The PANY Bulletin

Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Volume 43, #2 Summer 2005

Film Essay
About Schmidt: Opening Analysis of a Narcissist

by Herbert H. Stein, M.D.

“A life is not important, except in the impact it has on other lives.”
Jackie Robinson

What happens when a life loses its importance to other lives? Films have prominently focused on narcissistic issues in such films as Mr. Holland's Opus or It's a Wonderful Life, among others, in which the main protagonist must modify grandiose ambitions of youth in exchange for recognition from the people touched by his life. About Schmidt tackles a much riskier form of narcissistic issue; what happens when someone with narcissistic object ties loses those wan, but vitally important connections.

At the same time, the film has the potential to touch those of us who are not as one-sidedly narcissistically motivated as Warren Schmidt. Although different theoretical schools argue about its origins, there is no school of analysis that does not consider object relations at the center of it's theory. Even loners, the Silas Marners of the world, are at least unconsciously preoccupied with their earliest attachments. About Schmidt allows us to think about the importance of our object relations by demonstrating what happens when they are lost. If Jackie Robinson was right, then our lives lose all importance when we no longer have any impact on others.

At Warren Schmidt's retirement party, his best friend tells him, “What means something, what really means something, Warren, is the knowledge that you devoted your life to something meaningful, to being productive and working for a fine company, hell, one of the top-rated insurance carriers in the nation, to raising a fine family, to building a fine home, to being respected by your community, to having wonderful lasting friendships.” This speech will prove negatively prophetic as we see Schmidt lose his meaningful relationships with his job, his daughter, his best friend and his wife. At retirement age, he finds that he is irrelevant, a complete outsider to the world around him. It is as if he were viewing a preview of his death, the ultimate complete removal of object ties. Ironically, each loss that Schmidt endures erodes his narcissistic shell, pushing him towards object relatedness.

We are introduced to Schmidt as he is preparing to leave his office for the last time. The sign on his building tells us that he works for “Woodmen” insurance, and, indeed, he looks like a “wood man.” He is expressionless, waiting stiffly for the clock to strike “five” so that he can leave. We are left to wonder if he is waiting out the time because he is reluctant to leave or because he is committed to routine. Whether or not the former is also true, we can't help feeling that routine and obsessional rituals have been the clockwork of his life. In retrospect, we will look back to it to see that like many people, the compulsivity of routine has helped disguise the vacancies in his life. At his retirement party that follows, he sits woodenly by his wife, looking expressionless and perhaps bored, stepping out at one point to get a drink at the bar.

Schmidt is given the usual assurances about his value. He is told by his young successor that he is welcome to come back to the office to provide advice, reassurances that belie the fact that he is no longer of use. He returns to the job with an innocence apparent to the viewer. The younger man does not know what to do with him, finally finding a way to get him out of the office. As he is leaving, Schmidt sees that his files have been thrown in the trash. The symbolism is not subtle. Although we may inwardly laugh at Schmidt's naiveté, it is likely that most viewers' associations will turn to the potential meaninglessness of our life's work after we retire, and perhaps at a more distant level to the time when we will be gone and forgotten.

Outwardly, Schmidt appears cool to his fate. He lies to his wife about the office visit, telling her that they needed him to fix some problems, showing us his wounded pride. But his feelings, particularly his “narcissistic rage,” come out only in his “analysis”.

Early in the film, Schmidt is watching TV when he sees an advertisement for a charity that supports children in developing countries. He calls the number and agrees to sponsor a child in Africa. When he receives the child's name and picture, he is encouraged to correspond. It is through this correspondence that he maintains the object tie that appears to maintain him as all others are lost. For most of the film, the boy, Nduku, functions as a silent analyst, an epistolary transference object. The boy's unresponsiveness proves to be technically perfect for Schmidt's needs. It is only in his letters to the boy, Nduku, that Warren Schmidt can openly express himself.

Schmidt's correspondence with Nduku demonstrates to the viewer just how narcissistic and schizoid he is. He writes to the boy as if he were writing to an adult middle class American. He appears to have no realistic view of his correspondent, using him as what Self Psychologists would probably call a “mirror transference”. The content also demonstrates his narcissism and his narcissistic rage, which he has outwardly controlled under his expressionless mask. After a few polite words, inappropriate to a 6 year old African boy, but fairly neutral, he suddenly ventilates:

“Dear Ndugu,
My name is Warren R. Schmidt and I'm your new foster father. I live in Omaha, Nebraska. My older brother, Harry, lives in Roanoake, Virginia with his wife, Estelle. Harry lost a leg two years ago to Diabetes. I am 66 years old, recently retired as assistant vice president and actuary at Woodmen of the World Insurance Company and God damn it if they didn't replace me with some kid! All right, so maybe he's got a little theory under his belt and can plug a few numbers into a computer. But, I can tell right off that he doesn't know a damn thing about genuine real world risk assessment or managing a department, for that matter, the cocky bastard.” (erases “cocky bastard”)
Schmidt resumes some control, but quickly expresses his feelings about how he has changed: “Anyway, 66 must sound pretty old to a young fellow like yourself. It sounds pretty old to me, too, because when I look in the mirror and see the wrinkles around my eyes and the sagging skin around my neck and the hair in my ears, the veins on my ankles I can't believe it's really me.

He gives a history of his narcissistic ambitions: “When I was a kid, I used to think that I was special, that somehow destiny had tapped me to be a great man, not like Henry Ford or Walt Disney or somebody like that but, you know, somebody semi-important. I got a degree in business and statistics and was planning to start my own business someday, build it up into a big corporation, watch it go public, you know, maybe make Fortune 500. I was gonna be one of those guys you read about. But, somehow it just didn't work out that way. You gotta remember I had a topnotch job at Woodmen, a family to support. I couldn't exactly put their security at risk. Helen, that's my wife, she wouldn't have allowed it.”

He is just hinting that his wife has thwarted his ambitions: “But what about my family, you might ask, what about my wife and daughter? Don't they give me all the pride and satisfaction I might want? Helen and I have been married 42 years. Lately, every night, I find myself asking the same question, 'Who is this old woman who lives in my house? Why is it that every little thing she does irritates me? Like the way she gets the keys out of her purse long before we reach the car and how she throws our money away on her ridiculous little collections. And tossing out perfectly good food just because the expiration date is past. And her obsession, her obsession with trying new restaurants. And the way she cuts me off when I try to speak. And I hate the way she sits and the way she smells. For years now, she has insisted that I sit when I urinate. My promise to lift the seat and wipe the rim and put the seat back down wasn't good enough for her. No!

He is more positive about his daughter, but the disappointments still come through: “Then there's Jeannie. She's our only. I'll bet she'd like you. She gets a big kick out of different languages and cultures and so forth. She used to get by pretty good in German. She'll always be my little girl. She lives out in Denver, so we don't get to see her much anymore. Oh, sure we stay in touch by phone every couple of weeks and she comes out for the holidays sometimes, but not as often as we'd like. She has a position of some responsibility out there with a high tech computer outfit so it's very hard for her to break away. Recently, she got engaged, so I, I suppose we'll be seeing even less of her now. The fellow's name is Randall Hertzel. He's got a sales job of some sort. Maybe Jeannie is a little past her prime, but I still think she could have done a heck of a lot better. I mean this guy's just not up to snuff if you ask me, not for my little girl. I'll close now and get this in the mail. Here I am rambling on and on and you probably want to get on down, cash that check and get something to eat. So best of luck in all your endeavors.

Yours very truly, Warren Schmidt.”
As we see from this first letter, Schmidt is disappointed and angry with his life and the people close to him, but even these slender threads are to be broken. Schmidt is settling into his retirement, a seemingly reluctant participant in his very active wife's plans—she has convinced him to buy a mobile home—when his life is changed even more dramatically. He goes out to mail some letters and returns to find his wife dead on the floor, the vacuum cleaner she had been operating whirring on without her. Now, he is truly alone, left without his guide and buffer.

“Dear Nduku,
I hope you're sitting down. I've got some bad news. Since I last wrote to you, my wife, Helen, your foster mother, passed away very suddenly from a blood clot in her brain.”

He attempts to cover over his difficulties without Helen, telling Nduku that he is managing well, while we see him languishing in an unkept house, piling frozen dinners in his mobile home. Finally we see him in Helen's room dealing with his grief by putting on her cold cream and going through the clothes in her closet. Here, he is more open in his letter.

“It occurred to me that in my last letter I might have misspoken and used some negative language in reference to my late wife. But you have to understand that I was under a lot of pressure following my retirement. I'm not going to lie to you Ndugu. It's been a rough few weeks and I've been pretty, you know, broken up from time to time. I miss her. I miss Helen. I guess I just didn't know how lucky I was to have a wife like Helen until she was gone. Remember that, young man. You've got to appreciate what you have while you still have it.”

The loss has moved him a little beyond his narcissistic isolation. As the letter has proceeded, he was able to move from bravado and concern about covering his weakness to an acknowledgement of his need for another person.

At this point, his relationship with his wife takes another bad turn. While going through her things, he discovers a shoe box filled with love letters to her from Schmidt's best friend, Ray. His rage pulls him out of his grief and lethargy. He throws the letters at Ray, defies Helen by standing to urinate and takes off in the mobile home to try to spend some time with his daughter in Denver before her wedding. We see now that he began the film in a state of lethargy and unconscious dependence. His wife's death uncovered his intense neediness. Her betrayal now somewhat frees him to become more active. Unfortunately, when he calls his daughter from the road, she tells him not to come so soon, reminding him of his loneliness.

Schmidt does not reveal these narcissistic wounds in his next letter, but he describes an attempt to heal the wound. “I've decided to visit some places I haven't been to in a long tine. So much has happened in my life that I can't seem to remember whole sections of my life that are just … gone. So you might say I've been trying to clear a few cobwebs from my memory. My first stop was none other than Holdrege, Nebraska. I thought it would be enlightening to visit the house where I was born 67 years ago next April. We moved away from Holdrege when I was not much older than you, and I've often wondered what our old house would be like today. Funny, I never forgot the address—12 Locust Avenue.”

Even this tangible tie is removed. There is a tire store where his house used to be. Nevertheless, the now object hungry Schmidt reminisces, telling the salesman in the store where his bedroom used to be. In the background we hear children singing “Ring Around A Rosy”. We hear Warren's mother calling his name and telling him she loves him as we see him wander through a playground. It is just a hint of the love that he is yearning for.

Just as Schmidt continually attempts to disguise his feelings, the film, itself maintains a sardonic humor—we see him getting parking tickets while he tells Nduku about his wonderful sight seeing trip and while he is buying Hummel figures in a store—that covers over his search for maternal love. “Helen loved Hummels.” The parody continues when Schmidt meets a younger couple who invite him for dinner in their mobile home. They are caricatures of overly friendly neighbors who laugh raucously at every joke, but when the wife, alone with Schmidt, tells him that she senses his inner anger, fear and loneliness we sense derivatives of the underlying emotions. Schmidt tells her she has understood him better than his wife ever did and puts his head on her shoulder. Almost instantly, the film's defenses are raised as Schmidt attempts to kiss her leading to a farcical escape from her angry response.

Nevertheless, the film takes another serious turn, if momentarily. Schmidt calls Ray's answering machine to try to make amends, perhaps in response to his own attempt at adultery. That night, he parks at a wooded spot by some water. He lights candle on top of the mobile home and sits the Hummel figures around him while he tries to make peace with Helen. For once, he expresses his feelings directly, rather than through a letter.

“Helen? What did you really think of me? Deep in your heart. Was I really the man you wanted to be with? Was I? Or were you disappointed and too nice to show it? I forgive you for Ray. I forgive you. That was a long time ago. And I know I wasn't always the King of Kings. I let you down. I'm sorry, Helen. Can you forgive me? Can you forgive me?” He sees what looks like a streak of light in the sky, like a shooting star, but too quick even for that. He takes it as a sign.

“And so, Ndugu, I must say it's been a very rewarding trip. And this morning, I awoke from my night in the wilderness completely transformed. I'm like a new man. For the first time in years, I feel clear. I know what I want, I know what I've got to do, and nothing's going to stop me ever again. Meanwhile, along with the usual check, I'm enclosing a little something extra to spend as you please. Yours very truly, Warren Schmidt.”

Schmidt's new determination is to convince his daughter not to marry Randall. We are not told explicitly how this connects with his coming to terms with his own marriage, but we might infer that he does not want her to settle for a lifetime with a man she will not really love. Randall is a caricature, a poster boy for failure who has a wall of plaques documenting his “honorable mentions” and has pulled his family members into a pyramid scheme. Schmidt is equally horrified by the dysfunctional extended family that has embraced his daughter. The film again turns to its defenses, presenting this extended section as farce. Schmidt corners his daughter for a moment to first beg and then insist that Jeannie not go through with the marriage, embellishing his plea with a tale of a bizarre dream in which space alien Randalls kidnap Jeannie. He ends up paying for his past sins of narcissism as she tells him, “All of a sudden you're taking an interest in what I do? You have an opinion about my life now?” Schmidt is forced to accept, finally making a gracious speech at the wedding.

“Dear Ndugu, you'll be glad to know that Jeannie's wedding came off without a hitch. Right now she and Randall are on their way to sunny Orlando—on my nickel, of course. As for me, I'm headed back to Omaha. I'm driving straight through this time, and I've made only one stop—the impressive new arch over the interstate at Carney, Nebraska—an arch that commemorates the courage and determination of the pioneers who crossed the state on their way west. You've really got to see it to believe it. And it kind of got me thinking.”

His perspective has changed, now. In fact, he has momentarily given up any conscious or unconscious grandiosity: “Looking at all that history and reflecting on the achievements of people long ago kind of put things into perspective. My trip to Denver, for instance, is so insignificant compared to the journeys that others have taken, the bravery that they've shown, the hardships they've endured. I know we're all pretty small in the big scheme of things, and I suppose the most you can hope for is to make some kind of difference.”

Events (script writers) have broken down Schmidt’s narcissistic defenses, leaving him depressed. “But what kind of difference have I made? What in the world is better because of me? When I was out in Denver, I tried to do the right thing, tried to convinced Jeannie she was making a mistake, but I failed, Now she's married to that nincompoop, and there's nothing I can do about it. I am weak … and I am a failure. There's just no getting around it.”

He describes an existential loneliness, facing the end of his life: “Relatively soon I will die, maybe in 20 years, maybe tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Once I am dead, and everyone who knew me dies, too, it will be as though I never even existed. What difference has my life made to anyone? None that I can think of. None at all. Hope things are fine with you. Yours truly, Warren Schmidt.”

Despite the film's attempts to distract with parody and farce, we are brought, with Schmidt, back to the inner need behind the narcissistic defenses, the need to find meaning in relationships with others, to be “important” through object love. At this point, the film brings in its deus ex machina as Schmidt receives his first and only response to his letters.

“Dear Mr. Warren Schmidt, my name is Sister Nadine Gautier of the order of the sisters of the sacred heart. I work in a small village near the town of Mbeya in Tanzania. One of the children I care for is little Ndugu Umbu, the boy you sponsor. Ndugu is a very intelligent boy and very loving. Recently, he needed medical attention for an infection of the eye, but he's better now. He loves to eat melon, and he loves to paint. Ndugu and I want you to know that he receives all of your letters He hopes that you are happy in your life and healthy. He thinks of you every day, and he wants very much your happiness. Ndugu is only 6 years old and cannot read or write, but he has made for you a painting. He hopes that you will like his painting. Yours sincerely, Sister Nadine Gautier.”

Schmidt opens the painting, which shows two crude figures, one larger than the other, holding hands. He quietly breaks into tears and then we see a hint of a smile on his face. The painting depicts Schmidt and Ndugu. He has been of importance, made contact with a child. In the world of imagination, the drawing depicts a parent and child, a loving union between mother and son, perhaps, that the film has only vaguely hinted at as the wish underlying Schmidt's unhappiness. We have not been told the source of his unhappiness, his penury, his need to sardonically hold people at bay, his failure to relate. If this were a real analysis, it would be just beginning.