The Family, August: Osage County – Family And Mental Injury

Our family is the starting point that in most cases affects our development in childhood, but also later in life. In the movie The Family, August: Osage County , we see how this unfolds in a family that is far from idyllic.

This family looks perfect to those on the outside, but only those on the inside know what’s really going on. The characters we meet in this film feel trapped between their love and the gloomy panorama of an environment full of frustration, envy and competition instead of love and protection.

Synopsis of the Family, August: Osage County

After the family patriarch commits suicide, it is up to his wife, now a widow, to gather their three daughters to come home to attend the funeral. For each of the three daughters, this journey to the childhood home brings up the conflicts and bitterness of their past.

Their father had been a refugee for many years, and their mother is addicted to drugs. Their marriage was very devastating. All their father did was satisfy his mother’s complaints and demands. Their mother thought he was not treating her fairly. And she punished her husband because he was unfaithful to her many years ago. This infidelity also produced a child. This is the family’s big secret.

An important fact here is that both parents came from poverty and experienced abuse from their own parents. They are rough people, and are used to the many difficulties of life. Both are also proud to have triumphed due to their hard work over the years.

However, they projected their own desires onto their daughters. But it may seem that none of the daughters fully lived up to these high expectations. The matriarch feels a deep contempt for all his three daughters, and constantly questions their different life choices.

A passive-aggressive mother

The Matriarch of the Family, August: Osage County  is narcissistic. She has a very passive-aggressive personality. The only thing she seems to focus on is the daughters’ many (in her eyes) mistakes. In addition, she blames them for having opportunities she never had. The matriarch is manipulative and overly dramatic when her tricks and deceptions do not work the way she wants.

The mother feels she has to compete with everyone. She uses all the information she receives from her daughters as a weapon against them. And her only positive comments come sandwiched between negative stings.

All in all, we can say that the mother is a twisted woman, who feels attacked because her daughters have their own lives. She does anything to make them come home, and to remind them of “their obligations to their mother.” She always reminds them that she had nothing, to make them feel bad for having “too much”.

The eldest daughter

The eldest daughter has always been a mediator during family crises, both with her younger sisters and with her own parents. She is controlling, and this led to a lot of problems with her own husband, who divorced her. However, not everyone in the family knows that she is divorced.

Despite the love that her husband and daughter feel for her, they are unable to cope with the fact that she can never relax. She feels an internal struggle and does not want to repeat her own parents’ mistakes.

The middle sister

The middle sister in this movie is the parents’ caregiver. She never married and did not do much with her life other than take care of her parents. As a result, she developed a great deal of bitterness toward her parents and sisters. She also has a very strange relationship with a half-cousin that no one knows about.

The matriarch feels grateful that she has this daughter as a caregiver. However, that does not stop her from constantly attacking her daughter. In addition, she mocks her daughter for not starting her own family because of her unfeminine appearance. She even makes fun of her. This daughter has serious problems relating to other people, and seems to have developed an evasive personality.

The youngest daughter

In The Family, August: Osage County , it seems that the youngest daughter is completely lost. She is a very childish and fragile woman who just wants to satisfy everyone around her and be accepted. She has spent her entire adult life jumping from one relationship to the next, taking risks with men who do not treat her with respect and love.

The youngest daughter is a very emotionally dependent person. She goes to unprecedented lengths to show her mother how “happy” she is, and how perfect and idyllic her current relationship is. However, the other family members see her partners as “this year’s girlfriend”. It’s hard to say, based on the information from the film, but she may be emotionally underdeveloped.

Recognizing patterns

The three daughters have grown up in an authoritarian environment. Their parents have never shown them any kind of love or affection. The parents were also very controlling throughout their upbringing. All three daughters are defined by a disorganized affiliation, although they have all dealt with it in different ways.

Yet, when the family experiences a crisis, they all resort to denial as a defense mechanism. This makes it easy for them to maintain a fake family environment. Each of them has developed different defense mechanisms for survival. In short, it seems like a “normal” family environment for an outsider, but it is in reality very dysfunctional.

Although The Family, August: Osage County is  just a movie, it shows us how our families can cause a lot of psychological damage.

Some time ago, the Provincial Hospital of Castellón analyzed the Family, August: Osage County  in one of its meta-training seminars. They dived into every problem presented in the film from a therapeutic perspective. Many people can relate to these family roles. They should be studied further to find out more about how this affects the mental health of people who are in such situations. It will also be useful to understand how they relate to other people in their lives as adults.