My Life as a Dog

In the film, My Life as a Dog (1985) directed by Lasse Hallstrom, we meet twelve-year-old Ingemar. Ingemar exists within and is influenced by an array of complex relationships and interacting environments as he deals with lack of control and loss in his life. This paper will explore the internal world and social environment of Ingemar and attempt to understand his world from several perspectives.
Ingemar

Ingemar is an early adolescent twelve-year-old boy with expressive eyes framed by strong eyebrows and a hair cowlick that rules his forehead. Although physically small for his age, Ingmar is athletic, intelligent, and emotionally resilient. As Ingemar confronts the loss of family members, home, and a beloved dog, he reads stories and tries to gain a perspective. He demonstrates the ability to reason about the social world but sometimes has difficulties with role taking and communication. Despite the chaos in his life, Ingemar is working hard to make sense of the world and actively construct this knowledge.
Micro Analysis of Nuclear Family
At the beginning of the film, Ingemar is living with his mother and older brother Eric, in an urban community. His father is gone; his mother, sick with tuberculosis is raising the two boys alone. A disorganized family apartment lacks warmth and is a window into their chaotic life. As a single parent, Ingemar’s mother has trouble dealing with the everyday responsibility of the boys. Ingemar and his brother are often too loud, and their daily interactions with each other frequently become nasty. There is sibling tension; both of the boys are dealing with the anxiety of the absence of their father and the long-term illness of their mother who often disappears into her books. Erikson states, “Much is learned from adults who become teachers by dint of gift and inclination rather than by appointment. And perhaps the greatest amount from older children.” Unfortunately for Ingemar, his older brother is not up to the task of helping in this situation. As their mother becomes more ill, the boys take on new roles and responsibilities such as making breakfast for their mother and reading aloud to her when she is tired but the toast burns, the milk spills and their mother screams, “You’re driving me crazy!” Ingemar, alone, is constantly getting himself into situations that spin out of control. He illustrates Piaget’s formal operational period, where there is lingering egocentrism. Piaget states, “Adolescents are impressed with the power of thought and naively underestimate the practical problems involved in achieving an ideal future for themselves or for society. They feel the sheer force of their logic will move mountains.” Ingemar decides to give his mother a rest and sleep away from home with his beloved dog Sickan. When he attempts to warm the two of them by lighting a small fire in the town dump, he creates a firestorm, in more ways than one.
Anger and pain are the most frequent emotions that Ingemar seems to elicit from his mother now. He wants very much to please her, but her reactions are always negative, no matter how hard he tries, he feels as if he has failed her. Ingemar is unable to please his mother in real life, but he often fantasizes about a moment at the lake. In this fantasy, his mother puts her book aside as he does stunts and tells her stories that make her laugh. Unfortunately, now, there are very few times that his mother returns his hopeful, longing gaze with love and tenderness–she is overwhelmed and very ill. Ingemar’s mother does not seem to see him, and he is confused by her screams and unpredictable anger.
Sicken
Sicken is Ingemar’s much-loved dog–the two are inseparable. Sicken remains calmly at Ingemar’s side during all of his debacles. The two of them are sent away from home at the same time–Ingemar must leave Sicken at a kennel when he goes to Smaland for the summer. Ingemar identifies with his dog Sicken and the Russian space dog Laika. As Ingemar worries about Sicken he thinks about Laika, launched into space alone, without enough food, or a way to get home. Ingemar says,
“And what about Laika, the space dog? They put her in the Sputnik and sent her into space. They attached wires to her heart and brain to see how she felt. I don’t think she felt too good. She spun around up there for five months until her doggy bag was empty. She starved to death. It’s important to have something like that to compare things to.”
Just like Laika, Ingemar does not feel too good about his situation–he has many things to compare and put into perspective. Ingemar does not know when he will make his way home or reunite with his dog. He has migrated to a new community and experienced powerlessness; he is not consulted about where, or how to leave or asked about his preferred destination. Ingemar is reflecting about Laika to gain a perspective of his situation. Laika, Sicken, and Ingemar were all sent away without the resources to return home. Along with the dogs, Laika and Sicken, Ingemar lacks control over his life. This is the meaning of the title of the movie and Ingemar’s story–My Life as a Dog. During the summer, Ingemar often reflects on Sicken; he worries about him and repeatedly asks the adults in his life if they have any information about the dog. Whenever Ingemar asks anyone about Sicken, his questions go unanswered–as if they are lost in a black hole of space. Ingemar is experiencing a startling aspect of the juvenile era; this is the beginning differentiation of the childhood authority figures–parents and their homologues–as simply people (JuvEra).
Smaland
When he is sent to live in the village of Smaland with his Uncle Gunnar and wife, Ingemar has many new peers and adults in his life. Ingemar is quickly accepted in the community. The small rural community provides a healthy, working class environment for Ingemar. His is athletic and joins the soccer team and willingly helps out at the local glass factory where the entire village seems to work. Smaland is a robust community where everyone knows each other, along with each other’s business, but also looks out for one another. Ingemar benefits from the larger social group and the interdependency that shapes these relationships. Erikson states, “…wider society becomes significant in its ways of admitting the child to an understanding of meaningful roles in its technology and economy.” Ingemar is in a socially decisive stage where industry involves doing things beside and with others, a first sense of division of labor and of differential opportunity, that is, a sense of the technological ethos of a culture (Erikson).
Along with this vibrant community, Ingemar has the good fortune to live with his Uncle Gunnar. Not only is his uncle kind, he has an infectious sense of humor and is a positive connection to Ingemar’s mother. He and his wife are authentic in their care and concern for Ingemar. They are significant new authority figures that are different from the figures in Ingemar’s home, not only in the way they exercise authority but their regard and interest in him (JuvEra). Ingemar is at a stage of development where he is increasingly aware of the subtle social relationships in the family, peer group, and the larger society; he is beginning to sort out their various social identities (Erikson). Uncle Gunnar represents healthy male sexuality at a critical time in Ingemar’s development; when the limitations and peculiarities of the home as a socializing influence begin to be open to remedy (JuvEra). Erikson states, “The adolescent mind is essentially a mind of the moratorium, a psychosocial stage between childhood and adulthood, and between the morality gleaned by the child, and the ethics to be developed by the adult.” Uncle Gunnar and his wife are full of positive energy. Ingemar watches as Uncle Gunnar playfully chases his wife around the house, looking up her dress and barking like a dog. Ingemar joins his uncle for a moment until the two adults disappear into their bedroom and close the door. A connection is made with Ingemar.
New Peer Group
Soon after arriving in Smaland, Ingemar joins the soccer team and begins to meet members of the team along with other kids in the community. One of the first kids he meets is Manne, a skinny boy, with knobby knees and green hair; another is Saga, star of the soccer team. Ingemar quickly becomes involved in not only soccer, but also boxing, and testing out a makeshift spacecraft with his new companions. A grandfather in the community builds a “space ship”, secures it to a wire suspended over a street and sends Ingemar and Manne for a test ride. The first trip, the boys get stuck in mid-air, “lost in space”, stranded like Laika, but they are rescued by the townspeople. Deveau writes, “When adolescents take physical risks, …though they may not realize that they are “flirting with death” their behavior is “counterphobic” and involves a “challenge to death wherein each survival of risk is a victory over death”. The second trip is successful ride, but a crash landing in a manure filled cow pasture. Ingemar has found friends. Ingemar’s new peers provide a healthy environment to move between childhood and adulthood (Erikson). Erikson writes that Ingemar is in the psychological stage in which an adolescent is an idealist and eager to be affirmed by his peers (Erikson). Ingemar, at this stage, is ready to be confirmed by rituals, creeds, and programs, which at the same time define what is evil, uncanny, and inimical (Erikson).
Saga is sometimes a chum and other times a threat to Ingemar. She is also dealing with change and a loss of control–due to puberty; her breasts are growing, and she will soon not be able to conceal the fact that she is a girl. Saga is aware that her world is about to change. The choices she has made in her life so far, to play soccer and compete, toe-to-toe, in the boxing ring against boys is about to end. Erikson () states, “In order not to become cynically or apathetically lost, young people must somehow be able to convince themselves that those who succeed in their anticipated adult world thereby shoulder the obligation of being the best”. Saga wants to compete and be the best.
There is sometimes a close, warm relationship between Ingemar and Saga and other times adolescent sexual tension. She has the power to tempt and the power to humiliate him. However, Saga is a constant, true chum; she does not abandon Ingemar when the going get tough between them–instead, he receives an olive branch in the form of a snowball in the face.
Mourning and Loss
In his paper, “Mourning and Melancholia,” Freud (1917) says that the mourner makes one last desperate attempt to keep the person alive, to defy and deny the reality of loss. Ingemar’s mourning was more difficult because the adults in Ingemar’s life, even his compassionate Uncle Gunner, avoid talking to him about the seriousness of his mother’s illness, her death or the fate of his dog. Furman writes that children need to constantly review the circumstances and meaning of the death; this helps the child achieve an image of the deceased family member that grows up with them as a supportive resource (Furman). When Ingemar worries about Sicken, he is projecting his own personal feelings of fear, neglect, and rejection. Faced with the reality of the fate of his dog was the tipping point for Ingemar. He locks himself in the summerhouse, unable to create distance and perspective. He thinks of Laika, but this time his perspective is that the dog was sent away and killed. The painful memory of his mother screaming uncontrollably as he and Sicken hide under the bed together is his last thought as he escapes under the covers, exhausted and defenseless, and falls asleep. Freud observes, “In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself”.
The fantasy at the lake was an idealized memory; Ingemar was able to feel safe, secure, and seen by his mother. Ingemar evokes the idealized memory to relieve anxiety in painful and stressful moments. It allows him to reclaim the lost object; a mother lost due to illness and death. Although this is a cherished memory, reality ultimately requires letting the object go, allowing the mourner to return to the present, to the self, and to new objects (Freud IO). In reality, due to illness and lack of resources, Ingemar’s mother had been emotionally unavailable, sometimes out of control, and rejecting; in her presence he feels like a failure, invisible, unloved and responsible for her worsening condition.
Symbolic Theme of Boxing
As a twelve year old, Ingemar is entering Erikson’s life stage– initiative vs. role confusion. His task is to integrate the roles and skills learned earlier in life with aptitudes developed out of endowment along with current opportunities offered by social roles (ERICKSON). Erickson believes that, in their search for a new sense of continuity and sameness, adolescents have to refight many of the battles of earlier years (ERICKSON). The boxing theme in the movie symbolizes Ingemar’s role confusion; his battle with a sense of not knowing who he is, whom he belongs to, or where he belongs.
Ingemar’s role confusion is portrayed in the scene at the end of the movie when Saga and another girl end up fighting over Ingemar at a party. Erikson observes that adolescents not only help one another temporarily through much discomfort; they also perversely test each other’s capacity to pledge fidelity (ERIKSON). The chaos and emotion created results in Ingemar barking like a dog–and just like his mother screaming at him uncontrollably when he chased the dog into her bedroom, Saga screams at him. She asks him if he is his dog and cruelly tells him his dog is dead. Ingemar is as if sucker punched, and defenseless–the boxing metaphor is strong.
The final scene in the movie reveals Ingemar peacefully asleep on the sofa with Saga as the television announcer shouts, "Ingemar did not let us down”! Ingemar Johansson succeeds; he wins the world boxing championship for Sweden. This is a huge victory not only for Sweden but symbolizes Ingemars personal victory.