Togetherness Through Big Eyes

Reviews the film, Big Eyes directed by Tim Burton ( 2014). This film tells the fascinating, true story of “big-eyed” painter, Margaret Keane, and her self-promoting husband, Walter. Written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the film follows recently divorced Margaret (played by Amy Adams) as she travels teary-eyed to San Francisco with her daughter to escape a bad marriage. The premise of the film involves Margaret’s flight from one abusive relationship to another. The reviewer believes that what is missing in this movie is a real understanding of the psychology of what goes on within Margaret. How this arrangement came about and then fell apart is best explored through the psychological lens of Murray Bowen’s (1978) systems theory of differentiation. Bowen posited that individuals with the same degree of emotional maturity often discover mutual attraction and couple up. Tim Burton does a marvelous job depicting the true story of artist Margaret Keane and her husband Walter, while also serendipitously offering an illustrative account of Murray Bowen’s systems theory of differentiation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)