Lighthouse movie — psychological explanation

I saw this film few nights ago and haven’t found this explanation anywhere, so here we go…

SPOILER WARNING!, of course

The island and the lighthouse represent mind of a person who commited murder in Canada, exactly as the character of Robert Pattison says in the movie, and this movie is about psychological processes inside of his psyche (which Dafoe’s character literally points at near the end). It’s not certain, what this person looks like in reality, but his name is probably Thomas (because both inhabitans of the island are also named Thomas) and we don’t really know what’s happening in reality, except he is probably running away from his crime and justice. The movie is also smart analogy between mind and isolated island with “house of light” on it.
It looks like the director is using basic freudian psychological concepts to describe these psychological processes, but it can be explained without you knowing them and I will add them just for clarity.

The lighthouse itself is subconsciousness/unconsciousness and William Dafoe’s character (D) is it’s manifestation (freudian id), which are your deep animal instincts and urges — it farts, pees, drinks and is emotional (fear, anger, status, sadness). It’s always awake (D’s last name is Wake and he works at night), it never leaves the mind (he’s been on the island for a long time, he’s old), it’s in charge and protects your deep mental and life functions and sanity (the light, probably, but it’s hard to tell what the light really is). He is also hard to understand (cryptic speech, multiple origin stories, archaic language).

On the other hand, the rest of the island is consciousness/higher cognitive functions (freudian ego). Robert Pattison (P) represents manifestation of this part of the psyche — He’s young and temporary, he is current thoughts and fresh memories. Pattison is also more sense-oriented (attention, visions, horn sound, mermaid voice, taste) and represents rationality (he is trying to figure out D, cares about money). He also actually makes and performs the real-world plans (takes care of the cleaning, repairs, etc.) which is commanded by the subconsciousness — D. Also has a plan to get a house or something like that.

Id is also what evaluates and judges thoughts — D judges P for not being slow and cleaning badly and P desperately wants to know what D thinks of him. D also has it’s own rules and intuition (drinking, not harming seagulls) as opposed to rule-obider P.

I’m gonna walk through the story and explain things to the best of my knowledge without trying to see something in everything. I’ve seen the movie just once and forgot lots of it, so I’m sure there will be more to find.

• P arrives to the island. He brings the new memory of the murder so he’s not very open as P knows that his story is not supposed to be exposed OR you can say that this particular memory is only slowly starting to unpack and be fully comprehended.
• P finds the mermaid idol, which is something like propagation of subconscious idea of sexual need into the consciousness. Unlike other goals of D, this one is passed subtly, as it would be weird if D actually asked P to masturbate.
• P is awake few times during the night, which is basically dreaming — he sees visions of mermaid, drowning etc.
• Seagulls represent conscience (freudian superego)— which is the rules and values of parents, peers and society imprinted in you (of the people, who aren’t around anymore or the dead sailors, as D says). They are kinda on D’s side and they are flying around, scanning the thought and judging it as society would. I think that they are also something more — memories of previous consciousnesses (which also goes together with dead sailors).

• P finds dead seagull in a well or something, which probably is the conscience that the previous consciousness had to kill, therefore the conscience that prevented him from comitting the murder.
• Eventually, consciousness can’t tolerate the feeling of guilt anymore (suspicious conscience, bugging memory) and kills it, thus bringing the storm and warning D. P can’t leave and new guy (change of consciousness) can’t arrive.
• The fear of social judgement is gone and lots of things go south from this point on. Until now, D was in charge, but he was either asleep or drinking by the light and giving few order here and there, which is a good state. But now I think that the real person’s mind is in such chaos that the higher mental functions are confused and mix with primitive instincts and urges. They can’t merge the two character into one in the movie, but, for example, it’s not clear anymore, who later breaks the ship.
• From this point on, their sleep schedule goes haywire, D doesn’t stay by the light over night. P starts to dring and is slowly becoming crazier and more like D. They dig up alcohol.

• There is growing tension between them as they are fighting for dominance and control. D has his theatrical speech and P concedes for now.
• Then, there is this mixed scene of P masturbating thinking about the mermaid, pulling out cage with one-eyed head, light and lock and few quick shots of his real-world blonde boss, Thomas hitting him with a stick, and P (and perhaps his boss) drowning.
  We can assume that Thomas is masturbating in reality at the same time and since this is unusual state of mind, his mind is giving him all kinds of flashes of ideas. The memory of the murder is brought up, which will be relevant in the next point, but also he breaks the talisman, which means breaking up with his id and becoming free.
  Then, there is connection between the head (most likely of previous worker) and seagull — they both have one eye, there is seagull flying in the back of the shot. The previous worker had to be his consiousness before the murder, so it makes sense that one-eyed seagull memory was bugging him, but I could be wrong about this.

• They both get drunk and D finds out the true full story of P. Right after that, we see P looking at another laying P on the top of lighthouse (the only interpretation I can think of is that the whole consciousness became fully aware of this memory) and the very next shot is naked D holding P and looking at him with lighthouse look. I guess even the subconsciousness became fully aware of this thought now.
• P tries to escape, but D won’t let him. D says that they could be on the island for days or months, who knows? That’s because in your memory, time flows at its own speed. D wins an argument again and they both get even drunker.
• P reads D’s notes, calls him selfish liar, judges him for his animalistic drives, gets sad wanting to go to the light. D tells him he knows about the seagull and that he is a looser, which makes P angry and he beats up D and becomes his master.

From now on, it’s even harder to interpret anything as we are getting further from the standart psychological roles (and it’s probably ment to be ambiguous). I have just few partial thoughts and they could all be wrong.

• If thoughts stay in consciousness long enough, they slowly blend into subconsiousness — P wants to take over the lighthouse. And tries to bury the subconsciousness, which tells him that if he goes to the light, he will be cast to the hell. Well, getting rid of D is hard, thing to do, so he rises again and is finally killed and P goes to the light.

• Explanation more outside of psychology is that P seeks salvation and escape of the murder and punishment and the lamp is something that the believes can give it to him eventually. Anyway, he goes there and goes mad, is eventually rejected and pulled down.
• One idea is that since it’s pathological thought, it makes the real Thomas loose his sanity. Or, similarly, such evil though can never blend with subconsciousness.
• Another idea is that subconciusness is something impossible to be understood or controlled by consciousness.
• In the last scene, we can see that P is missing his eye, which was either burnt by the light or pecked out by a seagull. There is also no lighthouse, which suggests that he lost his mind.