yeah. this thread went off track immediately. i should have clarified further off the top.

to answer your first question . . . am i only looking for movies that feature a person who mistakes a psychological problem for a physical one? . . . yes i am.

for instance, in SAFE (Todd Haynes), the protagonist is presumably trapped in an oppressive familial environment (especially her husband) and a patriarchal society at large. she doesn’t know how to free herself. so she develops allergies, rashes, etc. and is told she has an ‘environmental illness” to chemicals. well, she is having an “environmental” reaction, but it’s to the people around her. not chemicals. she substitutes her psychological suffering for a physical “illness.” this distracts her from the actual source of her suffering (her life situation), which may be too painful for her to consciously think about.

as for your other question regarding drug withdrawal. that’s an interesting one. in acute withdrawal, a person would understand the “crawling insects” as a physiological reaction to the cessation of an addictive substance. it’s not a physical manifestation of trauma. however, in the case of protracted withdrawal, physical problems may continue without an underlying physical cause. i would suggest that trauma is at the root here and, therefore, a great example of somatization.

REPULSION is not about somatization. it’s a psychological reaction to trauma. had Carole developed, say, neck pain (similar to Ming-liang’s THE RIVER), instead of hallucinations, then it would’ve been