"Who hurt you?"

The psychosis behind "Baby Reindeer"

Baby Reindeer (BR) is a psychologically accurate portrayal of self-hatred and shame stemming from the battered self-esteem of one who has been battered.  This leads to a desire to eject or disavow those unwanted parts, and the fantasy that one can do so via “outside” or external means, via a person, place, or thing. 

This is also, I believe, what all addictive processes are about, a fantasy of transcending what has somehow become “toxic,” in the wounded perspective of one who cannot see or accept their own wounds. 

All of the characters in BR are stuck in a state of aborted development, with one exception.

If you have not seen the show, read no further.  Spoilers to follow:

In the hit series, Richard Gadd—the show’s writer and creator—plays Donny Dunn, aspiring comedian and working bartender, who becomes eerily and then menacingly stalked by Martha, played with fierce conviction by Jessica Dunning. 

We may wonder why Donny does not run for the hills, what pulls him toward Martha like some codependent tractor beam.  In contemporary psychoanalytic theory we might call this an “attractor state,” that which tugs on us for unknown or unconscious reasons, drawing us with quixotic magnetism into hot debates on social media or with loved ones.

Martha’s vortex of desperation is what haunts Donny, who withdraws into a fetal self-protection from which he hopes to be rescued.  Donny’s contempt is turned inward, as the wounded or traumatized part of him believes he deserves such attack, hoping the “good” side of Martha (Dr. Jekyll) might emerge to rescue him: a demonic undertow.

Meantime Martha wishes to fuse herself to Donny’s vulnerability, like a waiting breast—enraged when she feels rejected.  She needs to destroy what seems, in her distorted perception, to mock her unlovability. Martha’s reactive rage is externalized in the form of a man whose rage is turned inward, both fending off searing shame.  Who hurt you?

We see shame on Martha’s face when she is finally arrested, a chastened schoolgirl.  And it is shame that makes it impossible for Donny to quit his abusers, who might one day understand he is lovable. 

Donny seeks such redemption via “outside” means, warding off a psychological integration; his compulsive search culminates in the final episode.  He is again saturated with ironic self-awareness without true insight. He chronicles each of Martha’s voicemails, sorting and labeling them, a simulacra of self-understanding in place of a career.

Each is captivated by the fantasy of cleansing, a failure only feeding their self-contempt. 

Donny’s onstage schtick is reminiscent of a child who we intuit made his parents laugh by acting “zany,” both disarming and pathetic in adulthood.  He is trying way too hard, much funnier when he plays off the audience. Otherwise his odd props and “wacky” costumes seem to invite the scorn he believes he deserves.

We see flashes of real tenderness between the two main characters—which cannot be sustained, as each likely believes they do not deserve it.  It is intolerable\ as it has always been spoiled.  Donny’s own “freeze” response, common with PTSD, during Martha’s rageful attack at a pub (and Darrien’s abuse later on), reminds me of patients whose fear-system paralyzes them in the face of danger. 

This is in part why he puts up with it all, waiting for glimmers of possible redemption, with both Martha (emotionally) and Darrien (worldly), crumbs to the viewer but a feast to him, given his emotional impoverishment.  Such crumbs are keyhole glimpses of a better world, evoked by Martha’s nickname for Donny: the show’s title, a baby forever stunted.  

“Did someone hurt you, reindeer?” she asks sweetly, a dollop of tenderness unsustainable, sweetened honey in the sun, soon melting in the eclipse.

We see seeds of a backstory in Donny’s parents: a religious father, Gerry (Mark Lewis Jones), smoldering with cold fury, and a meekly adoring mother, Elle (Amanda Root).  When Martha begins stalking them, Gerry responds with a fury similar to hers.  Rage is what Donny has long absorbed, in an environment where, we intuit, maternal tenderness (did someone hurt you, reindeer) is stomped upon by religious perfectionism.  Is Gerry accommodating Catholicism? 

Clearly all of them have had to pathologically accommodate others (Teri in a sociocultural sense.)  This is the great Bernie Brandchaft’s term, an underrated psychoanalyst who wrote about accommodative systems and the coercion for children to attune to and “take care of” noxious caregivers.  

Martha survives by embodying the abuser and projecting her weakness onto others.  I have had patients like this, who often oscillate between their own shame and raging attempts to destroy others whose approval they crave.  Donny in turn projects his own intolerable rage onto Martha: a self-abusing fetal position in which he must comply with others, like many survivors.  Life is too painful otherwise, as destructive invasion is sure to come—and does, in the form of Darrien and his promises of success in exchange for humiliating subjugation.

These sequences are the darkest of the show, almost unwatchable, harrowing in their depiction of bejeweled carrots dangled before the painful thwacking of sticks.  Again, if such nauseating abuse was not to some degree already absorbed by Donny, he would have done what we keep wanting him to do—run for the hills.  Such a person often believes this is what they must endure to get to the good stuff of life.

Darrien is played with suave confidence by Tom Goodman-Hill, a character who “love bombs” Donny with perfect empathy (meaning insight, not sympathy), silky promises of the career advancement Donny craves, echoes here of Harvey Weinstein.  The subsequent abuse leaves Donny scarred and broken.  His collapse onstage is a victory for the reality of his scarring, an affirmation somewhat compromised by its public forum, lending the moment both courage and a touch of grandiosity.

In other words it is telling that when success finally comes Donny abandons it almost immediately.  He cannot stand it, doesn’t deserve it.  How could he, when he has abandoned Martha and his father, perhaps even Darrien?  Surely they love him behind the hateful masks. Is he really that selfish? He returns to them all, eventually.

Such dissolution reaches an apex in his losing Teri, the healthiest of the bunch, who in the end rejects the madness and tearfully ends things, despite their genuine connection.  Donny’s own persecutory shame and defensive cover-up has destroyed such connection and alienated Teri.  Donny’s temporary impotency vanishes with fantasies of fucking Martha, for it is to her alone he can say, “You complete me.”

We get a flavor of potential sadism in Donny’s withdrawal, locking Teri out, scenes played poignantly by Nava Mau.  She is in a way the most intriguing character, a benevolent femme fatale both seductive and deeply honest, standing up for herself with anguish but without attacking, a wonderful protagonist for a future neo-noir. 

All this leads to the one big unanswered question I have, which is: why are none of them in therapy?   Teri after all is a therapist.  I was surprised she never dragged Donny’s self-hating, slippery ass to a colleague’s office.  It is refreshing to watch a show free of therapy speak, yet boy do they need it!  (Except for Darrien, likely convinced he doesn’t need it at all.)

In a way the story is strongest in what we don’t see, which is hard to see even in prose, or before us in the consulting room, elements often captured by (alas) the ear-jangling jargon of psychoanalysis.  By this I mean the unconscious remnants of that which draws some of us to traumatizing others, the fantasy of redemption.  Note how all but one character is remarkably rigid; in my own practice I attempt to cultivate a more flexible relatedness or ways of living.

Perhaps Gadd imagines he has told the whole story by getting it all out there, and perhaps he has.  In many ways, however, this is all just the beginning.