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THE UNTOUCHABLES (Intouchables), by Eric Toledano and OlivierNakache, 2011

This moving film is based on a real story. A rich aristocrat, Philippe Pozzodi Borgo (François Clouzet) becomes tetraplegic after a paragliding accidentand needs someone to take care of him full time. With that aim, he employs ayoung black ex-convict and gang leader (Driss / (Omar Sy). In real life, Philippe,the wealthy and aristocratic business man wrote a book about the experienceof that relationship and about what it added to his life; a book that became abest seller. The film is based on the book.

Taken separately, the main characters of “The Untouchables” couldrepresent, from the point of view of analytical psychology, two key elements ofthe psychology of the personality: the Superior and the Inferior Functions.

One of them, the character of Philippe Pozzo di Borgo, the wealthyaristocrat, would symbolize the Superior Function.

We know that the Superior Function is that function of consciousnesswhich we most identify with: we can be a thinking, feeling, sensation or intuitiontype, the development of that function helps us to adapt in a particular way toreality: it helps us to develop our consciousness. The Superior Function is thefunction that leads us through life until the moment when, sometimes ourpsychic growth, or the development of our individuation, the urge to reachwholeness, or an excess of one-sidedness may demand us to incorporate otherundeveloped aspects of our personality. If we resist and block thattransformation in our life, a moment can come when a “collapse” of ourconscious life is produced, because we are in need of renewal.

That is what happened to Philippe, who after being the owner of afabulous fortune in his conscious life: money, culture, social position, status… the

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moment of collapse came to him, and since then he couldn’t enjoy his fortunebecause, after remaining tetraplegic, he didn’t have a body to do so.

Psychologically we can say that, once and again in life, this usuallyhappens when consciousness has developed to its highest level; then acollapse can occur in the guise of an annoying symptom, an illness, adepression, an accident, etc. and all that one-sided conscious developmentcan come to nothing. Life cannot go on advancing in the same direction, anda lot of life possibilities, which are incompatible with that one-sidedness, arewithout development and claim their conscious realization.

In the film, little by little, we learn what has taken Philippe to thatsituation. When he had everything in life, he lost his wife, which symbolicallyrepresents a loss of contact with the anima, and with it he also lost the meaningof life and his inner balance. But after his wife’s death, and although Philippecouldn’t “fly” inwardly, he went on flying with his paragliding until the accidentthat condemned him to the wheelchair and to an insensitive and useless body.

Philippe’s liking in reaching for the skies after his wife’s death symbolicallypoints to his escape from reality, his running away from pain, his rejection ofbearing the feeling of loss, the difficulty of relating to his new reality… all thatprecipitates the final breakdown, the crashing against the ground,symbolically, the collapse of his conscious world.

The situation is so blocked that, from the beginning, we have the intuitionthat Philippe doesn’t need a personal caregiver who understands him in amotherly way, who rocks him and treats him like a baby, but he desperatelyneeds somebody to treat him in a radically different way. We know thatsometimes being treated with compassion, with exaggerated empathy, is thelast thing that can help us, because sometimes it only perpetuates the problemand keeps us in paralysis, going on living the same old story.

On the contrary, Philippe has the intuition that he needs his opposite,and that shows us that the moment has arrived for the new process to start fromthe unconscious: the situation has arrived at an end where there are no morepossibilities in that side of known life; now it has to shift over to the oppositedirection. In this case, that means to discover a different way of living, of feelingthings and relating to them.

Following this, the most interesting part of the film starts when thecharacter of his personal caregiver turns up, bringing an injection of life andreality, of energy and vitality. The Inferior Function, here symbolized by thecharacter of Driss, appears on stage.

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The Inferior Function is the part of the personality which has remainedbehind “and therefore it still has the original wholeness of nature”. .”The InferiorFunction brings a renewal of life. Through it “the world is, as it were,rediscovered” 1 The Inferior Function is the least developed: it is incompatiblewith the Superior Function, it is primitive and wild, autonomous and rebellious,but it is in contact with all the energy of the unconscious.

That’s why, in the initial interview to hire a new caregiver, Philippeunderstands that the only one that can help him is the person who apparentlyseems to have fewer skills for the job. But things are not what they seem to beand Driss, the young ex-convict from Senegal, who belongs to the lowest levelof society, unemployed and without qualifications, will be the one, because heis the only person who can provide a new life potential for Philippe, the onlyone who can help him to rediscover the world.

Following von Franz, The Inferior Function can be personified by the Shadow inmany occasions: its personification by the Shadow “occurs when the fourthfunction is contaminated by the lower levels of the social strata of thepopulation or by the famous under-developed countries. (…) The inferiorfunction often appears as a wild Negro or Indian. It is also frequentlyrepresented by exotic people of some kind: Chinese, Russian, or whoever maypossess something unknown to the conscious realm. (…) This socialrepresentation of the inferior function is particularly fitting in that this functiontends to have, in its negative aspect, a barbaric character. (…) I meanbarbaric in the sense of being unable to exert conscious control, being sweptaway, being unable to put a break on, unable to control”2.

1 M.L.von Franz. Jung’s typology. The inferior Function. Chapter one. Pages 9 and 11.2 Ibid. page.55

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This personification of the InferiorFunction by means of the shadow appearsin the character of Driss, the blackcaregiver. He is the only one who can helpPhilippe, for he possesses countlessunknown and renovating aspects forconsciousness. Driss is someone who, in aradically opposed way to Philippe, iscompletely in contact with his own body, ayoung, strong and energetic body. Apartfrom this, Driss is unemployed, that is, hecannot develop his ability because hissocial integration is limited. He is part of amarginalized minority with little social andeconomic resources. So, just for all thesereasons, Driss is the one who can bestsymbolize an Inferior Function that is farfrom being accepted by consciousness…

That way, throughout the film we witness that wonderful clash ofopposites that complement each other: the slow integration of the InferiorFunction –and of the Shadow- in the totality of the conscious personality. Thatenables Philip achieve a more complete life… Examples of this are the scenessuch as the one where Driss dances and plays his music at Philippe’s birthday. Itis not just that Driss dances, but that he also gets the people at the birthdaydancing. Through it, the joy in the body returns again, as well as spontaneousmovement, emotion expressed through the dance. In other scenes we can seehow Driss is the only one capable of bringing Philippe closer to nature, to thesea, to the beauty of night walks through the lonely city. He is the one whohelps Philippe to restore his eros, to recognize his desire of having a relationshipwith a woman again.

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Possibly, the reason why Philippe and Driss's story has moved so manymillions of readers and spectators is because it has a collective, archetypicalbackground. It could be said that, in a certain sense, in the same way asindividuals, society has developed some superior functions, but has left othersbehind, for example, intellectual, scientific, technological development relatedto a collective superior function, have taken us to the heights, but now, as inPhilippe’s case, it is the turn of its collapse. It is easy to see it in questions asevident as ecological problems, or the economic crisis, problems that belongnot just to one country but to a whole civilization.

That is why it is very hopeful, in a collective situation of collapse as theone we are experiencing, to know that shadow and the Inferior Function arethere waiting for us in the wings; in them we can still find renewal, as much in apersonal as in a collective way, because many of the contents represented bythe wonderful character of Driss can help us to rediscover the world: hence thejoyfulness felt by spectators when they see the film.

María Mora ViñasValencia, May 2012