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Main Jhukega Nahi Sala!

Updated: Mar 8, 2022

As a psychologist and freud fan you instantly know, the ID is at play. Whole movie is about Pushpa proving to the world about his identity by creating his brand. Pushpa’s mother is asked by Pushpa’s father, if she wants love or respect, and when she tells him she chose love and now Pushpa has to suffer the bad part of that deal, obviously the “survival” mind of Pushpa takes oath to show whole world that he is the king without a kingmaker.

The ‘strong’ Pushpa we see is the result of the interplay of many things. Early death of his socially unapproved father, the step brothers are the only humans closely resembling a father figure. When he buys the new van his first instinct is to put it in front of his brothers to show them he deserves to be the son of his father. But his brothers make sure that at every step of Pushpa’s life he should know he is despised. Lacking close relationships with father figures, he indulges in high-risk behaviours. Continuous bombarding humiliation whenever Pushpa tries to rise up in life (taking admission in school, Getting married, denial of his accomplishments) triggers his childhood trauma again and again, giving another strong nudge to risk-taking behaviour which may give him the feeling that he have more control over his present than the past.

Also to protect his amma, who is already living a life where she feels humiliated and hurt, Pushpa has no one to express himself. This unexpressed hurt and anger often transfer into problems with authority, which can be seen clearly when he challenges first police, then his own master, and eventually master’s master (Shrinu) too.

We also see a neurotic need for power in our Pushpa. The neurotic need for power, for control over others, for a facade of omnipotence. We all seek strength, but the neurotic may be desperate for it. His identity is clearly linked to power, as since childhood he has only felt helpless and out of control of his life. He is a victim of the situation. Power in our case is dominance for its own sake, often accompanied by a strong belief in one's own rational powers.

According to Sigmund Freud, neurosis is a coping strategy caused by unsuccessfully repressed emotions from past experiences. These emotions overwhelm or interfere with current experience.

Another coping strategy used by Pushpa is aggression.

Concluding, Individual identity development is influenced by how one resolves all of the previous childhood psychosocial crises, and the adolescent stage is a bridge between the past and the future, childhood, and adulthood. (Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development). Human Brains are wonderful resilient things. They learn to survive. Our Pushpa did a great job but his unresolved trauma has only caused self created obstacles in his life, where proving a point becomes his whole life mission.(The last scene where he spends time before his marriage just to show to Shekhawat that he is a brand, enters his own marriage with bloody clothes.)



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