The Golden Horse-winning film "American Girl" is the autobiographical story of director Fiona Roan Feng-i. Set in 2003, it follows a mother and her two daughters who return from the United States to Taiwan to reunite with the father after the mother is diagnosed with breast cancer — a family living together amid love and resentment, facing head-on the fear of death.
"What gives my parents the right to make decisions for me?" This question lingered in director Fiona Roan Feng-i's mind for a long time, so she used the film to bring her whole family back to 2003, reopening old wounds and re-examining her relationship with her family from a new angle. Before filming, she spent time interviewing family members and relatives; she read articles to understand cancer patients; she took her mother to receive counselling. In one interview she mentioned that, as a creator, she often needs to reflect on what kind of person she is — why her own upbringing made her become this way — and the answer pointed precisely to those difficult days in 2003. And so, through honest creative work, she healed her own childhood and came to understand her family anew. Only in the process did she discover how unfamiliar she was with her mother's own family of origin, and that understanding, to some degree, helped set her at ease.
The Iceberg Theory (Iceberg Theory)
The family therapy pioneer Virginia Satir proposed the Iceberg Theory, comparing a person to an iceberg floating on the water. Our outward behaviour is like the part of the iceberg that shows above the waterline; what we can see is in fact only the tip of the whole iceberg, while the far larger part is hidden beneath the surface, representing a person's inner feelings, perceptions, expectations, longings and sense of self. When we communicate with others, we are sometimes completely unaware of what lies beneath our own iceberg, and our emotions are long suppressed without our knowing.
Take Fang-yi, the elder daughter in "American Girl", as an example. When she lashes out at her mother and says, "If you want to die, then just die! It's not as if you wanted to live properly anyway," what we see behind those words is not only anger (feeling) and defiance, but also the daughter's accusation that her mother is being weak (perception) (an expectation that her mother be strong) — which, in truth, also conceals a fear of her mother's death (longing).
The Inferiority Complex (Inferiority Complex)
In Alfred Adler's individual psychology, he held that human beings inherently carry a sense of inferiority, which can stem from the family of origin, interpersonal relationships, the social system, local culture and so on. The inferiority complex unfolds in two stages. The first stage (Primary) is a sense of inferiority carried over from infancy to the present; this kind of inferiority is not necessarily harmful, and can be transformed into our motivation and productivity. But for some people the sense of inferiority develops into the second stage (Secondary), arising from not having learned in childhood how to live alongside that inferiority.
For example, from the moment we are born we face the authority of our parents or caregivers; in a sense, our very survival depends on them, and the balance of power is completely tilted. Whether we are hungry or unwell, we can only wait for our parents to attend to our needs. These experiences can leave us unwilling to be the underdog, giving rise to a compensatory mindset, in which we seek to balance our role as an individual and within society from some other strength. To mask this sense of inferiority, some people come to feel they must be the very best in another domain (for example, their career) in order to make up for the insecurity born of inferiority — and may even neglect other domains (such as relationships) as a result. This is known as over-compensation.
To lessen the negative effects our family of origin brings, we first need to recognise that we are in an unhealthy relationship, and try to step outside the frame of our family of origin so that we are not trapped by unhappy experiences. In reality, though, this is often easier said than done. Even once we become aware that problems are surfacing in how we relate to others, smoothing over the scars left by our childhood experiences is anything but easy. After finishing "American Girl", Fiona Roan Feng-i candidly resolved the knot she had carried since childhood. The creative process can re-enact inner conflict; rather than treating the family of origin as our own shackles, endlessly blaming heaven and others and reproaching ourselves, it is better to try chewing over that experience from another angle.
"True reconciliation is reconciliation with yourself." — Fiona Roan Feng-i
Reference
Adeler, A. (1930). Individual psychology. In C. Murchison (Ed.), International university series in psychology. Psychologies of 1930 (p.395-405). Clark University Press.
Bowlby J. (1969). Attachment. Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Loss. New York: Basic Books.
Satir, V., Banmen, J., Gerber, J., & Gomori, M. (1991). The Satir model: Family therapy andbeyond. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books.
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