The masterpiece movie, The Twilight of the Golds highlights pertinent issues that affect families across the world. However, different people respond disparately to these issues depending on one’s characters. In this movie, Suzanne Gold Stein is in her early mid 30s and she suffers from cognitive dissonance. David Gold is the brother to Suzanne, is in his early 30s and he uses rationalization as his defense mechanism. On the other side, Rob Stein uses repression as his defense mechanism.
Suzanne Gold Stein
As aforementioned, Suzanne suffers from cognitive dissonance. This mental condition underscores a situation where an individual is in deep mental stress and tension especially due to conflict of ideas. In other words, it is “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously” (Milton, Polmear, and Fabricius 67). In this situation, an individual does not know which beliefs to cherish and the ones to discard. Suzanne is caught in such a situation when she realizes she might be carrying a gay child in her womb. From the beginning, Suzanne is clearly troubled. First, she keeps her pregnancy as a secret for over three months without even informing her husband. Only a troubled person would do that. When she realizes that she might be expecting a gay child, her beliefs are divided and she does not know what to do.
On one side, she cannot imagine raising a gay child. Already she has had enough troubles with her gay brother, David, who has not been fully accepted in the family. At first, she wonders whether nurture can overcome nature, but her doctor husband assures her that such a thing cannot happen. This assertion throws her beliefs into deeper conflict. The only option left is to abort the baby, but her religious beliefs hold that such an action amounts to murder. This scenario perfectly captures the definition of cognitive dissonance. In addition, David, the gay brother, insists that his sister, Suzanne, must not abort. This confusion leaves Suzanne in a psychological discomfort as she battles it out to decide which beliefs to follow. Fortunately, the piousness of life overcomes the shame of bringing up a gay child.
Suzanne decides to deliver her baby, but she ends up divorcing her husband, Rob. Fortunately, in a flash-forward, Suzanne appears calm whilst playing with her already grown up gay son. Perhaps, she overcomes the cognitive dissonance, which ahs been part of her life from childhood to adulthood.
David Gold
David is the son of Phyllis and Walter and he is gay. Given that his sexual orientation is not fully accepted in society and by his family, he resorts to rationalization as a coping mechanism. Rationalization is a coping mechanism whereby one “creates false, but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behavior” (Harmon-Jones and Judson 63). In this case, David’s unacceptable behavior is being gay. While to him there is nothing wrong with one’s sexual orientation, the society where he lives in does not view the issue from such a perspective. The society is so against being gay such that Suzanne and Rob simply say their son will be ‘like David’.
Therefore, when David hears that the unborn baby might be gay, he tells Suzanne that there is nothing wrong with that and he quickly turns to his parents for affirmation. He asks them if they would have aborted him if they had prior information concerning his sexual orientation. Unfortunately, the parents do not answer to such controversial question, and thus David separates himself from the family. Conventionally, being a rationalist, he does not understand the wrongness of one being gay.
David uses his rationalization traits to persuade Suzanne not to abort the baby because no one in history has ever done such a thing. In addition, David notes that the unborn gay child is just like a brother to him and if Suzanne aborts, she will have aborted her brother. In essence, this argument is false, as the closest blood relationship the baby can be towards Suzanne is being a son. However, as aforementioned, in rationalization, the perpetrator comes up with false, but convincing arguments to justify his or her position and David fits very well in this definition.
Rob Stein
Throughout the movie, Rob remains as a silent character perhaps due to the stereotype that doctors should remain so and show little or no emotions. However, Rob uses repression as a defense mechanism. In repression, one “keeps distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious” (Hock 114). When Rob brings in the results concerning the sexual orientation of their unborn son, he appears devastated. He even suggests that Suzanne should abort the baby.
However, despite these obvious signs of being troubled, Rob represses his emotions. He remains calm and composed as if everything is fine. Ultimately, he ends up divorcing Suzanne after she decides to have the baby, whether gay or not. If David were not that affected by the boy being gay, as he insinuates throughout the movie, he could have stayed with his wife. However, he divorces his loving wife because deep within, he is hurt and wrecked, but instead of letting it go via emotional burst ups, he copes by repression, which ultimately works against him and his young family.
Works Cited
Harmon-Jones, Eddie, and Judson Mills. Cognitive Dissonance: Progress on a Pivotal Theory in Social Psychology, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1999. Print.
Hock, Roger. Reading 30: You’re Getting Defensive Again!” Forty Studies That Changed Psychology, Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2013. Print.
Milton, Jane, Caroline Polmear, and Julia Fabricius. A Short Introduction to Psychoanalysis, London, Sage, 2010. Print.