Analysis of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’

Rosemary’s Baby is a 1968 psychological horror film directed by Roman Polanski (with Repulsion and The Tenant, it’s part of his ‘Apartment’ trilogy) and based on the Ira Levin novel of the same name. It stars Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, and Sidney Blackmer, with Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, and Charles Grodin.

I haven’t read Levin’s novel, but apparently I don’t need to. For Levin himself wrote of Polanski’s movie, “The result was possibly the most faithful film adaptation ever made. It incorporates whole pages of the book’s dialogue and even uses specific colors mentioned. It was not only Polanski’s first Hollywood film but also the first one he made based on someone else’s material; I’m not sure he realized he had the right to make changes. His understated directorial style perfectly complemented the style of the book, and the casting couldn’t have been better. I’m one of several people who claim credit for first suggesting Mia Farrow for the leading role.”

Speaking of quotes, here are some from the film (except as indicated):

“Awful things happen in every apartment house.” –Rosemary (Farrow)

“Are you aware that the Bramford had rather an unpleasant reputation around the turn of the century? It’s where the Trench sisters conducted their little dietary experiments. And Keith Kennedy held his parties. Adrian Marcato lived there too…The Trench sisters were two proper Victorian ladies – they cooked and ate several young children including a niece…Adrian Marcato practiced witchcraft. He made quite a splash in the 90s by announcing that he’d conjured up the living devil. Apparently, people believed him so they attacked and nearly killed him in the lobby of the Bramford…Later, the Keith Kennedy business began and by the 20s, the house was half empty…World War II filled the house up again…They called it Black Bramford…This house has a high incidence of unpleasant happenings. In ’59, a dead infant was found wrapped in newspaper in the basement…” —Hutch (Evans)

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‘”Sometimes I wonder how come you’re the leader of anything,” she said. A bump on the other side of the wall woke Rosemary, and Mrs. Castevet said, “And please don’t tell me what Laura-Louise said because I’m not interested!” Rosemary turned over and burrowed into her pillow.

‘Sister Agnes was furious. Her piggy-eyes were squeezed to slits and her nostrils were bubbling the way they always did at such moments. Thanks to Rosemary it had been necessary to brick up all the windows, and now Our Lady had been taken out of the beautiful-school competition being run by the World-Herald. “If you’d listened to me, we wouldn’t have had to do it!” Sister Agnes cried in a hoarse midwestern bray. “We’d have been all set to go now instead of starting all over from scratch!” Uncle Mike tried to hush her. He was the principal of Our Lady, which was connected by passageways to his body shop in South Omaha. “I told you not to tell her anything in advance,” Sister Agnes continued lower, piggy-eyes glinting hatefully at Rosemary. “I told you she wouldn’t be open-minded. Time enough later to let her in on it.” (Rosemary had told Sister Veronica about the windows being bricked up and Sister Veronica had withdrawn the school from the competition; otherwise no one would have noticed and they would have one. It had been right to tell, though, Sister Agnes notwithstanding. A Catholic school shouldn’t win by trickery.)

‘”Anybody! Anybody!” Sister Agnes said. “All she has to be is young, healthy, and not a virgin. She doesn’t have to be a no-good drug-addict whore out of the gutter. Didn’t I say that in the beginning? Anybody. As long as she’s young and healthy and not a virgin.”‘ –Minnie Castevet (played by Ruth Gordon in the film), actually (close to the end of Chapter 4 in Levin’s novel)

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Roman: No Pope ever visits a city where the newspapers are on strike.

Minnie: I heard he’s gonna postpone and wait till it’s over.

Guy: Well, that’s show-biz.

Roman: [chuckling with his wife] That’s exactly what it is. All the costumes or rituals, all religions.

Minnie: Uh, I think we’re offending Rosemary.

Rosemary: Oh, no.

Roman: You’re not religious are you my dear?

Rosemary: I was brought up a Catholic. Now I don’t know. He is the pope.

Roman: You don’t need to have respect for him because he pretends that he’s holy…A good picture of the hypocrisy behind organized religion was given I thought in Luther.

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[referring to Rosemary] “As long as she ate the mousse, she can’t see nor hear. She’s like dead now.” –Minnie

“This is no dream, this is really happening!” –Rosemary

“Tannis anyone?” –Rosemary

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Rosemary: I dreamed someone was raping me, I think it was someone inhuman.

Guy: Thanks a lot. Whatsa matter?

Rosemary: Nothing.

Guy: I didn’t want to miss the night.

Rosemary: We could have done it this morning or tonight. Last night wasn’t the only split-second.

Guy: I was a little bit loaded myself, you know.

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[about having sex with Rosemary while she was passed out] “It was kinda fun in a necrophile sort of way.” –Guy (Cassavetes)

[describing how her pregnancy feels] “It’s like a wire inside me getting tighter and tighter.” –Rosemary

“I’m having a party for our old…I mean our young friends – Minnie and Roman are not invited. Neither is Laura-Louise nor is Dr. Sapirstein. It’s gonna be a very special party. You have to be under 60 to get in.” –Rosemary

“Dr. Sapirstein is either lying or he’s, I don’t know, out of his mind. Pain like this is a warning something’s wrong…And I’m not drinking Minnie’s drink anymore. I want vitamins in pills like everyone else. I haven’t drunk it for the last three days. I’ve thrown it away…I’ve made my own drink…I’m tired of hearing how great Dr. Sapirstein is.” –Rosemary

“Pain, begone, I will have no more of thee!” –Rosemary

“Now! That’s what I call the long arm of coincidence!” –Minnie

“Witches…All of them witches!” –Rosemary

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Roman: Rosemary –

Rosemary: Shut up! You’re in Dubrovnik. I don’t hear you. [She slowly walks over to the cradle, sees her child in the bassinet – her eyes widen in terror] What have you done to it? What have you done to its eyes?

Roman: He has his father’s eyes.

Rosemary: What are you talking about?! Guy’s eyes are normal! What have you done to him? You maniacs!

Roman: Satan is his father, not Guy. He came up from hell and begat a son of mortal woman. [Coven members cheer ‘Hail, Satan!’] Satan is his father and his name is Adrian. He shall overthrow the mighty and lay waste their temples. He shall redeem the despised and wreak vengeance in the name of the burned and the tortured. Hail, Adrian! Hail, Satan! Hail, Satan!

Minnie: He chose you out of all the world – out of all the women in the whole world, he chose you. He arranged things, because he wanted you to be the mother of his only living son.

Roman: His power is stronger than stronger! His might shall last longer than longer.

Japanese man: Hail, Satan!

Rosemary: No! It can’t be! No!

Minnie: Go look at his hands.

Laura-Louise: And his feet.

Rosemary: Oh, God! [She drops her knife]

Roman: God is dead! Satan lives! The year is One, the year is One! God is dead! Why don’t you help us out, Rosemary? Be a real mother to Adrian. You don’t have to join if you don’t want to. Just be a mother to your baby. Minnie and Laura-Louise are too old. It’s not right. Think about it, Rosemary.

Rosemary: Oh, God!

*********

[The baby starts to cry. Rosemary watches as Laura-Louise roughly rocks the bassinet, and then slowly walks over.]

Laurie-Louise: [To Rosemary] Get away from here! Roman!

Rosemary: You’re rocking him too fast.

Laurie-Louise: Sit down. [To Roman] Get her out of here. Put her where she belongs.

Rosemary: You’re rocking him too fast. That’s why he’s crying.

Laura-Louise: Oh, mind your own business.

Roman: Let Rosemary rock him. Go on, sit down with the others. Let Rosemary rock him.

Laura-Louise: Well, she’s liable to –

Roman: Sit down with the others, Laura-Louise. [To Rosemary] Rock him.

Rosemary: Are you trying to get me to be his mother?

Roman: Aren’t you his mother?

Apart from the obvious theme of paranoia, a recurring one in this movie is intrusion, introjection. Rosemary and her husband, Guy, move into an apartment in New York, a place with a strange history that their friend Hutch tries to warn them about. A previous tenant, an elderly woman, has left a written message about not being able to cope: “I can no longer associate myself.”

The couple’s elderly next-door neighbours, Roman and Minnie Castevet, are unusually nosy. They have a superficial charm; we often see them wearing brightly coloured clothes (Minnie wearing bright makeup), an unusual look for older people, whom one would assume would dress more modestly, not so ostentatiously.

The Castevets have taken in a young woman (Terry Gionoffrio, played by Victoria Vetri) who has been recovering from a drug addiction, but whose mental health is still shaky. They have given her a pendant, the inside of which is filled with foul-smelling ‘tannis root.’ It represents the introjected presence of the Castevets; always there with the girl, controlling her. “Ro” will get such a necklace soon. Terry kills herself by jumping off the apartment building. Minnie Castevet, when seeing her body on the sidewalk at night, tells the onlooking police, Rosemary, and Guy that the girl was happy, denying she had any problems.

The Castevets invite Rosemary and Guy to have dinner in their apartment. Roman boasts of having been to every city in the world. One is reminded of Job 1:7, “And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” This connection with the devil becomes more pertinent when Roman speaks ill of all world religions, condemning their sanctimony and hypocrisy.

While a criticism of the hypocritical morality of organized religion is generally warranted (consider the largely unpunished Catholic priesthood, guilty of the sexual abuse of children, to see my point), the Castevets and their elderly inner circle are hardly any better. In fact, they have a religion of their own…Satanism! What’s worse, Rosemary’s husband is about to join their clique.

A struggling actor, Guy makes a deal with the devil to further his career: have his wife get pregnant and give the baby over to the Satanists, she of course knowing nothing of the conspiracy. First, she is given one of those smelly necklaces, which she’d rather not wear, but which Guy urges her to wear.

On the night they plan to have her conceive, Minnie gives her and Guy cups of a special chocolate mousse treat. Rosemary’s has “a chalky aftertaste,” making her reluctant to eat it all. She tricks Guy into thinking she has eaten it all, when she’s only eaten some. The funny aftertaste comes from the fact that her mousse was drugged: since she hasn’t eaten it all, she’s only partly drugged and when Satan rapes and impregnates her during the Castevets’ ritual, she screams, “This is no dream! This is really happening!”

The foppishness of the Castevets in their brightly coloured clothing, Roman’s bragging of having been everywhere, and Minnie sticking her nose in Rosemary’s business, all combined with their Satanism, represent pathological narcissism and psychopathy. Recall that Satan’s original sin was his overweening pride, regarding himself as too superior to need to bow before Adam and Eve, or to be subject to God’s Son, as in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Satan’s pride thus prompted the War in Heaven and the expulsion of the fallen angels from heaven and into hell. Similarly, the Castevets proudly believe their religion to be superior to the conventional faiths.

Part of narcissism is narcissistic abuse, which involves projecting one’s own evil or faults onto the victim. This projection includes projective identification, which extends into making the victim incorporate, embody, and manifest the projections, as Rosemary is doing by wearing the smelly necklace, eating the drugged, funny-tasting mousse, drinking the daily health drink Minnie prepares for her, and–of course–having the baby. Satan’s penetration inside her, during the rape and impregnation of her, is a graphic symbol of all this projection and introjection of evil.

The horror of her having this beast on top of her, moving in and out of her, makes her fantasize of the opposite, of seeing and receiving forgiveness from the Pope, as a way to cope. Her fantasy symbolizes the defence mechanism of splitting into absolute good and bad. Something similar has happened in her dreaming that a nun was speaking Minnie’s angry words to Roman over Terry Gionoffrio’s suicide. This splitting also represents a failed attempt to reconcile the real evil around her with her fantasized good.

It is often said of Rosemary’s victimization that it represents feminist issues about male oppression of women throughout history. After all, her husband conspires with the Satanists to control her reproductive system, standing by as Satan rapes her, to bear the Antichrist. I must to an extent disagree with this interpretation, and I’ll give my reasons.

Firstly, since the root cause of women’s oppression has been the patriarchal family–i.e., to ensure patrilineal succession, one must be sure that a woman’s husband is the father of all of her children–she must be a chaste, bashful virgin on her wedding night, sexually blinded to any interest in other men, and sacrificing her intellect so that motherhood can be her only vocation…all to assuage the paranoia her husband feels of the possibility of being cuckolded. Guy, however, wilfully participates in a Satanic ritual that leaves him a cuckold…he even sees it happen before his very eyes!

Secondly, Rosemary isn’t the only victim in the movie. In fact, two of the other major victims are men: Donald Baumgart, an actor blinded by a spell so Guy can replace him and get his big acting break; and Hutch, who is killed for having tried to help Rosemary.

Finally, many of the Satanists who victimize Rosemary are women–not only Minnie, but also Laura-Louise (played by Patsy Kelly) and Mrs. Gilmore (Hope Summers), among others. In fact, Minnie’s nagging of Roman indicates who is the dominant one of the Castevets; remember when she says she wonders how Roman could be the leader of anything, Rosemary dreaming that an angry nun is doing the wondering instead.

Now, it is far from me to imagine that a patriarchal marriage would be preferable to the one causing Rosemary such victimization here; but her being manipulated into having a baby other than her husband’s, especially when he witnesses the adulterous sex with a group of Satanists as naked as he and his wife are, is diametrically opposed to the fundamental principles of patriarchy. Guy even takes her wedding ring off her finger prior to the Satanic sex-ritual, suggesting a temporary respite from patriarchal marriage.

To understand the root of her victimization, even though it has some of the features of the usual forms of female oppression, we have to look elsewhere. I see that root in narcissistic abuse, and in the authoritarian lording of the older generation’s worldview over that of the younger generation. Recall how ‘don’t trust anyone over thirty‘ was a popular saying of the counterculture of the late 1960s.

These two elements–narcissism and aging–are interrelated in the context of this film, for research has shown that narcissism in people gets worse as one gets older. The original sources of narcissistic supply–the beauty, intelligence, and strength of youth–fade away with age, and this fading away becomes a source of narcissistic injury and rage, which can be assuaged only by gaining feelings of power over others in new, compensating ways.

Furthermore, the birth of the baby means that these elderly Satanists can vicariously experience youth anew. They’ve been projecting their evil into Rosemary via her womb. The ugliness of the newborn baby will be a symbolic projection of the Satanists’ moral ugliness.

As the fetus grows in her womb, Rosemary finds herself experiencing unbearable pain. This pain symbolizes the effects of the emotional abuse she is suffering, a suffering compounded by her tormentors’ repeated invalidation and minimizing of it. This is typical of narcissistic abuse.

Dr. Abraham Sapirstein (Bellamy), who refuses to give Rosemary pills and instead has Minnie make the ‘health drink’ (though later, he’ll change his tune almost unnoticeably and allow pills), dismisses her pain, saying it will go away soon (it won’t). Guy won’t acknowledge how ghastly and pale she looks; instead, he criticizes only her decision to cut her hair short in a Vidal Sassoon style.

Rosemary arranges to have a party with only her and Guy’s younger friends, a plan Guy looks askance at, but she defiantly insists on. Minnie tries to stick her nose in, but Ro won’t let her. At the party, she breaks down and weeps from the pain in the kitchen, in front of her girlfriends, who insist she stop seeing “that nut,” Dr. Sapirstein. She fears the baby will die.

After the party, she has a fight with Guy over her wish to see Dr. Hill (Grodin) instead of Sapirstein. This resistance to allow her to make contact with anyone outside of the circumscribed social circle is another feature of narcissistic abuse.

In the middle of this argument, her pain suddenly stops, and she can feel the baby moving inside her. To her joyous relief, it’s alive! From now on, she willingly drinks more of Minnie’s health drink, and acts as if everything’s back to normal, which of course it isn’t. These up-and-down cycles of narcissistic abuse are common; Rosemary is just experiencing the ‘honeymoon’ stage at this moment.

As anyone who has experienced emotional abuse knows, the ‘honeymoon’ doesn’t last long, and Rosemary’s experience is no exception. Hutch falls into a coma induced by a spell in which the Satanists have used a stolen glove of his; then, he dies. Before his death, though, he has made sure she receives a book called All of Them Witches. He has also rather cryptically said, “The name is an anagram.”

At first, she thinks he meant the name of the book, and with Scrabble tiles she rearranges the letters of the title to get some interesting, though incorrect, messages: “Comes with the Fall,” and “Elf shot lame witch.” Then she realizes, after having leafed through the book and seen old black-and-white photos from the nineteenth century of Adrian Marcato (who looks eerily similar to Roman) and his son, who if still alive in the 1960s would be about Roman’s age.

The son’s name is Steven, so when Rosemary rearranges the letters of Steven Marcato, she indeed gets Roman Castevet. Now, her paranoia–however justified it may be–shoots through the roof. The anagram symbolizes the rearrangement of personality traits to create Roman’s False Self out of his True Self.

She remembers not only her previous pain, but also the chanting and recorder-playing heard through the thin wall separating her bedroom and the Castevets’ apartment…how like Satanic rituals. After reading about how witches use blood–including babies’ blood!–in their rituals, she puts all the pieces together: Guy’s friendship with the Castevets, and his subsequent success as an actor, means he must have made a deal with them to give them her baby in exchange for helping him become a star!

A paradox typical of victims of emotional abuse occurs: though she isn’t at all deluded in her belief that the Castevets el al are witches, what she’s experiencing is nonetheless truly maddening. Furthermore, she’s portrayed as insane by her abusers, who know perfectly well that she sees the truth about them.

A narcissist collective of flying monkeys will do whatever they have to do to ensure that their ‘version’ of the truth is the generally accepted version, no matter how harmful their version of that ‘truth’ is. This kind of circumscribing of the truth is exactly what Guy, the Castevets, Dr. Sapirstein, et al are doing to ensure that no one takes Rosemary’s side of the story seriously.

Thus ‘Satanists’ and ‘witches’ make perfect metaphors for collective narcissists: they’re twisted and evil, and they use lies to cast spells on anyone outside their ‘coven’ to make the outsiders believe whatever they want them to believe. Rosemary, as the justifiably paranoid victim, with all of the Satanists’ evil introjected into her (the Antichrist baby, the ‘health drink,’ the ‘devil’s pepper’ necklace, the pills, and Laura-Louise’s milk-poison–“…we’ll kill ya – milk or no milk!”), is never listened to or helped, like a typical victim of narcissistic abuse.

Rosemary’s role as a victim of narcissists is also a paradoxical one. Her portrayal by her abusers as having gone mad puts her in the role of scapegoat, or of the identified patient who is always ‘acting up’ and ‘causing trouble.’ On the other hand, as the mother of Satan’s child, she is also idealized by the Satanist coven as a kind of golden child, the Non-virgin Rosemary, Mother of Gog. This latter aspect will become especially apparent at the very end of the film.

These interchangeable scapegoat/golden child roles suggest that Rosemary is a symbolic daughter to the Castevets, with Guy as their symbolic son. Since he has been welcomed into the Satanic circle, he’s the Castevets’ golden child, making her–relative to him–the scapegoat whose perspective is never listened to.

As she gains more and more Knowledge (Wilfred Bion‘s K) about witchcraft in her reading, the Satanic clique–especially Guy–reject what she’s learned (-K); Guy even throws away All of Them Witches, patronizingly claiming that doing so is for her own good, that this gaining of Knowledge is harming her.

The rejection of newly-acquired Knowledge, Bion’s -K, is motivated by the Kleinian notion of envy, in particular, the infant’s unconscious desire to destroy and spoil the goodness in the good object, its mother. This is what the unborn Antichrist is doing to its mother, by making Rosemary physically, then mentally, ill.

Envy, just like pride, was a major motive of Satan’s in John Milton‘s Paradise Lost. When the devil, having just been thrown into hell with the other rebel angels, learns of God’s plan to create Adam and Eve, he wants to go up to earth and figure out how he can spoil the goodness of God’s creation (Book II, lines 330-389). Rosemary and Guy in this regard are like Adam and Eve, and the Castevets et al are a collective devil. Their envy, like that of proud Satan, is an envy typical of the pathological narcissist, too.

Another thing narcissists are apt to do is pretend to be the pitiful victim. As Rosemary’s suspicions are growing, and she tells Sapirstein about them (not yet knowing, of course, that he’s a smelly-necklace-wearing Satanist, too), he tells her that Roman has only a short time left to live. Instead of feeling mad at him, she’ll be compelled to feel sorry for him, since one of his flying monkeys (Sapirstein) has passed on the bad news to her.

She imagines she’s protecting her unborn–and presumably human–baby, but it won’t contain her love, since she wants to thwart the plans of the Satanists. Her refusal to join their group makes the baby feel as though its life is endangered; as the Antichrist, it presumably has the supernatural ability to sense its mother’s hostility to the coven that’s been looking out for it, i.e., to sense this danger with neither the need of sensory indications nor of the mature intellect for processing the information as normal people would. Thus, it projects its fear of annihilation onto her.

Instead of container/contained enhancing the baby’s growth by learning and cultivating self-soothing, there’s minus container/contained (Bion, pages 96-99) intensifying its fear, turning it into a nameless dread. As with -K, Bion says that minus container/contained “asserts the moral superiority and superiority in potency of UN-learning.” (Bion, 98) The unborn baby rejects any insight his mother would give him.

The Satanists restrain Rosemary with a sedative after having gotten Dr. Hill to help get her back in their clutches; and after she’s given birth, they give her a diet including pills and milk, all to keep her in their control. For the whole purpose of narcissistic abuse is to have power and control over the victim.

Rosemary, however, refuses to take the pills, knowing they’re more forms of evil she’s being made to introject. Her defiant resistance, in spite of how insane it makes her look, is what keeps her good, keeps her human.

Once the collective projection of evil, the Antichrist baby, has been delivered, and therefore no longer an introjection she’s carrying inside herself, the Satanists are content with it and no longer need her. She, it seems, will be slowly poisoned to death with the pills and whatever has been mixed in with that milk. They tell her the baby died so, after mourning, she won’t have any more interest in it.

Still, she can hear a baby crying in a nearby room, so she wants to investigate, taking a knife and discovering a secret passageway through her closet to the Satanists’ apartment. This connection between apartments represents how the narcissist considers his victim to be an extension of himself; recall how the Satanists can sneak into her apartment after she’s locked the front door.

Her sense of isolation in her bedroom is a motif shared in Polanski’s other two ‘Apartment’ films, Repulsion and The Tenant. Her knife symbolizes her wish to get revenge on the Satanists by projecting her pain into them, making them negative containers that introject her hate of them.

She barges into the room where the Satanists all are, including the crying baby and a number of guests from other countries. Roman is as healthy as ever, his trip to Dubrovnik a lie.

Now, it’s Rosemary who is projecting herself into the Satanists’ personal space. Laura-Louise screams, and the others sit awkwardly as they watch her entrance…especially Guy, who’s avoiding her eyes in embarrassment. That knife in her hand is a powerful symbol of such a projection, a malign contained element threatening to be vengefully stabbed in their hearts, a collective malign container.

She looks into the cradle and sees the monster inside. This thing was in her womb for nine months! A mother naturally wishes to see herself in her beloved baby, but Rosemary cannot see her reflection in such hideous eyes.

She projects the fault onto the Satanists, assuming they have deformed her and Guy’s son; but Roman drives home the point that I made above, that her husband is not the father…Satan is.

Satanists aided in this birth, in which the patriarchal Christian faith has had no involvement whatsoever. There is no patrilineal succession from Rosemary’s husband to her son. The conceiving was outside the bonds of patriarchal wedlock. The evil that the Satanists represent is a formidable, horrifying one, but not a patriarchal one, in spite of the rape and the exploiting of a woman’s reproductive system. (The Virgin Mary may have conceived and given birth to a son of whom Joseph wasn’t the biological father, but unlike with Rosemary, there was no sex involved in that mythical conception, either.)

Guy hides his face in shame not because Satan has made him a cuckold (the male patriarch’s greatest fear), but because he knows he has sold his soul to the devil to advance his career. The traditional male role, with its pressure to make as much money as possible to provide for the family, and to repress feelings that are associated with weakness, makes many men feel as though they’ve sold their souls for money and the pretence of being ‘tough.’ This is part of why, to ensure needed equality for women, we must abolish sex roles, or at least minimize their divisive influence in our lives.

The shame that Guy feels doesn’t, however, excuse him of the vile thing he has done to his wife. He deserves a lot worse than being spat on. His job as a professional actor is symbolically fitting, as his success rests on being a pretender, a big phoney.

The trauma she feels, over having been manipulated into giving birth to such a beast, is overwhelming. The Satanists’ projection of their evil into innocent Rosemary allows them to function normally in society. She is falling apart inside, but they can keep their cool. This ability to project shame onto others is the essence of narcissistic abuse, the real evil symbolized by Satanism here.

She drops the knife, its point stabbing into the wooden floor, the symbolic fulfillment of her wish to injure the Satanists by forcing them to contain the pain they’ve made her contain; Minnie unabashedly pulls it out of the floor and rubs the mark as if removing a smudge. This action shows how well a narcissist can keep his or her cool, because the shame has been projected elsewhere.

The narcissistic façade of calm, collected superiority is a defence against psychological fragmentation; the Satanists can wear this façade, but neither Rosemary–in whom the introjected evil has only just been removed, but still remains a traumatic memory–nor the crying baby Adrian, who is the embodiment of that evil, can wear it.

Adrian’s distress cannot be contained by Laura-Louise, what with her clumsy, hurried rocking of the bassinet; only Rosemary, his mother, can contain it. So Roman, like the tempting devil himself, hoovers her into the devil-worshipping cult by goading her into rocking the baby instead.

Teary-eyed, she acquiesces.

The Satanists watch the, to them, touching scene as she looks lovingly at her baby and contains his distress in maternal reverie (i.e., as his container, she transforms that distress [the contained] into emotional peace by mentally processing his fears for him, then returns the transformed feelings back to him). In other words, she has to take terrifying feelings and make them into soothing ones.

She must also nullify her own fears and accept her lot. How can one do that among devil-worshippers?

This is the scariest moment of the whole film: by accepting her role as his mother, she is now thoroughly enmeshed in the narcissistic Satanic cult. To keep from falling apart, she must become one of them.

She must delude herself that the bad internal object, of which the unborn child was the symbol, is actually a good object; she has learned to love Antichrist-Adrian (as Winston Smith learns to love Big Brother), as terrifying as he is.

She must love the Antichrist… she has no escape.