Black, White, or Grey All Over?

Throughout Grey’s Anatomy we witness, both conscious and unconscious, defense mechanisms from Meredith Grey. The mind is powerful, so powerful that when it senses trouble it becomes its own problem solver. The issue is, is that the unconscious mind often lacks a responsible response. Sigmund Freud, and many other psychoanalytics believed the unconscious mind was the driving force in peoples’ actions. When the brain cannot pin point the exact problem or solution, we create defense mechanisms. This becomes the body’s way of coping and maintaining separation from threatening materials and our conscious.

In episode five of season 1, Meredith makes one of the worst mistakes a surgeon can make. In the surgical room, she nicks a heart with her fingernail, jeopardizing the patient’s life. Concurrently that same day, her mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s, signs away the deed to her house. This is a major reminder of this deadly disease’s truth. Meredith has to learn to let go.

Meredith Grey has reached a level of overload. Between her mother and the mishap in the operating room, Meredith enters a frenzy of madness. Her unconscious mind begins screaming and yelling at the notary, nurses, and workers. Her mind is using a mechanism called displacement. She beings to put all of her anxiety, anger, and fears onto safer targets, hence the yelling.

“Did you ever feel like disappearing”? Meredith states this in Episode fifteen of season three. In this episode Meredith’s unconscious minds begins to battle one of her deepest, most repressed memories.

She sat there, motionless and numb, willingly drowning in her own bathtub. Face below the water, she waited for the water to seep into her lungs, and take her life. Derek lifted her from the water, and saved his wife’s life.

Later that same episode there was a ferryboat accident and the doctors were rushed to the scene. On the edge, close to river, Meredith was accidently pushed into the water by a frantic patient. Sink or swim, fight or flight?  Meredith had to make a decision; should she fight to live or let the water take her? As the frigid water nearly takes her life, Derek lifts Meredith out of the river. After a long hard battle to live(and a glimpse of her mother in the after-life), Meredith starts attending therapy where she uncovers her repressed childhood memory of her mother trying to attempt suicide. Slowly everything starts to make sense and she begins to acknowledge, confront, and heal.