August: Osage County: Family And Mental Injury

Our family is the starting point that many times influences beyond our childhood. August: Osage County forms the framework of a family that is far from idyllic.

This family looks perfect from the outside, but only the people in the family know what’s really going on. The characters feel trapped between their love and  the sad panorama of an environment characterized by frustration, envy and competition instead of love and protection.

Synopsis of  August: Osage County

After the head of the family commits suicide,  his wife calls their three daughters and asks them to come home for the funeral. For each of the daughters, the return home causes the conflicts and bitterness of the past to flare up.

Their father had been a refugee for years and their mother is a drug addict. Their marriage was very destructive. The only thing their father did was satisfy her needs and complaints. Their mother did not think he treated her with respect.

She punished her husband because he had been unfaithful to her many years earlier. This infidelity ended with a child, which is the family secret.

Both parents came from poverty and were abused by their parents. They are tough people and used to a hard life. Both are proud to have triumphed through hard work.

They passed on their own wishes to their daughters, but none of them have really lived up to expectations. The matriarch feels great contempt for her three daughters and always questions their choices in life.

A passive-aggressive mother

The Matriarch of  August: Osage County  is narcissistic. She has a passive-aggressive personality. She focuses only on her daughters’ mistakes. In addition, she blames them for having opportunities she never had herself. She is  manipulative and overly dramatic  when her numbers do not work the way she would like.

The matriarch feels she has to compete with everyone. She uses any information she receives from her daughters as a weapon against them. She always hides the positive things between the negative ones.

The matriarch is a shaky woman who  feels attacked because her daughters have their own lives. She does everything she can to get them to come home and remind them of “their obligations to their mother.” She always reminds them that she had nothing at all, and gives them a bad conscience about having too much.

The eldest daughter

The eldest daughter has always been a  mediator in family crises,  both for her younger siblings and her parents. She is controlling and it has created a lot of problems with her own husband who walked away from her. However, the rest of the family does not know that she is divorced.

Despite the love her husband and daughter have for her, they can not stand that she can never relax. She is fighting an inner battle and will not make the same mistake as her parents.

The middle daughter

The middle daughter in the film is the parents’ caregiver. She has never been married, and has not done much with her life other than caring for her parents. It has given her a lot of bitterness towards them and her sisters. She has a strange relationship with a half-cousin that no one knows about.

The matriarch is grateful that the middle daughter cares for her. Yet she attacks her all the time. In addition, she blames her for not having started a family, due to her unfeminine appearance. She even makes fun of her.

This daughter  has severe problems getting close to other people  and seems to have developed an evasive personality.

The youngest daughter

In  August: Osage County , the youngest daughter seems to have gone completely wild. She is a very childish and fragile woman  who will only satisfy others and be accepted. She has spent her entire adult life jumping from relationship to relationship and taking chances with men who do not treat her well.

The youngest daughter is a very emotionally dependent person. She goes to great lengths to show her mother how “happy” she is and how perfect and idyllic her current relationship is. However, the family sees her partners as “this year’s girlfriend”. It’s hard to conclude from the information the film provides, but she could be emotionally damaged.

Recognizable patterns

The three daughters have grown up in an authoritarian environment. Their parents have never shown any kind of love to them. They have also controlled their lives with a heavy hand. There is a messy relationship in all of them that they have each dealt with in different ways.

When there is a crisis in the family, they  go into denial. It makes it easier for them to maintain a fake family relationship. They have each developed different defense mechanisms for survival. It looks like a “normal” family environment from the outside,  but it’s actually quite chaotic.

Although  August: Osage County is only a movie, it shows how our family can create many mental health issues.

A few months ago, a hospital in Castellón, Spain, analyzed the film in one of its meta-training seminars. They dived into any topic with a therapeutic perspective.

Many people can relate to these family roles. They should be studied in more detail for the psychological well-being of the people living in these environments, as well as for those who are surrounded by them in their adult lives.