“We need to talk about Kevin”: an unusual, unconventional film some reflections on ‘bad boys’, between transgenerational projections and socio‐cultural influences

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Notes

1. Lionel Shriver, We need to talk about Kevin, Harper Perennial, New York, 2003

2. This aspect of extreme apathy and inertia in Kevin is more clearly brought out in the book than in the film. The uselessness and distance of psychiatric diagnoses is also evident (both as a young child and during his trial) as far as the understanding of the psychopathology of Kevin is concerned.

3. Lionel Shriver's identification with Eva is obvious here; Shriver, born in North Carolina, is in fact a forty five‐year‐old who calls herself a “gypsy”, has lived in various countries, is restless, married without children and a ‘feminist’, who has chosen to stop travelling and live in London, a city which she nevertheless she defines as closed and conventional.

4. By J.M. Herzog see: Blood and love, Int J Psychoanal, 81: 263–272 (2000) and: Father hunger and narcissistic deformation, Psychoanalitic Q., 71: 4, 893–914.

5. The subject of cruelty also in the writings of Eric Bremman, Cruelty and narrow‐mindedness, Int J Psychoanal, 66: 278–281 (1985).

6. Due to space and the chosen theme, I will not dwell on the role of Celia here and the jealousy that Kevin must have experienced, as I believe this to be an aspect which does not add much to what already existed in Kevin's world before Celia.

7. Which was the inspiration behind the wonderful Elephant (2003) by the director Gus Von Sant.

8. Please refer to the already mentioned works by Kohut and by Self psychologists on narcissism.

9. On the paradoxical “need to feel fulfilled” as a fruit of liberty in a contemporary subject, look at de Gaullejac V: L'injonction d'etre sujet dans la societé hypermoderne: la psychanalyse et l'ideologie de la réalisation de soi‐meme (Rev franc Psych, 2011, pp. 995–1006)

10. Only this aspect of the reflections of Badinter is dealt with here, even if the author recognises various causes which contribute to this ‘drifting’ of the female role, such as the new naturalism, economic factors, etc.