Nosferatu — Shame is a nightmare

This episode explores Nosferatu (2024) and its depiction of shame as a horrible, beautiful nightmare.

Mental Health is Horrifying is hosted by Candis Green, Registered Psychotherapist and owner of Many Moons Therapy.

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Show Notes:

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Want to work together? I offer 1:1 psychotherapy (Ontario), along with tarot, horror, and dreamwork services, but individually and through my group program, the Final Girls Club. 

Podcast artwork by Chloe Hurst at Contempo Mint.

‘Nosferatu’ Review: Bill Skarsgard and Lily-Rose Depp Are Riveting, but Director Robert Eggers Rules This Haute-Horror Feast by David Rooney 

Robert Eggers on What Makes His Nosferatu Different by Megan McCluskey

Robert Eggers Gave Lily-Rose Depp a Book About Demonic Sexual Awakening to Prepare for ‘Nosferatu’: I Used It as My ‘Bible’ on Set by Samantha Bergeson

Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame: A Relational/Neurobiological Approach by Patricia A. DeYoung

The Four Quadrant Model —  Narcissistic Overcompensation 

Transcript

Welcome ghouls to today’s episode of Mental Health is Horrifying. I’m your Horror Barbie host of darkness — Candis Green— Psychotherapist and all around spooky bitch podcasting from my bat-filled cave in Toronto, Canada. 

In the grand tradition of the original Scream being released during the Christmas season, for the relief of people who have spent enough time with their families and need the soothing benefits of a horrifying bloodbath, Dave Eggers blessed us with a Christmas day release of his latest masterpiece, Nosferatu. 

Like a bloodthirsty vampire, I wanted to EAT this movie. To say that I LOOOOOVED it is the understatement of the century. And I am a thirsty bitch, so obviously I loved how it was just sooo beautiful, deliciously gothically beautiful – but I also loved how layered and complex it was, especially in its depiction of main character Ellen’s experience of her dark, twisted relationship with Count Orlok and the nightmare that it casts over her and all of Wisborg.

Nightmares are a window into our deepest emotional experiences and for Ellen, her nightmare tells the story of her profound shame.

Okay — so let’s get right into it. Let’s check out Nosferatu (2024) and its depiction of the powerful impacts of chronic shame. 

Movie synopsis:

Ellen is a sad, lonely teenage girl who calls out in the night for a "a guardian angel, a spirit of comfort...anything.", but what she gets is a malevolent spirit that attacks her, leaving her convulsing in seizure.

Many years later in the winter of 1838, Ellen lives in Wisborg, Germany, with her husband, Thomas, a real estate agent. Hoping to achieve financial security, Thomas accepts a commission from his employer, Herr Knock, to sell some spooky old property, to the reclusive and eccentric Count Orlok, requiring him to travel to Count Orlok’s castle. Unknown to Thomas, Knock has arranged this as part of an occult pact with Orlok. 

Ellen pleads with him to stay, as the disturbances from her childhood are returning and she has been having raging nightmares. But because she is a stupid, useless woman, she must stay behind, and Thomas departs on his long journey alone, leaving Ellen in the care of friends Friedrich and Anna.

They didn’t have airplanes or Ubers back then, so Thomas has to travel for like 6 whole weeks to get to this spooky old castle, and once he arrives, Count Orlok is deeply weird and is obsessed with Thomas’ and his blood-filled body! He also takes Thomas’ locket from him, which was a gift from Ellen and contains her hair, fortifying his connection to her. 

Back home, Ellen continues to have more fits and spells. She has wild nightmares, she sleepwalks, she has seizures, and cries out in the night. And again because she’s a stupid, useless woman who is probably just hysterical, they treat her by suiting her up in a corset and tying her to the bed. What else would you do in 1838?! 

She is later helped by Dr Von Franz, who informs everyone that Ellen is actually under the spell of something demonic. 

Thomas is having a weird time back at the castle too. He too is having nightmares, and finds Count Orlok sleeping in a coffin which seems odd. He tries to escape, but it’s difficult as it feels as though he is stuck in a waking nightmare, but he finally gets out and returns home to Ellen and his friends. 

Meanwhile, Orlok sets sails for Wisborg inside a crate of grave dirt and plague-infested rats, killing the ship's crew. Once he arrives, everyone starts dying of plague, terror reigns, and he kills Friedrich and his whole family in an attempt to coerce Ellen to leave her husband and be with him instead. 

Through occult research, Von Franz discovers that Orlok can only be destroyed through a “willing sacrifice of a fair maiden.” So Ellen is like you know what this guy is toxic and I need to set some boundaries, and psychically summons Orlok to her chamber, bones down with his undead corpse until the sun comes up, leaving both her and him totally dead – her from bloodloss, him from UV exposure.

Stay out of the sun, kids.

Movie background info:

In an interview about the movie, Willem Dafoe talked about how much he loved the rats in the movie. He thought they were so cute! They’re in there to represent the plague and death and spreading illness everywhere and filth but it’s like – people, rats aren’t dirty. People are dirty and rats only become “dirty” through their content with all the nastiness and garbage we leave around. Naturally, rats are actually extremely clean creatures and make amazing pets for the reason because they’re clean, smart, and very sweet. Justice for rats! Anyways we need to get back on subject… 

Nosferatu is a tale as old as time – actually, a tale as old as the 1897 novel Dracula, written by Bram Stoker. Nosferatu was first made into a film by German expressionist F.W. Murnau in 1922 as an unauthorized and unofficial adaptation of the novel because they couldn’t get the rights. The original film, Nosferatu — A Symphony of Horror (god what a great name – is creepy as hell people! I saw it in my grad 11 French media studies class, which profoundly shaped who I am as a person. Shout of to my teacher Mr. Noce at York Mills Collegiate! The original score of the silent film was performed live at the Berlin screening, and has since been lost throughout history. The version of the film that I have seen has a score so profoundly creepy and unnerving, and doesn’t really match the action of the film at all, adding to the nightmare quality of the film because there is nothing to ground you to reality. 

Nosferatu was made again in 1979 by Werner Herzog, and of course 1992’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola, and once again in 2024 by the brilliant Dave Eggers, who fell in love with the story after staging a production of it and playing Count Orlok himself as a teenager. 

Eggers other films include the Northman, the Lighthouse, and The Witch – one of my favourites. 

So after being told so many times – how would Dave Eggers add his own unique telling to this story? Like in the Witch, Eggers focuses on the loneliness and supernatural connections of a young, female protagonist who embraces darkness in the hopes of assuaging her innermost desires. 

In an interview with Time, Eggers says of Ellen "She's an outsider. She has this understanding about the shadow side of life that is very deep, but she doesn't have language for that. She's totally misunderstood and no one can see her," he says. "Because of this gift, in her teenage years, she ends up reaching out to this demon lover, this vampire, who is the one being who can connect with that side of her.”

In speaking with IndieWire, Depp revealed that her preparation centered on Péhor, a book by Remy de Gourmont about demonic desire and shame. “Péhor” is part of “Histoires magiques,” a collection of short stories that center on a troubled young girl named Douceline as she finds herself becoming sensually devoted to religious figures. Douceline becomes sexually involved with undead creature Péhor, who awakens her to the pleasures of sin, submerging her into psychological torture.

Eggers says that his inspiration for Ellen’s supernatural connection came from the 19th-century belief that women who were prone to sleepwalking were in touch with another realm.

And like I’m sure was the case in the 19th century, it was damn near impossible for anyone to understand Ellen and not deem her as insane and just throw a corset on her, and tie her to the bed. Not only did her childhood experience in connecting with Orlok begin breeding the shame that would dominate her life, but so would the lack of acceptance she experienced from doctors, her friends, and super hot husband Nicolas Hoult if you’re into that sort of thing.

What is shame?

Shame is an organizing belief in self, often created through experiences of trauma (either acute or chronic) that the self is “bad” — unacceptable, unlovable, wrong — which creates an often dissociated self-state where the self remains unknown or unreachable to self and others.

Translation: Something bad happens to you once or repeatedly, or you don't get your needs met on a really deep level over a prolonged period of time, so you turn that pain inwards and start believing that you’re a total garbage person but quite often, the extent of your belief that you are a total garbage person is repressed deep down inside of you because it’s too difficult to look at it, so you make weird choices in your life that aren’t really the best thing for you, and you don’t really understand why you and your life feel so garbage all the time. 

Shame is something that is very commonly formed among those who have experienced sexual trauma. You’ll hear people describe themselves as feeling dirty, or disgusting, or like they’re broken, which is unfortunately really common to take that violence committed against you and turn it inwards. 

Let’s think about Ellen’s relationship with Orlok, shall we? We don’t really understand why Ellen finds herself as such a lonely, sad teenager, but she is, which is something a lot of us can relate to, right? Teenage years are confusing, and you’re trying to find yourself and figure out who you are, you’re going through puberty, there’s all sorts of hormones everywhere, and in my case there were also ultra wide leg jeans and bucket hats – so it’s confusing and you really have no idea what’s going on! In the 1800s, how was a girl to find friends other than to reach out to the darkness of the night and accidentally conjure a demon?

So she calls out into the night asking for “a guardian angel, a spirit, a comfort… anything” and this friggin guy shows up and possesses her, and she convulses, she develops this weird occult sexual relationship with him, he torments her psychologically through fits and possession for years and let me remind you, this all begins when she is a child, and she is victimized by him.

Over time, Ellen comes to believe that she deserves this torture and becomes incredibly ashamed of it, and it’s hard for those around her to understand the pain she is experiencing so they’re just like get that hysterical woman into a corset! 

Nightmares and shame

One morning, Ellen shares with Thomas  an unsettling nightmare she had before their wedding that she was marrying Death himself, and there were only corpses in attendance, and it was this horrible scene, but she somehow found herself happier than ever. As she’s telling this to Thomas, she is sobbing, displaying these really terrifying and confusing feelings she is having about Orlok; how she both fears and loves him. And Thomas asks her to never speak of this again and kind of wants her to just shut up so he can get on with his day and not deal with the reality of her sexual trauma and resulting nightmares.

I wish I could have launched myself into the movie right at this part and been like if I could just interject her and learn a bit more about this nightmare Ellen… because THIS is exactly why there is so much value in doing dream work as part of psychotherapy. Her dream illuminated her unconscious feelings and behaviors so perfectly. These are parts of self that are moved into the shadow, out of view of the conscious mind but dreams provide a window into ourselves that is not none always available. and if could have just sat with this dream a bit longer, understood and not judged it instead of being like okay great shut up Ellen let’s never speak of this again — things could have gone so differently for her! Don’t dismiss your dreams, people! No matter how weird, terrifying or wacky.

Nightmares are a common symptom of trauma, and that unconscious part of shame that I was referring to earlier. Where our conscious, waking minds can do a really good job of repressing the parts of ourselves that we hate and would rather not look at or acknowledge, our dreams simply do not give a damn, and create visual representations of our most powerful emotions and experiences as a way to try and process them. 

I believe that horror is a collective nightmare – portraying common experiences, emotions, and traumas of the collective through this artistic medium. And in Nosferatu, our collective nightmare is shame. 

Aside from the nightmares and other night disturbances that Ellen experiences throughout the film, the whole movie feels like one big nightmare that we are submerged in as a way to understand Ellen. So many scenes feel like a nightmare – detached from reality, supernatural, and free from the confines of space and time. One of my favourite examples of this is the scene where Thomas is trying to escape Orlok’s castle, and he is trying every door he can find to try and leave and he finds that each one is locked. He runs from door to door frantically, terrified, and eventually he finds that the only way to escape is to launch himself out the window into the icy waters below. In reality, a fall like that would have killed young Thomas, but leaning into this as a symphony of horror, he survives somehow – like in a dream, where you wake up right at the most horrible part. 

Dissociation and shame

In regards to shame, dissociation is disconnection within primary consciousness, which relates visceral and emotional information to a felt sense of self. 

This means that the experience of shame is dissociating someone not only from their environment and the world around them, but also from themselves – their body, their own actions, and their sense of identity. At the same time, dissociation interrupts a right-brain kind of cognition about the external world, the kind of knowledge acquired through processing faces and social cues and held within implicit knowing about norms as they relate to social interactions.

If prolonged, shame-based dissociation can become a highly rigid, closed right-brain system and a matching personality style. The result of experiencing chronic states of relational shame and trauma early in life, such as Ellen did, is a progressive impairment of the ability to adjust, take defensive action, or act on one’s own behalf, and blocking of the capacity to register affect and pain, all critical to survival. 

In many ways, Ellen is dissociated from her shame and it is instead projected upon and enacted within her surroundings, the darkness that overtakes Wisborg, the creeping shadows, plague, and death that threaten to swallow everything around her. 

Though dissociated, the traumatic experience doesn’t disappear of course. It is stored as isolated sensory fragments, affective states, or behavioral reenactments, and it may present consciously as flashbacks, nightmares like the epic ones that Ellen has, and vague and unknowable feelings that threaten to overwhelm a trauma survivor’s sanity. 

An example of a behavioral reenactment is Ellen flipping out when Thomas has to leave to go on his business trip. She may not fully grasp why it is so distressing for her to be separated from him, but we can imagine that she is reenacting the pain of loneliness and isolation she experienced as a teenager that led her to Orlok in the first place. 

Whose shame is it anyway?

I want to also mention shame that is assigned to Ellen for merely being female too. Dave Eggers likes to explore themes of puritanism in his films, and in Nosferatu, Ellen is much akin to Eve, who is said to have unleashed sin upon the world through the lens of Christianity, which views women as beacons of chaos. 

Ellen’s femininity is shameful, her desire is shameful, her loneliness is shameful, and the depth of her feeling is shameful. 

You may have heard about the recent case in France about Gisele Pelicot who was sexually victimized by her husband and countless men over the years. She stood trial in France, choosing to not remain anonymous because as she said – the shame isn’t ours to feel, it’s theirs. 

Loyal waiting

I want to talk about a 4-quadrant model of shame that helps us to better conceptualize what is occurring within the psyche of someone struggling with chronic shame, which is difficult to talk about or even identity as a presenting issue for many therapy clients, as it is characterized by the dissociated self-state.

Through the dissociative shame, a false self is often created, one that is strong and resilient, making it difficult to leave space for the narcissistic injuries that have occurred to the vulnerable self.

Ellen, as mentioned, had a connection with Orlok, and it becomes clear that they were, in a manner of speaking, lovers. She eventually confesses this to Thomas. “He is my shame, he is my melancholy,” Ellen says, telling Thomas that he gave her the “courage to be free of my shame.” But part of her continues to be pulled by the lure of Orlok – which is something referred to as loyal waiting.

The four quadrant model is one that explores narcissistic overcompensation – again narcissism isn’t a negative term in psychology, all it refers to is the needs of the self. This model explains what happens in the internal psyche of one who is experiencing shame and enters into a dissociative state, leading parts of the psyche to overcompensated for the wounded, unreachable parts.

Okay – the top two quadrants refer to someone’s conscious awareness; the top left is how I view myself, and the top right is symptoms. The givens of how I view myself are ego-syntonic (meaning “feel good”) and the symptoms quadrant are ego-dystonic meaning “feel bad”. I think we can view Olok himself as a symptom of Ellen’s dystonic “feel bad” feelings, as he is the embodiment of her melancholy. 

Below this top layer is the one we are interested in right now, this is the unconscious layer – meaning, these processes and enactments fall outside the individual’s everyday awareness. The bottom left quadrant is called loyal waiting – and this refers to the individuals’ commitment to patterns of behavior and relationship that they believe will pay off in the end, despite all evidence to the contrary. The bottom right quadrant is revenge reenactments – which refers to the retaliation inflicted on self and others when loyal waiting fails time and time again. 

Ellen is shown to be in loyal waiting for Orlok – waiting for him is decidedly not good for her, but she does it anyways, and doesn’t even fully realize or understand what she’s doing. Consciously, part of her might justify her choice by being like well he is like 6’5 and owns a castle and is like totally obsessed with me like girl would your man cross an ocean in a shipping crate for you cuz mine did. And it’s like – Ellen no. He brings plague.

Loyal waiting doesn’t describe healthy loyalty based on relational mutuality; it refers to a person’s fantasy that puts into play unrequited childhood longings. It’s a way of relating to others based on a deep unconscious wish that someone will in some way make up for needs that were never met, filling the emptiness that lies at the core of the self. 

For some, this can look like waiting for the perfect other who will make up for the attunement they lacked in childhood. It can mean waiting loyally by, hoping for the day when their quiet, consistent self-sacrifice will finally be seen and rewarded. For others, like Ellen, it means clinging to the hope that an abusive partner will turn into that perfectly loving other. 

Loyal waiting is a pattern that leads to ultimate disappointment and self-destruction, as we see in the final scene of Nosferatu. Ellen’s sacrifice to Orlok is referred to as her “willingness” to do so, but can someone really be willing under the threat of abuse, coercion, or the reality that her, all of Wisborg, and everyone she loves will die horrible, plague-riddled deaths?

I don’t think so, Susan. 

Treating shame

In treating shame, the central task of therapy is to allow implicit memory to become explicit narrative, working slowly from what is known to what is not yet known. During this process, an individual becomes able not only to remember the shame as a manifestation of trauma, but also to mourn the losses that the traumatic experiences inflicted. 

A comprehensive undoing of dissociation is central, and this is achieved through the integration of memory and narrative, the self through a grieving process, and the integration of self-with-other relationships as the trauma survivor reconnects with the world.

Integrating memory with narrative can be achieved through therapy by examining trauma narrative and the stories we have begun telling about ourselves, and one way I find particularly helpful to do this is through the assistance of tarot. In working through trauma and dissociaed shame, it can be difficult to speak directly to the conscious mind to make sense of what’s going on, but tarot can access parts of the unconscious self through the use of metaphor, universal imagery, and archetypes. This is a safe way to work with trauma, as speaking directly to the trauma can be re-traumatizing, and attempting to speak directly to the shame can activate narcissistic overcompensation or revenge reenactments.

Tarot can typically be associated with divination and predictive readings — but it is so much more than that when used as a psychotherapuetic aid.

Tarot activates the brain’s right hemisphere processes of the intuitive and somatic, rather than the logical or rational processes of the left hemisphere. This is particularly helpful for those who have experienced trauma, which affects our neurological ability to feel and make sense of experience. 

When used in creative applications, tarot can illuminate understanding of self through its universal imagery, archetypes, and metaphors.

I have a program as part of my Final Girls Club offering beginning on January 28 called Illuminative Tarot for Working With Trauma that is open to anybody who wants to learn creative ways to work with tarot as a supportive partner in the healing process. I have a presale on right now, so check it out on my website at manymoonstherapy.com if that interests you.

I thought it might be interesting to actually pull a couple of cards from that bottom half of the quadrant – Ellen’s unconscious shame to see if we can understand more about her loyal waiting, and her revenge reenactments. 

*shuffle cards*

Okay for Ellen’s loyal waiting, I’ve chosen the ace of pentacles. Look at the sense of hope present in this card – there’s a big hand holding out a big shiny coin, presenting it like it’s the best, biggest, brightest, and most important thing in the entire universe. It is held above and in front of a lovely path that looks like it could be leading somewhere really lovely and promising, and this feels like the perfect encapsulation of this sort of false hope that is created in loyal waiting. Like if I’m good enough, and I try hard enough  — this person will save me. This one person will make everything all right and fix that big hole that I have felt inside of me all my life. 

Looking at it next to the 7 of cups which is what I chose for Ellen’s revenge reenactments, what really stands out to me in this card is the supernatural figure that is illuminated at the centre of an otherwise confusing, and overwhelming scene. This is a card that reflects wishful thinking, illusion, and fantasy and I think this ghost really standing out is showing some malevolent actor that is creating chaos in what could otherwise be a very lovely life. The cups in this card bear different types of gifts – some show jewels, home, abundance, while others portray danger like a dragon or a snake. Ellen struggles in her relationship with Thomas, who is a real snack, but their relationship is fraught and she experiences a great deal of anxiety within the relationship, uncertainty, and self-sabotaging — like wanting to divorce Nicolas Holt to be with some gnarly corpse man. 

But in a dissociative shame state, it’s really hard for Ellen to see things for what they are and make choices that are the right ones for her, so she makes self-sabotaging decisions.

Ellen — if you’re listening to this — focus on all the wonderful things you have brought into your life instead of letting this gnarly vampire dude control your life! Your husband found out of season lilacs for you! You have an awesome dressmaker! Your friends love you! Perhaps this was difficult to see due to the way trauma scrambles your brain and ability to make aligned choices for yourself, but Orlock is not the one! All you have to do is shove him out into the sun say at 10am after you’ve hard your morning coffee and then bam! That bitch is gone! And you can start getting on with your life.

Conclusion:

One of the central questions in Nosferatu is “does evil come from within us, or beyond?” I think this question that Ellen asks so perfectly demonstrates her shame, as she no longer knows where it began or who it belongs to. She has come to believe that she is an evil person, that she is bad and that is the story that she believes about herself. 

Humans are relational creatures. We live in connection and relationship to not only ourselves, but the world and people around us, and that shapes who we are. And quite unfortunately for Ellen, her lived experience was shaped by an undead rotting corpse man who is reanimated by Satan’s power. Like, that’s just something she could have not controlled for or anticipated in her life.

Outro:

And that my ghouls is the story of Nosferatu. Gothic horror truly is one of my favourite sub-genres of horror, and thus you will find me exclusively wandering around my home in a dramatic white nightgown, and I will be using a candelabra as my sole light source moving forward. 

Mental Health is Horrifying is entirely researched, written, edited, and produced by me, Candis Green, Registered (and spooky) Psychotherapist. If you like this podcast, please consider rating and reviewing on your preferred listening platform. It really helps the show to reach all the other spooky ghouls out there and I will be eternally grateful – and an eternity is a very long time for a vampire, okay? 

If you live in Ontario and are interested in psychotherapy with me, I offer therapy for Final Girls who want to make sense out of the guts of their lives. I specialize in grief and trauma, and incorporate both tarot and dreamwork into my practice as tools to delve deeper into fields of psychic terrain. I offer other services as well which include tarot, horror, and dreamwork. You can follow me on Instagram at @mentalhealthishorrifying and you can also learn more about me and my services through my website manymoonstherapy.com.

OR you can also howl at the moon and I will hear your call.

Bright blessings.