It is the middle of the night. A dark limousine rides along Mulholland Drive carrying a mysterious woman (later known as Rita). Suddenly, the limo stops without explanation, and the driver pulls a gun on her. However, before anything happens, a car crash disrupts the situation, and Rita stumbles away, confused and suffering from amnesia.
The scene from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive foreshadows the film's themes of identity fragmentation, fate, and the interplay between phantasy and reality. The scene of the accident, introduces ambiguity from the very beginning, leaving the viewers to question what is real and what might be a part of an unconscious narrative. The film operates in the shadowy space between reality, dream, and phantasy (1), making it a perfect subject for exploration through the lens of Freud’s paper Creative Writers and Daydreaming (2). The film’s disjointed narrative, surreal sequences, and characters caught between identities create a world where the boundaries of conscious reality and unconscious phantasy dissolve. Lynch invites viewers into a space that mirrors the structure of a daydream—a fragmented, wish-fulfilling world where desires and anxieties intertwine.
The Role of Phantasy in Mulholland Drive
Freud described phantasy as a space where unconscious desires take shape, often offering an escape from the constraints of reality. In Mulholland Drive (3), this phantasy space is central to the film's structure. The story begins with Betty, a bright-eyed aspiring actress, arriving in Los Angeles, the quintessential dreamland. Her journey seems straightforward at first, but as the film progresses, it becomes clear that much of what we are witnessing may be an elaborate phantasy or daydream constructed by a deeply troubled mind.
The film's first part unfolds like an idealised version of life in Hollywood—a fantasy world where Betty is optimistic, kind-hearted, and full of promise. She meets Rita, a woman suffering from amnesia, and together they embark on a mystery-solving adventure that feels like something out of a noir film. This could be seen as the wish-fulfilment aspect of phantasy—Betty is living out her dream of making it big in Hollywood, with all the glamour and intrigue she likely envisioned.
Yet, Freud noted that phantasy is not merely about wish fulfilment. It can also be a space where the individual unconsciously processes unresolved anxieties and conflicts. The idealised world of Betty begins to crumble as darker elements surface, suggesting that this phantasy is masking deeper psychological trauma. The narrative starts to fracture, revealing that what was thought to be reality is perhaps an intricate phantasy—one that allows its creator to rewrite the painful truths of her life.
Daydreaming as a Defence Against Reality
Freud’s insights into daydreaming help to explain the disorienting shifts between realities in Mulholland Drive. Daydreams, Freud suggested, are not just wish-fulfilling fantasies but also defensive mechanisms against unbearable realities. In the case of Mulholland Drive, the film’s later revelation that much of what we’ve seen is a daydream-like phantasy crafted by the character Diane (who we discover is the “real” version of Betty) speaks to this idea.
Diane’s daydream—a narrative where she becomes Betty and lives a glamorous Hollywood life—is her defence against the crushing disappointments of her real life: her failed acting career, her broken relationship with Rita (who, in reality, is named Camilla), and the overwhelming guilt she feels for orchestrating Camilla’s murder. The phantasy world she constructs allows her to temporarily escape the unbearable emotional pain of these realities.
In the film’s dream logic, Betty’s story is the idealised life Diane wishes she had, free from the humiliation and rejection she experienced. However, just as Freud suggested, daydreams cannot entirely shield us from the unconscious conflicts they are meant to defend against. As the film progresses, the darker elements of Diane’s psyche bleed into the phantasy, leading to disturbing, surreal sequences—like the haunting “Club Silencio” scene—that remind us that this world is not what it seems.
The Blurring of Fact and Fiction
Freud pointed out that in creative works, just as in daydreams, the line between reality and phantasy is often blurred. Mulholland Drive takes this concept to its extreme, offering viewers a world in which it is impossible to separate the two. Lynch deliberately fractures the narrative, forcing the audience to navigate a labyrinth where characters, events, and even time seem to shift and transform in ways that defy logic.
This blurring of fact and fiction mirrors the experience of daydreaming, where fragments of reality intermingle with our deepest wishes and fears. Diane’s daydream may begin as a fantasy of success and romance, but as it unravels, the truth of her failures, insecurities, and guilt breaks through. The viewer is left unsure which parts of the story are “real” and which are phantasy, echoing Freud’s idea that our daydreams often obscure and distort reality in order to protect the dreamer from painful truths.
Lynch’s use of surrealism and dream logic throughout the film reflects Freud’s notion that daydreams, much like dreams themselves, allow unconscious material to surface in symbolic form. Characters’ identities morph, time seems to fold in on itself, and the film's seemingly disconnected scenes come together in a way that is reminiscent of the fragmented nature of dreams. Just as dreams use symbols to express unconscious conflicts, Mulholland Drive presents its characters’ psychological struggles in a symbolic, non-linear narrative.
Phantasy as a Space for Emotional Truth
Freud argued that creative works, like daydreams, allow both the creator and the audience to explore unconscious desires and conflicts in a way that reality cannot. Mulholland Drive is a prime example of this, offering a narrative that may not make logical sense but feels emotionally truthful. The film taps into universal themes of longing, loss, and regret, making its surreal, disjointed world resonate on a deeply psychological level.
Diane’s phantasy offers her—and the viewer—a chance to explore the emotional truth of her situation. In her daydream, she can rewrite the story of her life, recasting herself as the plucky, successful Betty and imagining a world in which her love for Rita/Camilla is reciprocated. But as the phantasy collapses under the weight of her guilt and despair, we are confronted with the emotional devastation Diane is trying to escape. The film suggests that while phantasy and daydreams can offer temporary relief from reality, they ultimately cannot protect us from our deepest, most painful truths.
The Haunting Power of Daydreams
Mulholland Drive offers a profound exploration of the intersection between phantasy, daydreams, and reality, illustrating Freud’s ideas about how we use phantasy to navigate our desires and conflicts. Lynch’s film invites viewers into a disorienting world where dreams and reality overlap, allowing us to experience the power of phantasy both as a creative outlet and a psychological defence mechanism.
Through its surreal narrative and fragmented structure, Mulholland Drive reminds us that phantasy and daydreams are not mere escapes from reality but essential tools for processing the unconscious mind’s deepest conflicts. However, as Freud warned, the lines between these realms are fragile, and phantasy can only protect us from reality for so long before the truth inevitably breaks through.
Lynch’s film masterfully captures the haunting power of daydreams, leaving viewers with an unsettling sense that the most disturbing elements of the film may, in fact, be the closest to emotional reality.
Additional notes
- Phantasy here refers to the unconscious mental processes shaping a person’s emotional and relational life. For example, we may unconsciously project a phantasy of an ideal or prosecutory figure onto real people in our lives. Phantasy here is used as opposed to ‘fantasy’ which refers to conscious thoughts and imaginings.
- In Creative Writers and Daydreaming (1908), Freud explores the relationship between creativity and unconscious processes. He suggests that writers, like children, engage in daydreaming to fulfill unsatisfied wishes, often rooted in repressed desires, which are usually hidden in adulthood but reappear in creative works in a disguised form. Freud argues that creative writers often transform personal phantasies into narratives that evoke pleasure in readers who unconsciously resonate with the underlying wishes. By offering a socially acceptable outlet for phantasies, literature provides a bridge between the inner world of desire and the external world of art.
- Mulholland Drive, a movie by Lynch, is not officially inspired by psychoanalysis, however, it resonates deeply with psychoanalytic concepts. The movie unfolds like a dream, with shifting identities and surreal imagery. The first part of the movie can be interpreted as a dream of phantasy with characters representing parts of the dreamer’s psyche. This aligns with the psychoanalytic idea that dreams both express and disguise repressed wishes and fears, preserving the dreamer’s sleep. When the dream dissolves, unresolved conflicts return. The movie invites viewers to interpret its mysteries much like a therapist might approach the unconscious of a patient’s narrative.