A Psychological Analysis of the Dark Side

I saw someone post thier school project on Anakin on this board, so I thought I'd do something similar. I wrote this for my high school Psychology class last semester. I got a B for some technical issues (contractions, ect.) and for the long, detailed summary of Stover's novel (which I will not waste your time with ) Anyway, hope you guys like it.


Analysis
What follows is a review and psychological analysis of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover, the novelization of a movie by the same name. While Revenge of the Sith is only the third installment of a six part saga, it is the episode in which many key events take place, and can stand well enough on it's own if the reader is provided sufficient background information from the previous two episodes. The purpose of this analysis is to explore a phenomenon in the Star Wars universe known as the Dark Side of the Force, specifically it's effects on those who use it, the Sith Lords.

To understand what the Dark Side is, we must first understand what a Sith Lord is. While it would be simple to say that a Sith is one who uses the Dark Side, this definition is vague, especially for those not familiar with what the Dark Side is. Examination of the Sith worldview, however, provides a clearer definition. While not explicitly stated, the dialogue of Chancellor Palpatine, a.k.a. Sith Master Darth Sidious, reveals much of his beliefs, and therefore, the general beliefs of the Sith. For example, in one of the many discussions between Palpatine and Anakin, Anakin mentions the will of the Force, a form of providence. Palpatine replies,

"I'm afraid I don't believe in the will of the Force. I believe it is our will that matters. I believe that everything good in our civilization has come about not by the blind action of some mystical field of energy, but by the focused will of people: lawmakers and warriors, inventors and engineers, struggling with every breath in their bodies to shape galactic culture. To improve the lives of all." (Stover, 2004, p. 248)

From this we learn that the Sith do not believe in predestination. They believe that everyone has the power to choose and shape their own destiny and, by extension, the world. Note that Palpatine does not say he doesn't believe in the Force, he simply does not believe in the will of the Force. In other words, Palpatine believes in God, but he believes that God has no will of His own. By this line of thought, a person who, with the will to control his destiny, discovers how to use the power of God would essentially control God. This, then, is the Sith Worldview: the Force is not a higher power, but a lifeless object, a tool to be used for one's own ends. Palpatine also states that "the real difference between the Jedi and the Sith lies in their orientation; a Jedi gains power through understanding, and a Sith gains understanding through power" (p.225). Anakin, still a Jedi, rebukes him, saying that "The Jedi are selfless? We care only about others? [The Sith] think inward, only about themselves" (p.225). This is confirmed by Palpatine's dialogue to Anakin after he has killed Mace Windu. Palpatine tells Anakin to weigh his wants and emotions from a "cold distance-that mountaintop within yourself-that is the first key to the power of the Sith" (p. 338). Weighing his loyalty to the Jedi against his fear of losing Padme, Anakin chooses that he wants Padme to live at all costs, and thus pledges himself to the Sith, murdering nearly all of the Jedi. This cold detachment and disregard for others with which the Sith pursue their own wants is eerily similar to Hayden Ramsay's view of psychopaths, who, like Thomas Aquinas's demons, pursue their own good with a sense of entitlement: "mine: my right" and do so in a way that satisfies their own desires, including destruction of life and religion (Ramsey, 2000). The Sith are even willing to betray their comrades to get what they want. We already have the example of Anakin, but his is not the only one. Earlier in th

 

Interesting read.
Although classifying Anakin under a personality disorder takes some of the mythicism out of it, you make some good points.
I disagree that Anakin is "addicted" to the darkside after ROTS, I think he has no other choice. "Dependant" on Sidious maybe, who is all he has left.

 

I usually only read stuff if it takes me less than 4 hours oh well....the dark side scares me anyway

 

All this talk about "The Dark Side" reminds me of this essay written by Paul MacDonald called, "Jedi Knight of Infinite Faith" -. In it, MacDonald pointed out something very intersting about Qui-Gon and the Force:


"Significantly, while Yoda and Obi-Wan frequently sermonize about the dark side as contrasted to the light, Qui-Gon never mentions either. Perhaps he does not even believe in polarization and irreconcilable opposites, light sides and dark sides.

By contrast, the Council seems completely focused in schisms of the past or battles in the future, so much so that they fail to take decisive action in the present. It is Qui-Gon who admonishes his disciple to "keep your concentration here and now where it belongs.""


Anakin, however, is no angel.

I don't believe there is anyone in the saga who can be considered an angel.

The possibility of there being no "dark side" or "light side", or any kind of schism seemed very interesting.

 

I really liked this essay - mainly because it summarizes many of my own ideas about Anakin and the Dark Side. The idea of the Dark Side working as a kind of a drug - well, right with you there. As someone else pointed out, saying that Anakin has a personality disorder somehow...diminished the saga, can't say how, really, but still. I do agree with you on the fact that he is extremely dependant on others. It's interesting that one with so strong a will is so submissive in his relationship with others (the people he cares about, that is. He is of course anything but submissive when dealing with people as Darth Vader.)

 

It's interesting how people assume that because Anakin became a Sith Lord, there must be something in his personality makeup that makes him . . . and only him, susceptible to the "dark side".

Personally, I believe that just about any Jedi Knight that was in existence at the time, had the potential to be a Sith Lord - whether that Knight was Yoda, Obi-Wan, Mace, Ki-Mundi or Anakin. Count Dooku had been a respectable Jedi Knight for many years before he became a Sith Lord.

Is it possible that all of the characters have a duality of both light and darkness within them? That they all are susceptible of giving in to their inner darkness or allowing their emotions and attachments to get the best of them?

Characters like Obi-Wan and Yoda may not have become Sith Lords, but from what I've seen in the movies, they were just as guilty of allowing their feelings and attachments to get the best of them.

The whole point of the Anakin Skywalker character and the fact that he had started as an innocent child is to show that anyone is susceptible of giving in to darkness . . . and not just certain people.

 

exactly!anakins inate humanity was his downfall,he felt things too much because he wasnt conditioned to be emotionless like every other jedi,at an early age.anakins ultimate downfall was that he was too human-he loved,hated,feared and cared,jedis dont.

 

Thanks for the replies. Upon further reflection, I have to agree that painting Anakin as somehow mentaly impaired does diminish the saga, like his choices aren't his fault. Just to clairify, I see a lot of myself in Anakin, so I hope he doesn't have a dissorder (makes his fall a lot more tragic and sinister, methinks). It's just people have a tendency to look for things like that in good people who go bad and not in good people who conquer thier demons.

 

I've always said that the Jedi needed some kind of "Assistance Program" or an "Intervention Counselor" or something. Yoda was too esoteric and mystic. Mace was too not-touchy-feely. If the Jedi had some kind of self-help program to help struggling Jedi, perhaps Anakin would have been counseled about his feelings instead of burying them and letting Palpatine manipulate and use them.

 

Thanks for the replies. Upon further reflection, I have to agree that painting Anakin as somehow mentaly impaired does diminish the saga

Not mentally, but emotionally impaired, yes, I would agree he was. I think if the Jedi would have better trained him emotionally he would not have turned.

 

they needed to address the whole slave thing.

 

I at one point in time in my life was just this way. You do everything because you want to please others and make them proud of you. Only problem is, they never show how proud of you they are. They have a tendency to abuse the kindness that you show.

After a while, you either dig yourself into a hole of depression and continue to let them abuse you, or you finally snap and fight out of the oppression that you feel and lash out to the extreme. I picked the second option and lost quite a few people that were supposed to be my friends in the process. I also distanced myslef from people who genuinely loved and cared for me...but because I was so hurt and conflicted, I kept them at bay.

However, unlike Anakin, through will power, the love of friends and family I was able to prevent myself from becoming criminally or violently destructive and was able to refind the center. I have become something much more emotional and mentally healthy.

There are underlying issues that the Jedi did not and probably could not deal with because they had someone so foreign to the weay they were in the order that they did not know how to deal. So they treated him like everyone else..even when they shouldn't. I think the only person that could have kept Anakin from turning would have been Qui-Gon, because he was what the order should have been.

 

I think Anakin does show symptomes of the borderline personality disorder. And as Darth Vader, he still is submissive, extremely submissive in his relationship to people who he cares about. It's just that the only one he does care about is Palpatine. But to him he is submissive to the point of slavery.

 

Maybe that is why i cannot stand adult anakin. and maybe what is wrong with our country in general. "we" are constantly seeking approval for our actions from others. and while praise earned and received is great, our actions should never be dictated by what reaction we get from others. it should start within ourselves. we should strive to be our best because of the fulfillment this brings us. when we settle for anything less, we hurt not only ourselves but everyone else. i know when i do well. i know when i suck. i really dont need anyone else to tell me either time.

i tell my kids when they do great. i tell my kids when they suck. when they do suck we discuss how to do better next time. but more importantly, i have taught them to satisfy themselves first. because if you give your all in any endeavor, you have succeeded. this is anakin's problem. he never believes in himself.

 

"I'm afraid I don't believe in the will of the Force. I believe it is our will that matters. I believe that everything good in our civilization has come about not by the blind action of some mystical field of energy, but by the focused will of people: lawmakers and warriors, inventors and engineers, struggling with every breath in their bodies to shape galactic culture. To improve the lives of all."

Whoever had stated this, sounds like a control freak. I don't think that many people likes the idea of something beyond their control, affecting their lives. Yes, we have some control over our lives by the choices we make. But we're also affected by circumstances beyond our control. It seems to me that for some people, it's either one or the other, instead of both.


It's interesting that one with so strong a will is so submissive in his relationship with others . . .

This is why Obi-Wan was the wrong teacher for Anakin. The older Jedi Knight had never really taught Anakin anything about self-realization. Instead, Obi-Wan tried to emphasize upon making Anakin another "ideal" Jedi Knight.

A perfect example would be the "Spy on Palpatine Assignment" scene. Anakin had expressed his disapproval of the mission to spy on upon Palpatine to Obi-Wan. Although the latter had also expressed disapproval, he still convinced Anakin to accept the mission, anyway. It seemed that Anakin obeying the Council's wishes and regaining their trust seemed more important to Obi-Wan than either trusting his feelings or advising Anakin to trust his feelings. It also seemed important to Anakin, which led him to accept an assignment that led to disaster.

 

The Dark Side is all about control really isn't it. The belief that if you are able to FULLY utilize the Force, then you will be able to control anything, even death, if that is your wish.

The Light Side espouses the theory that there are aspects of the Force which should be left alone (is those which are fuelled by anger, hate etc.)even if they appear to further enhance one's power, and that some things simply can't be controlled.

And that's the choice which has to be made. Accept that some things are best left alone and that some things simply can't be controlled, or strive for maximum power, which may lead either to maximum control or ultimate destruction.

Ultimately Anakin had more faith in Palpatine than in his jedi mentors, and he consequently chose the latter.

 

The Dark Side is all about control really isn't it. The belief that if you are able to FULLY utilize the Force, then you will be able to control anything, even death, if that is your wish.

The Light Side espouses the theory that there are aspects of the Force which should be left alone (is those which are fuelled by anger, hate etc.)even if they appear to further enhance one's power, and that some things simply can't be controlled.

What if there is no "dark side" or "light side" of the Force? What if there is simply . . . the Force? What if Lucas' attempt to polarize the Force was a mistake?

I think that it is a BAD IDEA to try to supress one's darker tendencies. Sometimes, utilizing one's darker tendencies can be a good thing in the long run. Sometimes, wallowing in one's belief of innate goodness is not a good idea.

I think that one should learn to control one aspect of ALL of one's nature. It's all a matter of learning to know which aspect to utilize and at what time.

 

I agree with that completely, and I think that when the Force was eventually brought into balance, that was the philosophy that would have ensued.

 

What if there is no "dark side" or "light side" of the Force? What if there is simply . . . the Force?

Well, the dark side is an idea that's engrained in the Saga from day one.

 

I think the Force is just the Force, but it can manifest itself as light or dark depending on the emotions used to fuel it.

 

I know that.

What I'm trying to hint is that perhaps it was a mistake for Lucas to even bring up "the Dark side". By doing so, Lucas ended up polarizing the Force or whatever mystical entity in the saga, when he should not have done so.

And why is it that Qui-Gon never referred to the "Dark Side" in TPM? He is the only Jedi Knight who never used that phrase. Instead, he commented on the Sith.

 

A nice read, on this sunday morning- thanks.

Ramred,

I always thought the division of the Force into the light and into the dark, is the Darkside. How about that?

 

Interesting. What you're saying is that to polarize the Force is the wrong thing to do. Very interesting.

 

This cold detachment and disregard for others with which the Sith pursue their own wants is eerily similar to Hayden Ramsay's view of psychopaths, who, like Thomas Aquinas's demons, pursue their own good with a sense of entitlement: "mine: my right"

Hi.

I've been doing a pile of reading on sociopathy vs. other reasons people choose to commit harmful acts to other people. What I've read (a summary of some of which can be found in my "A clinical definition of the psychopath: Does Palpatine fit?" thread), leads me to believe that, of all the people who commit harm without remorse, only a small subset are true psychopaths. In short, all psychopaths are willfully destructive people but not all willfully destructive people are psychopaths.

Hmm.

I'm going to share a bit more, based on what I've read. I'm fascinated by other points of view, however; this is just what I've read by a few experts who've published mass market books.

Virginia Satir came up with five freedoms expressed by a whole, fully functional human personality. According to her, full personal functionality includes:

1 -- the power to perceive
2 -- the power to think and interpret
3 -- the power to feel
4 -- the power to want and choose
5 -- the power to imagine.

As Martha Stout, Ph.D. defines the psychopath, something is organically wrong with the brain such that it is incapable of higher human emotions ... the love, fear, hate, sadness, etc. as processed by our mammalian, cerebral cortex brain. They possess only the lower sensate focus type of emotion mediated by evolutionarily older areas of the brain. So, if you look at Virginia Satir's definition of a fully human personality, they are missing number three and possibly number one as well. (If you can't feel love or grief yourself, then you may be able to perceive someone else acting lovingly or bawling their eyes out, but the emotion behind that is a nonsequitor to you ... the person may be crying, but you've never felt that emotion and you can't imagine why they are acting so silly. So ... you perceive the person crying but the feeling part of perception isn't there. Psychopaths have, according to Stout, half of number one.)

So, we have two types of criminals. The most common type has all the basic components of normal human personality. They can and do commit crimes just as heinous as a psychopath, but NOT for the reason that they are incapable of feeling empathy. They have the ability -- they are just choosing to turn it off for some reason. Then you have the psychopathic criminal, who does not have the brain circuitry to feel the emotions we do.

Stout defines conscience as "a sense of obligation based in an emotional attachment to another living creature (often but not always a human being), or to a group of human beings, or even in some cases to humanity as a whole." It is the decision to do something because you recognize that a being will suffer if you do not, and you can't abide its suffering.

Stout tells us that about 80% of the criminals currently in prison are of the first type -- completely capable of empathasizing with a being's suffering but willfully choosing not to -- and then usually burying themselves deeply into rationalization and denial. About 20% of incarcerated criminals are of the second type -- having the brain disorder that renders them unable to comprehend the suffering the rest of us experience.

So, I have argued that Palpatine is not a psychopath, not on the basis of his moral relativism, but on the basis of some of what I've just said.

In the dream, whatever he did was the right thing to do simply because he wanted to do it. In the dream there were no rules, there was only power. And the power was his." (p. 83).

Anakin has just seen the world the way that all Sith see it: through the eyes of a psychopath.

Again, nonpsychopathic criminals also see the world this way. The question is not how they are seeing what they do, but why they see it that way.

The fact that Anakin turns to the dark si

 

I thought Anakin's journey to the Dark Side was about slavery...

Whenwe first see him he's a boy, a slave being bought and sold like currency. He has no power, no control. All slaves want to break free of that. They want to be able to rise up and have power for themselves. He gets his chance when he leaves to become a Jedi.

But even then he is still a slave. He is a slave to the will of the Jedi, telling him to let go of his emotions, but at the same time he is a slave to those emotions...It's a tug of war between the ideals of the Jedi and the feelings in his heart. By AOTC he is a slave to love, and we see that throughout the film, especially the fireplace scene where he confesses that his feelings are tearing him apart.

Despite his ability to use the Force, Anakin has no real power. He remains a slave all his life, always searching for a way to break free, to have that power. He was powerless to save his mother and in ROTS, the Dark Side enslaves him. The promise of power to make things the way he wants them to be, to be in control is too great a temptation for him, he sees it as the only way to become truly free. The ironic thing is that it's that power that would make him a slave forever.

Sidious is always the master, always in control and Darth Vader is his puppet. Vader is strong, but his slavery now has a physical manifestation in the suit that he is forced to wear to keep him alive. He is a slave to the machines that give him life.

But Anakin does finally break free at the very end, he stops being a slave when he turns on his master and saves his son. It ends up killing him but that doesn't atter, at that moment his life is complete, his quest is over.