook towards life. At the beginning of the film, Dr. Sayer is presented as having a shy personality, a characteristic which changes as the film progresses. After his experience with Leonard Lowe and other patients, he seems to overcome his shyness and even asks Eleanor, a nurse working at the hospital out. Nurses working at the hospital also learn to empathize with the patients more as a result of the brief interaction they had with them while the effects of the drug were still in place.
New Insights from Research Sources
According to Clapper (2010), the film presents an accurate analysis of the psychological condition that characterizes catatonia, as well as the impact that the experimental drug would have on a patient. An analysis of data about real patients who have suffered from the psychological condition revealed that they showed similar characteristics as those shown in the film. The effect that the experimental drug had on the patients was also accurate, as would be the case in real life. L Dopa, the drug used in the film, has actually been found to reduce the severity of certain psychotic conditions including Parkinson's disease. Due to the fact that both the medical condition as well as the drugs used in the film are real and accurate, it can be concluded that the psychological reactions and issues that take place in the film are also accurate and depict what would happen in real life.
According to Allan (2007), the awakenings depicted in the film as adapted from the original book are accurate. Real life patients that suffered from the medical condition depicted in the film ended up developing a psychotic condition that left them in a catatonic state, which had initially developed as a symptom relating to an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. After the administration of L-Dopa, the same drug that is described in the film patients dealing with the condition became more optimistic about the future and showed a variety of sociological responses including the desire to lead a normal life as well as the happiness and an increased level of interaction with others. The effects of the drug were, however, short-lived, as with time it wore off, as did the sociological responses that had been recorded by the patients. This highlights that limitations that people dealing with psychotic conditions have to deal with, as shown by the temporary relief that was created by the drug.
According to Pathiraja (2012), Dr. Sayer’s altruism and empathy led to him to commit unethical medical acts, some of which are illegal. Dr. Sayer decides to test the effects of the drug on his patients despite not having research evidence on its efficacy. He administers the drugs without knowledge of what they would do to the patients, which is unethical, unsafe, and illegal in some cases.
Awakenings explores key psychological themes about the effects that most psychological conditions have on patients. As the psychological condition they were dealing with wears off, patients are slowly able to live a normal life and interact with those around them effectively. Their needs also change from lower to higher level ones once they are able to interact more with others. The film also explores the effect of empathy and altruism and the extent to which it can be a motivating factor. Dr. Sayer ignores medical rules in order to help his patients deal with their condition.
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