Conor O'Malley was awakened by a nightmare in which his mother was about to fall off a cliff, and he grabbed her tightly, but in the end his mother fell.
Conor's mother, Lizzy, is recovering at home after a phase of treatment with cancer. Conor's father has left them to start a new family in America. The weak mother could do little, not only to make breakfast for himself, but also to take on the responsibility of taking care of her.
At school, Conor was bullied by a group of male classmates, and one of the leading boys asked him why he kept staring at him in class. Conor gritted his teeth and silently endured their fists.
Mother finds old projection equipment and watches an old movie with Conor: "King Kong". Looking at it, my mother fell asleep tiredly. Back in his room to do his homework, suddenly everything starts to shake, Conor and the tree monster meet for the first time. Originally he was scared to hide under the table, but when the tree monster asked him why he didn't run out to find his mother, he immediately realized his responsibility. He jumped out from under the table and yelled at the tree monster, saying he wasn't afraid of it. The tree monster told him that he would come again, and then he would tell him three stories, and Conor had to tell himself a fourth story. This fourth story, Conor's nightmare, is the truth.
Conor's nightmare was that he couldn't catch his mother, and in the end, her mother fell off a cliff. So, what is the truth of this dream?
Grandma came, she wanted Conor to live with her, Conor didn't want to, he thought he could take care of his mother and himself. While they were arguing in the kitchen, the mother fainted in the living room because she was too weak. Maybe Conor has always been reluctant to face it. He always thought that everything would be fine about his mother's illness. But the reality hit him again and again, and the arrival of his grandmother made him realize that maybe his mother would not get better. So although he was angry at his grandmother, he didn't even realize that he was just unwilling to accept the reality that he was about to lose his mother.
That night, the tree monster reappeared and told him the first story. The story is about a young prince and a witch, the old king had three sons, but the first two died fighting giants. The old king married a witch who wanted to take away the third prince's inheritance. The prince said that the witch poisoned the old king and killed his beloved farmer's daughter. The people were angry, they followed the prince to drive away the witch, and helped the prince regain the throne.
The appearance of the tree monster seemed like a dream, and it seemed like a psychotherapist that Conor had found for himself. It first appeared, after Conor watched "King Kong" with his mother, Conor found her mother fell asleep watching the movie, which made him suddenly realize her weakness. So, the tree monster came at night.
The second time, my grandmother came. This time, it was not just Conor's observation, but reality told him that his mother was really dying. Whether it was his grandmother's invitation to live with him or his mother fainting in the living room, he couldn't avoid this fact any longer. But the reality is so painful, Conor can't face it, he needs someone to help him.
The first story of the tree monster is coming to an end, and the ending is that it rescues the witch and sends her to a happy life on an island. Conor didn't understand why the tree monster should help a bad guy, the witch who killed the old king and the farmer's daughter, the prince's lover, should be burned to death. The tree monster told him that the witch was indeed conspiring to seize the prince's right to the throne, but he did not say that she was the murderer, that was what the prince said. The old king was old and sick, and in the end he was not poisoned to death, but died of natural causes. The peasant's daughter was the hand of the prince while she was asleep, in order to have a righteous reason to rise up and lead the angry people to help him regain the throne.
There are no absolute good and bad people in this world. The tree monster hopes that Conor can look at people and what is happening around them from an integrated perspective. This is the beginning of maturity. The first step of the tree monster is to let Conor gradually accept that there may be bad parts in a person, and there will be good parts to prepare for the subsequent treatment. Conor looked at the tree monster thoughtfully, and then asked him, what does this have to do with what he is facing now, trying to escape from his grandmother's clutches? The tree monster told him that this was not what he needed to escape.
At this stage, Conor doesn't quite understand the tree monster's intentions, because he hasn't seen his real problem, or the trouble that will really drag him into the end. But if the tree monster took him to face his own problems now, Conor would not understand, nor would he want to believe it. Just like psychotherapy, the therapist will always take a step-by-step approach, taking the client to see the source of his problem for himself through the analysis of resistance and transference.
Mother Lizzy told Conor that the last treatment was not ideal, so she may need to go for another treatment, hoping he would understand and live with her grandmother for a while. Conor didn't say anything in front of his mother, but he vented his anger to the trash can. When we face a stressful event, we can't help but activate our defense mechanism and use various ways to avoid the emotion that really makes us unable to face it. Maybe we'll deny it, maybe we'll be as unnamed as Conor, slamming into the trash a few times to try to make ourselves feel better.
Conor was taken home by her grandmother, who usually had to go to the hospital to take care of her mother, so Conor touched and looked around in the house alone. Unexpectedly, his father who was far away in the United States suddenly came back. He took Conor to the amusement park and told him that he would pick him up to go to the United States. This made Conor happy, but disappointment soon followed, and his father said he could come back after Christmas with them. It turned out that his father didn't plan to live with him, and Conor's eyes were filled with deep loss.
The tree monster came at night, and it told a second story. There is a pharmacist in the town who uses his skills to help the residents, but at the same time he makes money for himself. But the town's beloved priest disapproved of the pharmacist's practice and told the residents to stop buying medicine from him. The pastor believes that hanging pots should be compassionate, not making money. But one day, two of the pastor's favorite daughters fell ill. He went to the pharmacist for help and told the pharmacist that if he could save his daughters, he would let the residents continue to buy his medicine, and agreed to let him cut them off. The tree that can be used as medicine. The pharmacist refused, and the priest's two daughters died that night.
The tree monster took Conor to the priest's house and told Conor we were going to smash it today. Conor didn't understand why it was the priest's house and not the pharmacist's. The tree monster said that the priest had lost his faith. Many people always want to stand on the moral high ground and tell others what you should do. But when they are faced with the same situation, they will immediately step down from the altar and make the choice that is most beneficial to them. So, what do you believe, and follow through on what you believe, that's what the tree monster wants to tell Conor. You need to believe in the treatment you are doing now, and that it will be successful, that it will be the best for you and what will help you.
Conor, led by the tree monster, begins to smash the priest's house, but when he wakes up, he finds that he has smashed his grandmother's living room to a pulp. The moment Grandma pushed open the door, Conor was choked with guilt and speechless. Grandma said nothing, got up and went upstairs.
The father knew about his behavior, but he didn't blame him. He helped him clean up the broken living room together, and chatted with him about his mother. Conor began to feel that his grandmother and father did not reject him as he thought, but that they actually loved him from the bottom of their hearts. Maybe the grandmother was a weird old woman, and the father had his own real problems and couldn't take him to live with him, but they silently endured Conor's attacks and anger, and kept trying to let him see that they were here, and they would always accept him.
Conor was finally willing to go to the hospital to see his mother, something he had been avoiding before. Because going to the hospital means that he accepts the fact that his mother has not recovered, and means that he has to face the weak mother again.
In the ward, the mother told Conor that her treatment had failed again, but the doctors would try again. Conor couldn't look at his mother. He stood by the window and finally asked, "Since the new treatment works, why didn't you try it in the first place?" Conor knew that there was no more effective treatment. His mother was terminally ill, and she But I deceived myself again and again, in order to make myself feel better. And he also pretended to believe his mother's words again and again, in order to make her feel better.
At night, the tree monster came, Conor hoped that the tree monster would stop talking about those boring stories, he wanted the tree monster to help him and heal his mother. The tree monster told him that maybe this wasn't the best time to tell the third story, because Conor wasn't ready. The same is true in psychotherapy. If you find that the client is sitting in the consultation room and is unwilling to talk about the issues that have been discussed before, just wait. When the time comes, the therapist pushes the situation forward only to make the client want to run away. Conor thought that he summoned the tree monster because he wanted it to heal his mother, and used a real dilemma to cover up the part he really needed help, so the tree monster left this time.
Conor has been working hard, working hard on the problem that really troubles and fetters him. He was able to go downstairs and hug his father to bid him farewell, which was already the result of his hard work. He quietly observed how his seriously ill mother got along with other people, how he bravely faced his scrawny body, and how others around him helped his mother. These details, which he ignored before, are now beginning to pay attention.
Finally, it was time to tell the third story. This time, the tree monster and Conor completely merged into one, and together with Conor, rushed towards the classmate who had been bullying him. The third story has almost no story, because that's Conor's own story, the story of a transparent man who wants to be seen by others.
The third story is the most difficult to understand. I basically don't understand why the tree monster asked him to beat the classmate, but this is also a step of treatment, which slowly stimulates the aggressiveness that Conor has been suppressing. If the aggression never goes in the right direction, it will turn to attacking itself. And the hardest part that Conor is going to face is yet to come, and if he can't handle the situation before then, he might hurt himself when the hardest part comes.
The hardest part is finally here, Lizzy tells Conor that the last attempt has failed. Conor rushed to the tree monster and questioned it, promising to cure his mother, why not. This is the best part, and the hardest part for Conor, the truth behind all of this. It's not the mother that the tree monster wants to heal at all, it's Conor. Through the three previous stories, the tree monster has built up enough personality strength for Conor to face his fears head on.
So the mystery is about to be revealed. What is Conor's deepest fear? Is it the mother who is about to die? It could be said yes, it could be said no. In the dream, Conor always felt guilty for not being able to hold on to his mother, and felt that he should work harder so that the mother would not fall. But the tree monster made him look at his dream again, and he was horrified to find that it was his own letting go that caused his mother to fall.
Conor always knew that his mother would never recover, and such weakness is not what a healthy person who is slowly getting better should have. Pretending her mother was getting better, pretending she could handle the burden of taking care of her and the family, all made Conor tired. He was reluctant to leave his mother, but he hoped that the one who stayed by his side was the healthy mother he used to be, not the sick one he is now. If he can't get the healthy mother he used to be, he would rather let the mother die now so that he can be free from all this.
However, this is not allowed, it is not not allowed by the outside world, but more importantly, it is not allowed by his own heart. The school of psychoanalysis founded by Freud believed that all neuroses arise from conflict. Conor wants to have a better mother and abandons his weak mother, which is a need of the id; but at the same time, the superego tells him that the need derived from the id is terrible and shameful, how can it be possible to abandon his mother Woolen cloth? Under this conflict, he has been haunted by nightmares, in which he repeatedly saved his mother, repeatedly let go, and then woke up, forgetting the part of his letting go into consciousness.
But the conflict was always there and tormented him subconsciously, making him feel like he should be punished for wanting to abandon his seriously ill mother. He didn't understand why he was always staring at the male classmate in class. It was actually a way of satisfying the superego that he should be punished. Let the male classmates beat him and keep silent. Deep in his heart, he will get a balance because of this kind of beating and offset the anxiety caused by the conflict. In the long run, you may get a beating from provoking others to developing more extreme hurtful behaviors to yourself. Especially when his mother really died, Conor might think that his "letting go" killed his mother, and he lived with a heavy sense of guilt all his life. That's why the tree monster said, if you don't say it, it will be too late. By the time the mother is dead, the guilt and conflict of this magnitude will be more difficult to treat than it is now.
Faced with the most secret and shameful part of himself, Conor was exhausted, and he fell asleep under the tree. But that's okay, because when he wakes up, the tree monster knows he'll have the strength to embrace his dying mother and the strength to accept the life ahead. It's a story about growing up, and it's a story about healing. Every paragraph cannot be saved, every step cannot be rushed; it is not because you become a better person that you can see yourself clearly, but because you see yourself clearly, you can become a better person.
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