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LA Confidential, the recent film adapted from James Ellroy's 1990 crime novel, raises several essential questions about the nature of intrapsychic change. It illustrates how an individual's internal growth occurs through the resolution of psychical conflict, which depends upon the recognition and expression of emotional pain. The film portrays how change emerges from a process of disillusionment, loss, and acceptance, a process that results in a deeper understanding of oneself and mankind. Specifically, the film raises the issues of what makes a good man, as well as how a man can be, and all men necessarily are, both good and bad. (Indeed, part of the film's power to impact the viewer in a lasting way may be in its insistence upon the presence of this duality in every character.) So, the question of man's fundamental goodness moves from the simplistic moral interrogative of "Is he or isn't he good?" to an elegantly crafted portrayal of the eventual acceptance of beneficence and evil in himself by each man. Such self-awareness seems then ineluctably linked to intrapsychic change. The movie provides a vehicle through which to grasp the partnership between consciousness and growth, and it suggests how others are used to facilitate internal reflection and change.
In this article, I focus on the evolution of the film's three protagonists: Bud White, Ed Exley, and Jack Vincennes. I consider what circumstances and/or experiences compelled their respective movement, and I discuss how, if these characters can be taken as a single man, their story can be seen as a vivid and cogent paradigm for human development and intrapsychic growth. I postulate first nodes of transformation, that is, points at which each character began to question formerly held convictions about himself, others, and the world. I describe how these nodal events prompted each man to, as Exley observes, "tear down with a wrecking ball" previously internalized, rigidly held beliefs that have proved too occlusive for healing and new growth. By tearing down these archaic mental structures, each is able to construct more flexible notions about himself which take shape as curiosity, intuitive musings, fantasies, and hopes. Thus, each man designs a blueprint for his inner life which contains a sense of his own unique needs, longings, and wishes. He...