Late psychologist Carl Rogers claimed that most cases of anxiety and depression result from a gap between what he called our “real” and “ideal” selves. According to Rogers' theory, all of us have an internal concept of our ideal situation, and our ideal identity. In other words, we hold an imaginary version of ourself that possesses all of our most coveted qualities. At the same time, we also have an internal concept of our actual situation, or our “real” self. The further the gap between our ideal and our perception of our reality, the more likely we are to suffer from anxiety and depression, as well as a wide variety of mental illnesses, including phobias and various forms of psychosis. Rogers' theory is not meant to contradict the Freudian view that repression and displacement are the root causes for most phobias. Rogers believed that repression and displacement were common factors in patients with a significant gap between their real and ideal selves. While Carl Rogers' theory is never alluded to in the film, it provides a good rubric for understanding Scottie's mental breakdown and subsequent recovery. It is also worth noting that the bulk of Carl Rogers' work, including his theory on real and ideal selves, was published in 1951, meaning it probably would have been lingering in the public consciousness at the time of the 1958 release of Vertigo, and certainly during the 1954 publication of the source novel, D'entre les morts.
Scottie's inability to maintain control over his external environment creates a massive chasm between his perceived real and his ideal selves, and it is this gap that fuels his agoraphobia, madness, desire, and depression. In Scottie's ideal version of himself, he is a hard-nosed, logical detective. He always gets his man, and he has no trouble with the ladies. He has a moral compass and dedicates his life to serving social justice as a police detective. In short, Scottie would like to be able to see himself as a strong but caring masculine gentleman that can always sniff out the truth.
The first time we see Scottie, as he chases a criminal on the rooftops, his mind is still a relatively clean slate. As far as we can tell, his mental rift doesn't begin forming until he jumps across an alley way (the alley could be read as symbolic of his mental gap, but I won't take that leap [pun intended]), and a lack of athleticism causes him to fall short of the next rooftop. Already terrified by the height and the feeling of helplessness, Scottie watches in horror as a fellow policeman, who had made the jump look easy only a few moments before, falls to his death in an attempted rescue. Meanwhile, the criminal the two of them were chasing has presumably gotten away. In the very next scene, we find Scottie in Midge's hyper-feminine apartment, surrounded by flowers and brassieres, presenting himself as though he has already emotionally recuperated from the rooftop incident. The only lingering problem, he says, is “this darn agoraphobia.” To demonstrate, he attempts to scale a stool. Three steps up, however, Scottie faints from the vertigo and falls like a damsel in distress into the motherly arms of Midge. As we can plainly see, Scottie is not quite the masculine, assertive, powerful man that he would like to be.
As with any traumatic experience, Scottie's damage is partially emotional, and it is evident in his behavior and superficially light-hearted attitude that he is attempting to bottle up and repress the majority of that emotion. The fact that emotional damage is often used as a feminine stereotype immediately calls Scottie's masculinity in question. In his mind, an emotional release like crying would be incompatible with his ideal, masculine self, and thus is an unacceptable thing to do. His logic, the centerpiece of his identity as a detective, is as questionable now as his identity, as the two and a half foot drop to the floor clearly doesn't pose an actual threat. Not only is Scottie afraid of heights, he's apparently too scared to take his feet off of the ground. Scottie's phobia is a conscious manifestation of a subconscious disparity between his real and ideal selves. Just as the manifest content of a dream simultaneously derives from and symbolizes the accompanying latent content, Scottie's agoraphobia is symbolic of his underlying ego-conflict. Gravity pulls on us at all times. It is an external force entirely outside of our control, and thus it is an apt metaphor to describe Scottie's complete loss of control of himself and of reality. Scottie knows that he should have no problem climbing the stool, for example, but something outside of his logic, perhaps his fear of failure, makes him feel as if he is once again helplessly overlooking a fatal drop. In order for Scottie to cure the agoraphobia, he will have to also cure his conflict of self, and vice versa. The two must be cured together, and Midge suggests that another severe emotional shock might be the only way of accomplishing that feat.
After leaving the girliest apartment imaginable, Scottie heads straight to Gavin Elster's bayside industrial office, which is the exact polar opposite. Elster is identified as a former classmate of Scottie, which immediately flags him as a sort of rival or judge. In this miniature highschool reunion, Elster is the only peer that Scottie can use to gauge his own success, and there is no doubt what so ever that Elster has the upper hand. His massive office is built almost entirely out of rich mahogany and robustly lacquered wood, there are huge paintings, model ships, and plaques on the walls, and outside his wide window there are massive phallic cranes moving giant crates around in an already-masculine industrial environment. Despite the obvious financial success afforded by Elster's business, he admits that he is ready to sell it because he doesn't like running a business that he married into. He wants the dignity, masculinity, independence, and control signified by forming his own business. The two men are talking in the most masculine and expensive office/wharf combo that Scottie has probably ever seen, and yet Elster is standing there lamenting it all like some big, effeminate failure. You can almost watch Scottie's ideal self growing further away over the course of the conversation as he shifts uncomfortably in his chair or noses around the office. Elster, on the other hand, carries himself in an elegant, confident manner and spends part of the conversation standing over Scottie, framed as if in a movie screen by the walls on either side and above him. Elster asks Scottie to take on a job that defies all rationality. He claims that his wife has been possessed by a suicidal ghost, and that he wants Scottie to tail her and make sure she doesn't hurt herself. Coupled with the inadequacy, failure, and fear that is weighing on Scottie's mind, he feels that he has no choice but to accept Elster's supernatural investigation or risk being considered close-minded or, worse, even more cowardly than before. Scottie's primary goal is still to relieve is agoraphobia, but here we curiously see him take a job for no other apparent reason but to assert his masculinity. While it is easy to say that his damaged masculinity results from his fear of heights, this falls short of describing what is actually more of a symbiotic relationship. Scottie's attempts at asserting his masculinity all serve to reunite his actual self with his ideal self, and thus cure his agoraphobia, but, paradoxically, the agoraphobia itself helps to maintain the divide. The entire film, then, is founded upon Scottie's desire to become his ideal self, to become powerful, knowledgable, and masculine, a task that can only be accomplished if and when he cures his fear of heights.
Upon laying eyes on the woman he believes to be Elster's wife, Scottie is quickly smitten. The manner of his infatuation is multi-faceted, though. On one hand, as with any erotic encounter with the opposite sex, sleeping with Madeleine would make Scottie feel more masculine. Her identity as Elster's wife, however, makes it significantly more meaningful. In a way, Scottie would be usurping Elster's power and masculinity if he slept with his wife. On the other hand, Scottie is genuinely intrigued and mystified by Madeleine’s actions. The act of watching a beautiful woman behave so inexplicably pulls Scottie in, his attraction growing stronger as each layer is added to the utterly incomprehensible mystery.
After he is publicly humiliated for allowing Madeleine to die in a tragic, inexplicable manner, Scottie snaps. His goal was to save Madeleine from herself and publicly reassert his masculinity by using his favorite detective tool, logic. But, in the end, Scottie allows Madeleine to die in the most enigmatic way possible, and, in some ways, he even causes her death. Not only did he fail to stop her from climbing the bell-tower stairs, Scottie is also the one that drove them to the Spanish Mission in the first place, so that Madeleine could realize her dream. Given the circumstances, Scottie is lucky to not be interrogated as a murder suspect. Quite clearly, his needs for both logic and identity are not only left unsatisfied, they are turned completely upside down. His public identity is reduced to rubble (universally disliked rubble, at that) and his perception of reality is skewed, seemingly irreparably. Scottie, who has relied on logic for his entire life, is at a loss to explain how a woman from the past could possess the body of a woman in the present and drive her to commit suicide. It defies everything he believes in, and yet it must be true, given the circumstantial evidence. While the failure of logic is definitely a critical part of Scottie's mental collapse, it is important to note the role of his damaged public perception, particularly as it pertains to masculinity. He has not yet lost his mind when he is verbally abused by the mission's impromptu courtroom. Scottie leaves the mission traumatized, but intelligible. It is not until a bad dream back home in San Francisco that Scottie actually goes off the deep end and becomes catatonic. If his trauma were strictly logical, he would have snapped immediately after Madeleine inexplicably tossed herself from the tower. It is not until the failure is allowed to soak into his sense of identity that it actually paralyzes him. This is, perhaps, alluded to in Scottie's dream, by the shot of his own silhouette falling from the tower. He himself, is the victim of seemingly supernatural forces pulling him in various directions against his will, just like Carlotta Valdez, the woman that Elster claimed had returned from the dead to possess Madeleine. In addition to identifying with Madeleine, Scottie comes to see himself as the very same vulnerable jilted lover that supposedly snuck her way into Madeleine's head, as evidenced by the repeated images of Carlotta in his dream, particularly in places (such as the courtroom window) that he himself had previously stood.
Vertigo, however, is not just a film about a man's descent into madness. In fact, it is Scottie's manner of reclaiming his sanity that makes the film so creepy and enduring. Early Freudian psychotherapy called for a technique called “catharsis,” in which patients were intended to confront their phobias or unpleasant memories in a benign setting. By re-experiencing the anxiety-inducing scenarios in a controlled situation, the patients were able to likewise control their phobias. In the end of the film, when Scottie figures out Elster's plot, literally drags Judy (whom he repeatedly refers to as Madeleine) up the same stairs he previously failed to climb, then physically and verbally dominates her into begging for forgiveness, he is experiencing the ultimate (albeit untraditional) Freudian catharsis. While Freud would ask his patients to simply sit in a chair and venture into the past in their memory, Scottie returns, ghost-like, to locations from his past, and eventually brings Judy back to the Spanish Mission with the honest intention of reliving the day of Madeleine's death. In his mind, he is literally traveling back into the past and being given a second chance at living the most traumatic day in his memory. This chance at redemption seems almost fated or God-given, it is the chance. By reaching the top of the bell-tower, uncovering the truth, and dominating the film's embodiment of femininity, Scottie has managed to replace his failure, confusion, and vulnerability with success, clarity, and a masculine sense of control. The gap between his ideal and real self has finally been bridged. However, the cost of Scottie's return to “sanity” is high, as history immediately repeats itself, and Judy is frightened by a dark, deathly image into falling from the tower. In the final shot of the movie, we see Scottie looking down toward Judy's body, no emotion on his face and no evident fear of heights. His agoraphobia has been cured and he's back in control, but what now?
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