what is psychosomatic blindness?
I hate to sound stupid but what is psychosomatic blindness? I've never seen the movie but after looking it up on the internet I couldn't find anything on it. Can anyone help me?
shareNo idea
share
MovieChat Forums > Hollywood Ending (2002) Discussion > what is psychosomatic blindness?
A psychosomatic illness is an illness where there is no biological reason for it, but the symptoms arise anyway, due to stress or whatever, it is all in the head. Therefore I would assume that they are referring to blindness being only in the head of the character.
sharepsychosomatic blindness doesn't actually exist (well, I don't think so actually), but Woody made it up cause it fits very well with his usual neurotic hypchondriac character, who always wnats things to work his way and still find an excuse to look good. In the movie, he pays the part of a director who doesn't want to direct a movie cause the producer is the man who ran away with his wife. But since he has to direct it cause he desperately needs the money, his subconscient comes up with this excuse of going blind. It's just crazy, it's a very funny idea.
sharePsychosomatic blindness does exist. It's called Hysterical Amblyopia - an apparent loss of visual function without any physical cause. There is a closely related disorder called Streff's Non-Malingering Syndrome. Of course these are very rare.
There have been cases of Cambodian refugees who have developed hysterical blindness from the psychological devastation of witnessing Khmer Rouge atrocities. These were studied and documented in Calfornia.
As you can hopefully guess, these people experienced a lot more stress than Mr. Allen or his character.
It has to do with the fact that the blindness wasn't caused by something physical, but psychological, meaning it was all in Hal's head.
shareDid you ever see the rock opera "Tommy"? Tommy suffered from psychosomatic blindness. A psychosomatic illness is when a person has a condition caused by a psychological reason, rather than a biological reason. The symptoms exist, but are made manifest for a psychological reason.