Psychoanalysis of Tara Westover's Educated

‘What we whispered and what we screamed’ is the 22nd chapter of the memoir, Educated, by Tara Westover. The memoir is about how she left her mormon family in order to pursue education. She recalls different incidents that happened in her life to steer her towards the path of education, in the manner of a story. In chapter 22, Tara has come back from BYU for Christmas and has learned that her brother, Richard, will be taking the ACTs (encouraged by her mormon father. She then goes to the store with her other brother, Shawn. When they reach there, she sees her ‘boyfriend’ Charles, and decides not to go in as she does not look clean. Shawn forces her to go in and when she refuses, he becomes violent. He drags her, pins her and breaks her wrist by bending it backwards. She laughs the pain off and does not tell a soul. She writes what happens into her journal, but after Shawn apologizes, she changes the writing to say that it was ‘all fun and games’, which is what Shawn had initially told her when he apologized.

In this chapter, Shawn displays a clear act of displacement. This can be seen when he takes his anger on Richard and his father out on Tara. Shawn was obviously upset that his father was praising Richard for being a ‘genius’. This showed him that he was not unique, he was just another normal child. This angered Shawn. Instead of taking his anger out on his father, Shawn physically assaulted his sister in the parking lot of a store. It could be seen that he was not in the correct mind when Tara said, ‘It was like getting beaten by a zombie, I write, Like he couldn’t hear me’. This goes to show that even though he was physically hurting Tara, in his mind he was trying to hurt his father, or worse himself, for being a failure in life. This exemplifies that even though Shawn may seem like a harmful, threatening person, he is an exposed weakling, who cannot seem to take criticism well, and does not want to see others get praised or do well. This is an example of displacement, although, in this case, the feeling is going from calm to threatening, not the other way around.

Tara exhibits clear signs of denial when she erases her memory of the event after Shawn apologizes to her for the second time. This action makes it seem as though Tara herself is not completely sure of what happened and that Shawn is easily able to manipulate her into thinking whatever he wants her to think. The first time he apologizes, Tara writes what she thought happened during a frenzy she was having. However, when she receives the second apology she is shocked, as this is something completely out of character for Shawn. This makes her feel guilty for having an inkling about what Shawn did, which makes it easy for her to deny her gut-feeling and rewrite her journal to make it seem as though what Shawn did was okay and normal.

Through this chapter, we can notice that both the characters are broken in one way or another. Tara is easily manipulated and Shawn has anger issues. This creates room for a lot of error and mistakes from both characters (or in this case people).