Confronting Our Internal ‘Ghosts’

In the explosive opening sequence of this summer’s sleeper hit “The Sixth Sense,” a man stands crying in his former psychiatrist’s bathroom.

“Do you know what you are afraid of when you’re alone?” he demands, shaking uncontrollably, wearing only a pathetically rumpled pair of undies. Then he lowers his voice to a whisper. “I do. I do.”

The line presents the perfect point of departure for a movie that opens a window onto the fears that can follow us throughout our lives but that we’d rather not confront. How many of us really know what it is we’re afraid of? And how many of us have ever really had to confront it?

“The Sixth Sense” is about a boy who has a secret; he sees ghosts--regularly. They rip at his clothes, throw up in his bedroom and drop the air temperature 30 degrees just by stopping in.

Another ghost movie, right? Well, yes and no.

Something about this ghost movie is resonating more strongly with audiences than past celluloid ghouls, which made it No. 1 in the country for six weeks, turned it into the biggest Labor Day weekend movie ever and is projected to bring in $270 million. So, what nerve did this particular story hit?

Behind the ghosts and the twists and the scared little boy, there are issues of second chances, trust, healing wounds and, of course, confronting internal demons, says Dennis Slattery, a faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, whose programs in psychology examine archetypal themes that infuse the psyche and the culture.

Slattery has become an expert on the archetypes that form the basis for myth, fairy tale, literature and, once in a while, a summer blockbuster. “The Sixth Sense” parallels classic tales of a hero forced to face his demons. But it’s how those demons are confronted that may be drawing in the crowds--often for multiple viewings. The story is, perhaps, offering a life model that all of us can use to come to terms with the fears that haunt our everyday lives, Slattery says.

“It’s a film full of all kinds of levels of woundedness,” he says. “And each of us carries a secret, and many people--maybe all people--look for the right person to tell that secret to. Psychologically, that is a very powerful element.”

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When the psychiatrist, played by Bruce Willis, wins the boy’s trust, he can take on the role of mentor. The story then begins to parallel “The Divine Comedy,” Slattery says.

“Dante is lost in the dark woods and needs a mentor to help him out,” Slattery says. “So Virgil is chosen to take him not the easy way out, but down, the long way out, through the Inferno. And in going down, he will confront things that will terrify him even more.

“That provided a kind of archetypal partnering up. I think people relate to that well--perhaps on a conscious or maybe an unconscious level--that needing someone to lead you where you know you need to go, but which you can’t necessarily find on your own.”

The movie demonstrates that the way to deal with fears is not by ignoring them, running away or trying to somehow beat them. As Slattery says, the key is to take the tougher but ultimately more rewarding path, diving into the muck and mire, as it were, and staying courageous enough to face perhaps even more scary revelations and challenges along the way.

Moviegoer John Balkwill, 42, came to the same conclusion.

“The things you are afraid of--don’t run from them, necessarily. Face up to them, and they will demystify their effect on you, in essence,” he says.

Another moviegoer, Jose Gonsalez, 38, says the movie reminded him of advice he had gotten as a kid while growing up in Mexico City.

“My grandmother said that when we see dead people like this, maybe it is somebody who needs some help. I never saw them, but I feel sometimes like somebody is around me. Sometimes I still feel like I’m afraid, and the movie brought me back to past things that happened to me as a kid.”

To co-producer Frank Marshall, the movie’s ghosts represent the boogeymen that afflict our personal lives, but also the violent demons that plague society.

“There is a teenage ghost who says, ‘Let me show you my dad’s gun,’ and there are people hanging in a gym who were an interracial couple, and a woman ghost in the kid’s kitchen who had suffered spousal abuse,” Marshall says. “The kid is being tormented by these things, just as we, as a society, are tormented by them. It makes the audience look at the issues of violence that we have today in a very unique way.”

M. Knight Shyamalan, the film’s screenwriter and director, says the movie was inspired by his own debilitating fears as a child. But he also believes that a major part of the film’s appeal lies in its empathetic answers about what waits on the other side of death.

“Eighty [percent] to 90% of the population believes in some form of afterlife, and whether it has to do with heaven, or with ghosts, it’s an important issue,” Shyamalan says. “It comforts people in some way when their feelings about the afterlife are made to seem plausible or legitimate.”

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Carole Lieberman, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, says the dead people were “a metaphor for the fact that all of us see ghosts, the ghosts from our childhood that we are still affected by. And in more cases than people will admit, these are caused by some form of child abuse.”

In the movie, the troubled boy learns to accept the ghosts that surround him, to help them find peace and, in the process, finds peace himself.

“If you can work through these memories, these ghosts,” Lieberman says, “then they can become your friends because of what they can teach you about yourself.”

That’s certainly what resonated with moviegoer Alex Abatie, 29.

“A month ago I had all this bad stuff happen to me and it made me reexamine what I was doing with my life,” he says. “Before that I was just thinking, why can’t I be like this or be like that? As opposed to, this is the way I am and I’m going to live with it. I guess it’s a little self-acceptance, and that kid did that too. He was fighting against the ghosts and didn’t want to see them, but he couldn’t deny they were there. When he just accepted them, I think he gained a little sanity.”