Shutter Island Psychoanalysis

Edward "Teddy" Daniels is a U.S. marshal in 1954 sent to Shutter Island, a hospital for the criminally insane, to determine the whereabouts of missing patient Rachel Solando. Upon arriving with his partner Chuck Aule, Teddy quickly begins his investigation. The circumstances surrounding Rachel's disappearance are discovered to be questionable at best. At this point Teddy then confides to Chuck that his motive for pursuing the case is centered around his desire to investigate Andrew Laeddis, an inmate of Shutter Island who killed his (Teddy's) wife two years prior.

When Teddy asks the facilities director, Dr. Cawley, to speak with Rachel's primary therapist, he informs Teddy that her therapist has left on vacation, and that due to an impending storm communications are down. The following afternoon the storm knocks out power to the island. This in turn opens the cell doors of the inmates, freeing them to roam the island. In the morning Teddy and Chuck explore Ward C, and area that Teddy believes to house illegal psychotropic testing on patients, while the orderlies round up the escaped patients. After failing to find any substantial proof, Teddy and Chuck split up; Teddy goes on to investigate the cliffs leading to the lighthouse, an "off limits" area.

When Teddy returns to where he left Chuck, he hallucinates seeing him dead at the bottom of the cliffs. He begins to climb down and discovers a cave inhabited by Rachel Solando. Rachel tells Teddy he's trapped and that everyone is against him, before forcing him to leave. When Teddy gets back to the hospital he is told that Chuck never existed, and that he came to the island alone. Teddy believes that Chuck is being held inside the lighthouse, and fights his way inside, only to find Dr. Cawley seated in an empty room. Dr. Cawley explains to Teddy that he is actually Andrew Laeddis, an anagram of Edward Daniels; and that he killed his wife Dolores Chanal, an anagram of Rachel Solando, two years ago after she killed their children.

Teddy denies what Cawley says and attempts to shoot him with his gun, which is revealed to be a toy. Chuck then walks in and explains that he is Teddy's primary psychiatrist, and that they have acted out his delusions in order to provide an alternative to lobotomy. Teddy appears to shed his delusions, only to maintain them the following morning. Teddy is then taken to be lobotomized as the credits begin to roll.

For the production of Shutter Island, director Martin Scorsese enlisted the help of famed psychiatrist James Gilligan to instill accuracy to the hospitals environment. Dr. Gilligan was quoted as saying "We worked together to make sure the story reflected a true war that was going on in the mid-20th century within the psychiatric community: a war between those clinicians who wanted to treat these patients with new forms of psychotherapy, education and medicine,