Simba and Nala: Can You Feel The Cathexis Tonight? (SPOILER)

[Ego Map]

I decided to start write this piece about the quality of the relationship between Simba and Nala, and their ability to change ego states from Parent (the state of enforcing rules and boundaries), Child (the state of obeying or rebelling against rules, or enjoying the lack of rules) and Adult (the state of using only and all the information available in the moment). Changing from one state to another is called cathexis, and in The Lion King we see Simba and Nala cathect ego states several times.

In the movie, Simba and Nala were incredibly close friends. They loved each other. They formed an effective alliance against Zazu and had heaps of fun doing it, watched out for each other when the hyenas tried to eat them, and generally really enjoyed each others’ company. But they weren’t destined to be together as cubs for very long. When Scar executed his coup the cubs’ friendship was cut short, and the two young lions didn’t find each other again until after each of them had reached adulthood a few years later.

It was only a chance encounter while Nala was on a hunt that brought them back together again. But as soon as they met again as adults, Simba and Nala began to rediscover that powerful symbiosis that they shared as cubs. It was reaffirmed, and then wonderfully deepened by Nala’s delighted discovery that Simba was still alive – and the flaring of Simba’s latent homesickness for the place he’d given up in the Pride Rock pride. They went off to be alone together. They talked during a romantic twilight stroll among the fireflies and lianas, and soon realised that Simba had a task to complete: to overthrow his uncle Scar. But he didn’t want to. Nala pushed him to do it and soon, they found themselves arguing bitterly. They’d never fought with this kind of bitterness before and they both found it to be a nasty surprise.

The story from here is wonderfully metaphorical: the couple’s task was to succeed in returning the ecosystem near their cubhood home to its former plentiful state. While Simba’s task was explicitly shown to be to overthrow Scar, it was made implicitly clear that the devastation in the Pridelands was Scar’s doing and could only be undone by neutralising Scar and his hyenas. Realistically this couldn’t have been Scar’s fault – Nala said there was no water in the land under Scar’s rule, yet how could Scar and his hyenas have possibly affected the water supply? – but in the story, it is important to accept that Scar spoiled literally everything about Simba’s cubhood.

That is what The Lion King is about, on a psychological level. How many people have felt that their childhood is ruined – sullied, somehow – when they reach adulthood and discover that adult life just isn’t that straightforward? That people can deceive us in such a big way that everything seems ruined, and that life really can go so wrong? Simba had to take control of the Scar Problem in order to make his home environment safe and lush again, and that meant not being duped when Scar lied to him again – which Scar did in a heartbeat, because lies were what had worked against Simba last time.

Incidentally, a scar is a mark on a person’s body, caused by damage. Scar damages Simba’s cubhood home and relationships, and leaves the land and Simba’s psyche badly marked. I wonder how many people have noticed that link.

At first Simba was unwilling to do this job. It looked too big, insurmountable. Righting the wrongs of childhood is a daunting task and understandably, he was afraid to engage with it. So the first thing he tried to do was forget about it, which he’d started doing a few years previously when Timon and Pumbaa met him as a lonely and scared cub, and he’d never really stopped doing as an adult. It was his default way of coping.

Precisely how much of all this Nala realized we will never know, but there was one important fact she didn’t know and therefore never accounted for: the secret Simba shamefully kept to himself in which he’d failed his father in the worst way imaginable. He believed he’d caused his father’s downfall with his naivete and foolishness. In The Lion King Nala genuinely didn’t know Simba’s secret so she couldn’t accommodate for it, or help Simba to come to terms with it. It was her lack of support for him over this that led to their argument.

So to protect himself he went into a cub-like psychological state and attempted to deflect the responsibility with the phrase he’d learned from Timon and Pumbaa: “Hakuna matata”.

Nala found this confusing, and when he tried to explain it to her she brushed the whole concept to one side. In other words, she was in Adult and didn’t want Simba to distract their conversation with his errant Child ego state. She didn’t even dignify it with her attention. Would she have done so if she’d known about Simba’s feelings of guilt? Would she have done so if she’d further realised that Simba’s guilt was false, because he wasn’t actually guilty of the crime he blamed himself for?

When Simba realised she was unconvinced he got angry. Although, this was a rebellious type of anger instead of a powerful, self-assured type. He took himself away from the situation because he couldn’t bear to tell her about what he believed to be his guilt for Mufasa’s death.

Feeling lonely, angry and sad, Simba wondered around the savannah alone until he accidentally met Rafiki. The baboon did something unexpected: he out-Childed the lion. Then, while Simba was still reeling from Rafiki’s behaviour and responding to it with a mixture of rebelliousness, stern-ness and irritation – indeed, anything he thought might possibly work to bring the situation under control or at least make it more familiar and therefore easier to cope with – the old baboon led him to a glade and invited him to speak with Mufasa’s apparition. Mufasa told Simba what he needed to hear to find the courage that Nala and the pride needed him to have.

That reassurance was enough to turn the tide for Simba, but I can’t help but wonder where most of us in the real world get reassurance from when we need it. Perhaps for some of us, our Uncle Scars are more subtle and we don’t realise that they can be overcome. If we don’t think in terms of overcoming or taming the desolate lands of our childhoods (only of accepting it and living our lives in the shadows as contentedly as possible) how can we hear reassurances from our Mufasas-in-the-clouds, assuming we’re lucky enough for our Mufasas to speak to us in the first place? Where can we find a suitable Mufasa from which to hear encouragement if our literal parent figures are less than supportive?

Once Mufasa had given him an instruction about what to do, Simba felt a lot more convinced about going home and putting things right. And we might guess that he felt a weight off his back because he’d been avoiding his responsibility to be the next king for so long, and finally could now cathect into his Adult state – which was the ego state Nala’d been in before and during the argument in the rainforest. The state she’d desperately tried to call him into because she knew that was where he had to be in order to do what had to be done.

Or was it the Parent ego state Simba went into on that journey home? After all, at this point he still didn’t have access to all of the information about the story of Scar and Mufasa in the gorge. Mufasa’s ghost hadn’t told him that he wasn’t to blame.

Simba ran back to his homeland to find Scar armed only with partial information.

While Simba looked around, stunned at the wasteland his home had become, Nala caught up with him. They had a conversation in which both of them cathected into Adult, and that’s what turned them into a powerful team in the fight against Scar. It was a sad Adult conversation they had on that forsaken rock, but then, it’s only right that they felt sad about what had happened to their home. Sadness was an appropriate, Adult, response.

But we mustn’t forget the other element on that rock. Adult is a useful state to be in but the other states have a very important place too. Timon and Pumbaa – the characters who’d taught Simba to cope by going into his Child state – were there, and they pledged to help in any way they could. This is symbolic of Simba cathecting his energy from Child into Adult. His Child state – conveniently externalised in the story of The Lion King into the meerkat and warthog – were not part of Simba’s Adult self, but they are a resource he could draw on.

And he did, by using Timon and Pumbaa’s song and dance to distract the hyenas while he snuck by. Although our Child ego state often doesn’t give us the best advice for how to cope with our problems, it still wants the best for us. Simba used Timon and Pumbaa/his Child ego state wisely in the fight that followed.

When Simba finally faced Scar, Scar cathected into Critical Parent to push Simba into Child. Parent ego states tend to invite Child, and vice versa, and Scar knew this. When he’d done that he was then able to push Simba around as much as he liked, and for as long as Simba didn’t know the whole truth about Scar’s defeat of Mufasa, he couldn’t regain the upper paw.

Simba was almost beaten because of his retreat into the Child position, but then Scar made his fatal mistake… Which pushed Simba into a very powerful Parent state. Scar hadn’t been expecting this and is cathected out of Parent, at least for a moment. By the time he managed to scramble his way back into into Parent the lionesses had all gone into a very angry and indignant Parent state themselves. So did the hyenas, hence the enormous brawl that followed.

Simba and Scar had a very nasty and dramatic fight at the very pinnacle of Pride Rock. At this point in the story both of them were strongly cathected into Parent. There was no telling who would win.

But ultimately, it was a little flash of Adult from Simba that allowed him to win: Nala’s ingenious trick of letting her opponent think they’ve won because they’re on top of her, before letting their own momentum doom them. He used a similar trick.

Clever old Nala.

[MooLion]

Interesting theories here! You've certainly given this a lot of thought.

[Animal of the Wild]

Well written!

[The Spirit of Life]

Amazing analysis! Thanks for sharing it