The movie We Need to Talk About Kevin was released in 2011 with direction by Scottish Lynne Ramsay, it was based on the best seller by Lionel Shriver, bringing a great psychological terror, with a dramatic and scary story with scenes that refer to the past and present of Eva and the birth and development of her son, sometimes passes the perception of being a nightmare But it is reality that is connected and makes sense in the course of the story.

Below I will do an analysis of the film with a psychoanalytic understanding and the use of some terms from psychoanalysis.

This article was written by Bruno de Oliveira Martins For students of the Psychoanalysis Training Course, we also have a live recording, in which this film was analyzed.

Lack of love investment may contribute to perversion in the film We Need to Talk About Kevin

In the film some questions become evident about the character that becomes the protagonist of the great final tragedy. Raising some diagnostic hypotheses it is possible to point to Eva's lack of involvement and emotional investment with her son Kevin, where for some reasons that already at the beginning of the pregnancy were already evident.

She didn't want him, the desire is missing, the investment of love, affection, fundamental for the psychic constitution of the baby, is missing, there is a need for the mother to love him in order to supply not only the basic needs of the child, which would be hunger, thirst, poo and pee, but also to supply the demand for pleasure, where it will libidinally invest in that baby and help in its psychic constitution.

For Zornig and Levy (2006), this narcissistic investment made by the parents is extremely important, where it makes it possible to build a base for the child's psychic organization, thus establishing the relationship with the other. Already at Kevin's birth his mother rejects him, this rejection already marks him from his birth as a mark also of an abandonment that he expected and needed love from, because being born is already traumatic in itself.

After spending a long period of months inside its mother's belly, the baby is abruptly separated from that environment and comes into the world.

At almost every point in the film We Need to Talk About Kevin the boy is treated like a piece of meat, with no one exercising the primary and essential function, the maternal function. It does not receive the care and the look of the mother, who only supplies its basic needs, nothing is established, In addition, not that Kevin didn't try to get his mother's attention by crying, screaming, making a mess, but this didn't make any sense to Eva who hated him more and more, words failed and violence ensued as can be seen in the scene where she throws the fragile child against the wall and causes him to hurt his arm.

It is possible to analyze the issue of a frayed relationship between the child and his mother, turning into violence, It is not the mother's fault, but the fact that she is looking at the fact itself and that it has turned into a physical aggression.

We Need to Talk About Kevin: Maternal function is extremely important for the child's psychic structuring

It can be occupied by any other person, including the father or the person who adopts the child. For Borges (2005), in psychoanalysis the maternal function is fundamental for the structuring of a psychism in the child, because from there it enables the baby to survive.

The maternal function enables through this Other's gaze the inscription of signifiers, this maternal Other imprints these signifiers on the baby's body resulting in a partial organization of the drive and consecutively the structuring of a psychism of this subject (LOVARO, 2019).

With this lack of loving investment from his mother and father, Kevin grows and structures himself psychically in the way he can amidst the lack that assails him, structuring his perversion. A very intelligent young man, astute, with a strong personality, where he normally does not accept the imposed social laws to the point of transgressing them, is a remarkable characteristic of a perverse structure, the transgression of rules and laws.

What is evident is a huge abandonment in Kevin, where Eva is unable to fulfill this demand of love towards her son and the father doesn't realize it or unconsciously didn't want to, This lack may have made marks and influenced this acting out that he practiced at the end, There he got the attention and the look he so desperately sought from this mother who hated him. Two important concepts for the understanding of perversion:

• a ego cleavage e
• a denial .

Observations and inquiries

For the author Dor (1991), Freud formulates through his research, observations and inquiries an initial metapsychological mechanism regarding perversion, these are two important concepts for the understanding of this structure, the cleavage of the ego as an intrinsic part of the functioning of the psychic apparatus and the denial of reality with regard to castration.

The subject in the psychic structure of perversion, different from the psychic structures of neurosis and psychosis, denies castration, not accepting it, not accepting the limits it brings that organize the psychic structure, this cleavage of the ego makes possible a denial of reality, but which is not distanced as in psychosis, enables a certain organizing division amidst the chaos, but remains in consonance with the outside world.

It can be seen, then, that the fact that the subject is perverse does not necessarily imply a perversity, nor that all perversity stems from a perverse structure, nor yet a triumph over the other, but the impossibility to bear subjective questioning due to the denial of castration.

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This choice of the subject stems from horror at the real danger of castration, This is so desperately real that it is preferable to deny it. (ALBERTI, 2005, p. 357).

Two moments in the film We Need to Talk About Kevin that are important in the perverse structuring of Kevin

Two significant scenes happen, one when Kevin gets sick, so his mother takes him in, lies down with him and tells him the story of Robin Hood, the hero of the bow and arrow who stole from the poor to give to the rich, despite being for a noble cause, the protagonist of the story stole, that is, transgressed the law. There one of the only times Kevin feels cared for, protected, loved by his mother.

At this moment he feels loved and protected, and more importantly, he attracts the gaze and affection of a mother who cares for him. In his adolescence, his father gives Kevin a professional bow and arrow as a gift, so again the bow and arrow is seen as something very symbolic. and representative in relation to the story told by the character's mother, whose main weapon is the bow and arrow, But this time this instrument will be used as a deadly weapon, Kevin comes to use it to commit the attack on the school taking the lives of many people.

For Ferraz (2010), the definition brought by the psychoanalyst Robert Stoller that perversion is strongly correlated with anxiety, and this perverse behavior is influenced by a difficult moment during the libidinal development in the family dynamics.perversion.

Hate would be a structuring and primordial characteristic in perversion, which is an erotic form of hate, and the perverse act is characterized by the desire to hurt, destroy, annihilate the other, is moving from a fantasy to the realization of the act (FERRAZ, 2010).

Final considerations

If someone had performed the maternal function, would he have had a perverse structure or would he have been heading towards neurosis? If someone had appeared on his path and made it possible for that suffocated and voiceless subject who was trying to get attention in search of his mother's love by breaking the rules to speak, would it have made a difference?

The hypothesis would be that it probably is, although one cannot be sure in the face of the uncertainties of human existence, but a bet is made that psychoanalysis is transformative in all senses, being able to transform paths and give new meanings.

After the incident Eva becomes scarred in the town, including suffering attacks on her home, she ends up visiting Kevin in jail, But they can't exchange a word, they just stare at each other, there it is possible to see that the boy finally gets his mother to look at him in a different way, unfortunately by this means committing an extreme evil act in the slaughter that took place in the small town's school.

It is also possible to analyze that Kevin has a perverse structure and goes on to commit an act of perversity, as he coldly calculates and trains previously to commit this barbaric act taking many lives in the school bombing, he does it coldly, measuring every step towards this goal, the pervert is cold and calculating and also derives pleasure from the pain of the other who suffers in the midst of his perverse act.

It is worth pointing out the feeling that the pervert has towards other human beings, this subject sees the other as an object, nothing more than that, there he assumes a role of protagonist than no longer being the object as he was previously, as in Kevin's case.

The psychic construction

The movie We Need to Talk About Kevin comes to be disturbing even without focusing on the acts of violence themselves, because the author does not focus on showing the images, but the characters, as in Kevin's attack at school on the other students, the camera focuses on the character at all times, but even though there are no explicit scenes, the film causes a disturbing sensation about the facts that will happen in the plot.

It is possible to come to a conclusion that this extreme act of Kevin's shows itself to be complex and also as a slow build, where they blend from his upbringing with all the lack of Eva's gaze causing a flaw in his psychic constitution to Kevin's internal issues that since his childhood have been showing. There is not one main fact in itself, but rather a set of events that mark the plot.

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Bibliographic references

ALBERTI, Sonia. perversion, desire and drive. Rev. Mal-Estar Subj., Fortaleza , v. 5, n. 2, p. 341-360, Sept. 2005 . Available at . accessed on Feb. 10, 2022

BORGES, Maria Luiza Soares Ferreira. Função materna e função paterna, suas vivências na actualidade. 2005. Dissertation (Master in Human Sciences), Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, 2005. DOR, Joël. Estruturas e clínica psicanalítica. Rio de Janeiro: Livrarias Taurus-Timbre Editores, 1991.

FERRAZ, Flávio Carvalho. Perversão. 5. ed. São Paulo: Casa do Psicólogo, 2010.

LOVARO, Bruna Sampaio.The child and its subjectivity: the implication of parental desire.Ijuí: UNIJUÍ, 2019.Course Conclusion Paper (Graduation in Psychology) from the Regional University of the Northwest of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, 2019.

ZORNIG, Silvia Abu-Jamra; LEVY, Lídia. A child in search of a window: maternal function and trauma. Styles of the Clinic. Journal on childhood with problems, v. 11, n. 20, p. 28-37, 2006.

The present article analyzing the film We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) was written by Bruno de Oliveira Martins Clinical psychologist, private CRP: 07/31615 and by the online platform Zenklub, therapeutic companion (TA), student of psychoanalysis at the Institute of Clinical Psychoanalysis (IBPC), contact WhatsApp: (054) 984066272, e-mail: [email protected]