pear that the individual mind is unique, it has much in common with other minds. Here is another area where Jung differs greatly from Freud, for he discerns a common substratum of the mind which he calls the collective unconscious. The individual is thus a member of a community and an individual and is at the same time a repository of collective attributes, such as the instincts. The individual may see these unlearned activities as his or her private property, and through them the individual can deal competently with certain environmental situations. However, the instincts are part of the constitution of everyone even though their manifestation may seem unique and essential for life. They cannot be classified as personal acquisitions. The collective unconscious works through archetypes, the original pattern, or the prototype, or the inborn manner of comprehension comparable to the instincts which are inborn manners of acting (Hall and Nordby, 1973, 39-41).
The collective unconscious is an important though unidentified element in this film. Annie Wilkes is a fan obsessed with a character in a series of books. The fact that this is indeed a series of books shows that the character of Misery Chastain herself taps into some aspect of the collective unconscious, showing how the human mind reflects similar responses and behaviors across the population:
The collective unconscious is common to all; it is the foundation of what the ancients called the "sympathy of all things" (Jung, 1973, 138).
Annie acts out certain primordial urges which may lie just beneath the surface of other people's thoughts. What they repress and only experience vicariously through horror fiction, she acts out because she lacks the means of controlling these urges and directing the psychic and sexual energy they entail into positive channels.
This can be seen as operating through the archetypes which influence Annie Wilkes, especially the perso...