“Trauma [is] a central organizing principle of human thought,
feeling, belief and behavior that has been virtually ignored in our
understanding of human nature. Without this understanding we cannot
hope to make the sweeping changes we need to make if we are to halt a
universal post-traumatic deterioration.”(Bloom, pg. 9)
SEA BISCUIT, this film places one innevitably lost in empathy for Toby McGuire’s character and his four-legged
partner Sea Biscuit. 'Toby' was left by his parents, mistreated by
his first boss and beaten senseless in the boxing ring. This likens
horse Sea Biscuit’s toxic stress decided in his former trainer’s
abusive tactics. Toby and Sea Biscuit equally react to life in ways
that seem unhealthy to others. Toby lived a depressing life. He had
trouble forming relationships with women and other jockeys. Sea
Biscuit was very violent and unpredictable. This points to the fact
that they both had problems resulting from attachment disorders.
These present as dysfunctional behaviors, moods and relationships
with others which stem from abuse or neglect at a young age.
In Toby’s youth, he was thrown into a foreign world without
any family. Thus creating an, “. . . anxious/ambivalent, insecure
attachment. Distressed upon separation. Angry and approaching, but
resistant.”(Richardson, 9/25/08) Sea Biscuit was caught in the
fight, flight or freeze response triggered by his trauma. “Problems
arise only when this reaction is evoked in the absence of any
threat.”(Bloom, pg. 18) Sea Biscuit was ‘fear conditioned’
which created his ‘chronic hyperarousal.’ Sandra Bloom speaks to
the effects of such trauma in her book, Creating Sanctuary.
“. . . most psychiatric disorder is the culmination of ‘normal
reactions to abnormal situations,’ situations largely created by
the failure of our social systems to provide traumatized children
with the protection and care to which they have a right.”(Bloom,
pg. 11)
When Sea Biscuit’s future owner asks his trainer how to find a
winning race horse, he tells him a great horse is one that won’t
back down from a fight. This was something that trainer saw in Sea
Biscuit’s eyes in spite of his limp and awkward running style. He
appreciated Sea Biscuit’s spirit as a horse who had potential to
show self efficacy (capacity for beneficial change in a therapeutic
intervention). This trainer put the horse into an environment of
sanctuary and matched him with the jockey counterpart (the part of
Toby McGuire). Once taken off the track and his vicious, “Cycle of
Doom,”(Richardson, 9/25/08) Sea Biscuit’s life struggles
crystallized from learned helplessness into a racing competence on
the open trails of the wood.
“Learning is dependent on the ability to categorize incoming
material. We can categorize information, and make new categories
only when we are in a state of relative calm and attentiveness . . .
Learning is also dependent on the state of consciousness we are in
when the learning occurs.”(Bloom, pg. 24)
McGuire’s character blossomed into a competent jockey and a
responsible young man. His new relationships with Sea Biscuit, the
trainer and the owner’s family was somewhere Toby fit in to form
relatedness with his environment. However, his traumatic past rears
it’s head in the way of troubled decision making abilities. He
reacts to another jockey cutting him off in the race by shooting
ahead while losing his momentum, and the race.
“When severely stressed, we are unable to think clearly, to
consider the long-range consequences of our behavior, to weigh all
the possible options before making a decision, to take the time to
obtain all the necessary information that goes into making good
decisions. As a consequence, our decisions are inflexible,
oversimplified and often very poorly constructed. At such times we
minimize the effort we put into problem solving because our body has
oriented us towards taking action, not towards thinking calmly about
the situation.”(Bloom, pg. 23)
Eventually, learning and growing in his own new recovery
environment. Toby’s character overcomes his emotional memory and
makes the corrective moves in order to win the race. The
neuroscientist Le Doux states that, “. . . emotional memory appears
to be permanent and quite difficult, if not impossible, to eliminate,
although it can be suppressed by higher centers in the brain.”(Bloom,
pg. 28) This is an illustration of how the brain damage from trauma
can be overcome, and once again how recovery is always
possible. A victory of the Pre-frontal cortex over the Brain Stem
(where the amygdala, nondeclarative, implicit, or procedural memory
lies). This happens, “. . . in development when the child begins
to understand speech.”(Bloom, pg. 27) Toby’s character grows
into an adult, who triumphs over the painful situations of his youth.
In the same way he always nurtured his boyhood dreams and
aspirations. This is a primary example of the integration of
different aspects of Toby's life and personality, into one unified
whole.
Bloom, S. (1997). Creating Sanctuary. New York, NY: Routledge.
Griffin, S. (1998). Denial. The Sun, 9-13.
Henry, J. (2008). SWRK 6310 Lecture Notes. Western Michigan
University, Fall Semester, 2008. *The premise of this paper was developed by Dr. James Henry.
Richardson, M. (2008). SWRK 6310 Lecture Notes. Western Michigan
University, Fall Semester, 2008.
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