Verity: When the Other Must Become a Monster
A Psychoanalytic Reading of Desire, Identification, and Defenses Against the Truth
Spoiler warning: This article discusses the story and ending of the film.
Lowen is supposed to continue Verity’s books. But her entry into this writer’s life gradually
extends beyond continuing a text: she becomes close to Verity’s husband and entangled in a
past whose truth a hidden manuscript claims to reveal.
From this point, another question can replace the film’s apparent mystery.
The issue is not simply what Verity has done. The issue is: Who does Lowen need Verity to be
in order to obtain what she wants?
This question does not diminish the importance of external truth. A child’s death, violence
against a woman, and the responsibility of those who participate in it do not disappear
through psychoanalytic interpretation. But in this reading, Lowen is not merely a witness
assembling evidence. She also finds a place for herself within the story she reads.
Every page about Verity says something about Lowen’s possible future.
If Verity is the horrifying woman the manuscript describes, desiring Jeremy will acquire a
different meaning. Lowen is no longer simply a woman who desires another woman’s
husband. She can become the person who rescues a trapped man.
This is where the search for truth becomes entangled with the need to remain innocent in
one’s own eyes.
The Manuscript: A Text That Both Exposes and Gives Permission
The manuscript presents Verity as a woman who resents motherhood and holds herself
responsible for her daughter’s death. The final letter, by contrast, claims that the text was a
fictional writing exercise. The letter also accuses Jeremy of attempting to kill Verity after
reading the manuscript and mistaking it for reality. Neither account becomes an established
truth merely because it has been written down.
But before the letter is discovered, the manuscript has already done something more
important than convey information: it has allowed Lowen to feel certain about the people in
the house.
This certainty feeds on the text’s apparent intimacy. The writing is hidden. It says shameful
things. It exposes its author. We can therefore imagine Lowen thinking: no one would write
such things about themselves unless they were true.
Yet the privacy of a piece of writing does not guarantee its honesty, just as the brutality of a
confession does not establish its truth.
The psychoanalytic point is that Lowen is not simply persuaded. She also gains something
from being persuaded.
With this account, she can both desire Jeremy and preserve her moral self-image. She does not
have to experience her desire as something complicated, accompanied by rivalry, jealousy,
and guilt. She has a story in which wanting him becomes inseparable from saving him.
The manuscript therefore performs two functions at once: it appears to expose Verity’s
wickedness while making Lowen’s desire defensible.
In this reading, the writing matters not only because of its content, but because of the service
it performs for its reader’s psyche.
A Bad Verity, a Good Jeremy, and a Lowen Who Must Remain Innocent
Here, Melanie Klein’s concept of splitting is illuminating. In splitting, the lovable and
threatening aspects of the self and the other are kept apart. Rather than tolerating the reality
that one person can be both desirable and capable of harm, the mind places goodness on one
side and badness on the other. Idealizing one person and seeing another as entirely bad can
reinforce each other.
In our reading, Lowen’s world becomes organized accordingly: Verity carries danger and
destructiveness; Jeremy carries suffering and victimhood; Lowen herself carries care and the
possibility of rescue.
But this division is not only about other people. It also helps Lowen keep parts of herself out of
view.
As long as possessiveness belongs exclusively to Verity, Lowen does not have to see her own
wish to take Verity’s place as possessive. As long as deception belongs to Verity, she can
overlook the role of omission, selective attention, and disregarded information in her own
behavior.
In the language of this defense:
“If she is bad enough, I no longer have to question my own goodness.”
This does not mean Lowen consciously devised a plan to deceive herself from the beginning. A
psychological defense can operate precisely where someone believes they are simply seeing
reality as it is.
Nor must we regard her concerns about Verity as entirely fabricated. An interpretation can
rest on genuine signs while also serving a defensive function. Fear and self-interest do not
necessarily cancel each other out.
Lowen can genuinely be afraid while using that fear to legitimize her own desire.
But this defense comes at a considerable cost: to preserve a good image of oneself, the other
person must be stripped of their human complexity. Verity is no longer a woman with a past, relationships, fears, and an account of herself. She becomes an obstacle whose removal would
apparently benefit everyone.
Lowen Wants More Than Jeremy—She Wants Verity’s Place
The relationship between the two women cannot be reduced to a rivalry over a man. Lowen is
expected to continue Verity’s writing, wears her clothes, and enters a relationship with
Jeremy. The film itself emphasizes this movement toward the other woman’s position.
Here, the distinction between romantic jealousy and envy becomes important. In Klein’s
formulation, envy is directed toward something good that another person possesses and
enjoys, accompanied by the painful feeling that it belongs to them rather than to me. This
experience can involve a wish to take or devalue that goodness.
From this perspective, Lowen’s question is not simply “How can I separate Jeremy from
Verity?”
Another question is at work: “Why does she have this life? Why does she possess something I
want?”
Seen this way, portraying Verity as bad is not merely a way of removing a rival. It can also
make envy more bearable. If she does not deserve her life, possessing that life no longer
signifies her superiority. Instead, it becomes an injustice that taking her place appears to
correct.
In this reading, the fantasy’s unspoken statement is:
“You have something I want, but because you do not deserve it, taking it from you is not
an act of possession. It is an act of justice.”
Here, desire and morality become dangerously entangled.
But another contradiction also emerges. To push Verity aside, Lowen moves closer to her. To
take her place, she must also make something of Verity’s way of being her own.
Verity is both the person Lowen wants to distance herself from and the model toward which
she moves.
Hatred, then, does not mean the absence of identification. In this relationship, hatred and
identification can feed each other: “I want you gone, but I want to be where you are.”
The Double: When the Woman I Fear Comes Too Close
In “The Uncanny,” Freud shows that fear does not always arise from unfamiliarity. Something
can become frightening because it returns a disavowed familiarity to us. The double, too, can
carry parts of the self, unrealized possibilities, and wishes that a person experiences as
existing outside themselves.
From this perspective, Verity is not simply Lowen’s rival. She is a disturbing mirror.
Lowen sees in her something she wants to condemn, but her own behavior erodes the
reassuring distance between them.
The initial fear might be: “What could this woman do to me?”
But at a deeper level, another question emerges:
“What might I be capable of doing to take this woman’s place?”
This shift matters. The threat no longer exists only outside Lowen. Part of it concerns
capacities within herself that she does not want to recognize.
The dream of the kiss gathers this conflict into a single image: Lowen kisses Jeremy and
suddenly sees Verity in his place. This is a dream, not an actual encounter between the
characters.
We can read it as the presence of guilt. But reducing it to guilt misses the image’s complexity.
Rivalry, identification, fear, and even attraction to the rival herself can overlap within this
dream. Its meaning need not be exhausted by a single definitive explanation.
What matters in our reading is that Verity has not been excluded from the relationship. She
has found her way into desire itself.
Lacan also helps us understand this problem. In his thought, desire is not merely the wish to
have something. It is also entangled with a question about the Other’s desire: What does the
Other want, and what place do I occupy in that wanting?
Lowen therefore does not simply ask, “Do I want Jeremy?”
There is a more difficult question: “What made Verity desirable to him? If I take her place, will
I become equally desirable?”
From this perspective, Jeremy becomes more than a desirable man. He becomes someone
whose choice can validate Lowen’s worth.
Wanting him becomes linked to wanting a particular image of herself: a woman who has been
chosen—not merely a replacement, but someone chosen in her own right.
Yet this very need keeps Lowen dependent on Verity. As long as she measures her own worth
against the position another woman occupied, she has not separated from her, even if that
woman is no longer present.
The Mother in the Manuscript: The Difficulty of Tolerating a Third
Within the manuscript’s account, Verity’s children become rivals to her relationship with
Jeremy. It is important to attribute this to “the Verity of the manuscript,” rather than treat it as
an established truth about a woman the film prevents us from knowing completely.
Analytically, the problem in this portrayal is not simply hatred of the child. It is the
unbearable realization that the beloved can also be attached to someone other than me.
Jeremy the father is no longer only Jeremy the husband. Part of his attention and affection
belongs to a relationship in which Verity is not the center.
In this reading, the child represents a limit to possession: the other person does not belong
entirely to me. They have relationships in which I am not the sole object of their attachment.
We can read the violence described in the manuscript as a fantasy of abolishing this limit. In
the language of such a fantasy: “If the rival is gone, everything will return to me.”
But this is precisely where an essential distinction must be maintained.
Experiencing anger, having a fantasy, creating a fictional character, intending to commit
violence, and committing it are not the same thing.
Freud’s distinction between psychical reality and external reality allows us to think about the
meaning of fantasy without equating it with an actual event. An experience can have psychic
consequences without the same event having occurred in the external world.
We must not reverse this distinction and conclude: “Then even if Verity did not commit
murder, her writing proves that she was a murderer in her unconscious.”
That is no longer analysis. It is turning interpretation into an indictment.
We do not even know whether the text directly expresses the writer’s personal fantasies or
constructs the voice of an imaginary narrator. Psychoanalysis does not authorize us to erase
that distance.
A more defensible question is why this image of motherhood makes Lowen so ready to judge.
What is it about the “bad mother” that allows her to absorb all the darkness in the story and
exempt the other characters from closer scrutiny?
Jeremy: The Desired Man Whose Violence Cannot Be Blamed on Another Woman
In the debate over the manuscript and the letter, there is a danger that Jeremy will recede into
the background, as though everything depends on what kind of person his wife was.
But Jeremy kills Verity. This event is not merely a claim made in one of the two documents.
Even before deciding whether the letter is truthful, therefore, we must confront his violence.
His grief may matter in understanding his behavior, but understanding violence does not
justify it. Verity’s possible guilt does not erase Jeremy’s responsibility either.
In our reading, the defense of idealization can come into play here: a disturbing quality in the
desired man can be reinterpreted so that he remains desirable. Violence becomes strength,
possession becomes protection, and revenge becomes evidence of the depth of his love. This
reinterpretation is consistent with the Kleinian logic of preserving the idealized object by
setting aside its threatening aspects.
Lowen’s question, then, is not simply “What kind of man is Jeremy?”
The question is: Which part of him must I minimize in order to continue the relationship?
This question also unsettles the security of the new relationship. If violence is explained
entirely through the victim’s badness, what guarantees that someone else will not one day be
placed in that same “bad” position?
This is not a prediction of the story’s future. It is the logical consequence of an explanation
that treats violence solely as a result of another person’s behavior, rather than as the
perpetrator’s choice.
Uncertainty about Verity must not grant Jeremy immunity. Nor does the characters’
psychological complexity mean that their responsibilities are equal.
The Letter: What Does Lowen Not Want to Know?
The letter is discovered after Verity’s death, and Lowen does not share its contents with
Jeremy. Despite this new account, she continues into her new life with him.
But the letter matters for more than the alternative answer it offers to the mystery.
It changes Lowen’s position: having judged another woman, she must now reflect on her own
judgment.
The question is no longer simply “What had Verity done?” It becomes: “With what certainty
did I judge her? What did I want? What did I help bring about?”
Lowen does not need to be certain that the letter is true to confront these questions. It is
enough that she can no longer remain certain the manuscript was true.
Here, Bion’s framework of knowing and opposition to knowing can help. Within this
framework, knowing is not merely the accumulation of information. The capacity to tolerate
the emotional meaning of experience also matters. The fear that knowing may be too painful
can disrupt the process of learning from experience.
From this perspective, Lowen’s problem is not a lack of information. New information exists.
The difficulty is that allowing it to change her understanding comes at a cost.
She must make connections between what she has read, what she has seen, what she has
wanted, and what she has done. Those connections could threaten her relationship, her
future, and her image of herself.
The more precise formulation, then, is not “Lowen does not know.”
She knows that another account exists, but she tries to prevent that knowledge from
changing her life.
Nor should this situation simply be called repression. The letter has not vanished from her
awareness. The problem more closely resembles neutralizing what is known: the information
is admitted, but its implications are left outside the door.
In the language of this defense: “I know I may have been wrong, but I do not want to draw a
conclusion from that possibility that would change everything.”
Of course, Lowen’s silence cannot be explained solely by the wish to preserve her desire. Fear
of a man whose violence she has witnessed, dependency, and concern about the future may
also play a part. Silence in the presence of a dangerous person is not, by itself, evidence of
denial.
But considered alongside Lowen’s earlier behavior, this silence can be read as part of a larger
conflict. She needs to protect herself, yet she also faces the question of what she is protecting:
her safety, her relationship, or an image of herself in which she is still the rescuer?
Guilt: Fear of Being Bad, or Concern for the Other?
The letter does not merely threaten Lowen’s love for Jeremy. It also threatens her account of
her own goodness.
An important distinction emerges here between two questions: “If I was wrong, what image of
me will remain?” and “If I was wrong, what happened to that woman, and what was my part
in it?
The first revolves around rescuing the self-image. The second places the other person at the
center of concern once again.
This shift approaches the depressive position in Klein’s theory—not in the sense of
developing depression, but in the sense of tolerating the reality that love and hatred can be
directed toward the same person, and that I, too, can harm someone who is no longer merely
a “bad object.” In this position, concern for the other, sorrow, and the wish to make reparation
become possible.
For Lowen, such a movement would not mean suddenly seeing Verity as entirely good and
herself as entirely bad. That would merely reverse the same splitting.
The more difficult movement would be to say: “I have feared her. I have envied her. I have
wanted her place. And yet she was a human being whose death I cannot reduce to a means of
beginning my own life.”
In this reading, reparation does not mean erasing the past or quickly soothing the conscience.
In the Kleinian tradition, reparation involves recognizing harm and respecting the other
person’s independent reality, rather than imagining that every event can be undone and
innocence restored.
What Lowen must relinquish is not simply a certainty about Verity. It is the image of herself as
someone who stood outside the violence throughout and merely discovered the truth.
This loss demands a form of mourning: mourning complete innocence, mourning an entirely
safe beloved, and mourning a future that was supposed to owe nothing to the past.
The film’s ending does not show this conflict being resolved. Lowen chooses the new life, but
she carries a question with her that can no longer be assumed to remain silent.
From Reading Another’s Story to Writing One for Oneself
For me, this is one of the story’s subtlest movements: at the beginning, Lowen is commissioned
to continue Verity’s writing. By the end, she decides which account will have a place in her
new life and which must not be heard.
She gives Jeremy the manuscript; she keeps the letter to herself. She is therefore not merely
the reader of two narratives. She intervenes in their fate.
From this perspective, her identification with Verity extends beyond wearing her clothes or
taking her place as Jeremy’s partner.
Lowen, too, becomes someone who places a distance between text and life, revealing one part
while keeping another hidden. This does not necessarily mean she has become the same
woman. It means she can no longer attribute the entire problem of distortion to someone else.
And we, too, are implicated in this question.
We can continue debating the manuscript and the letter, but we also need to examine our own
desire to close the case. Why do we so badly want one person to bear all the blame? What
comfort do we find in that certainty? By identifying a monster, what do we excuse ourselves
from examining?
A psychoanalytic reading is not intended to declare that truth does not exist. It asks what we
do with the truth when it does not align with our desire.
In this reading, the tragedy of Verity is not simply the failure to arrive at the truth. It is
turning another person into a narrative that helps us bear ourselves.
The final question is therefore no longer simply who Verity was.
The question is:
If we need someone else to be bad in order to preserve a good image of ourselves, are we
truly prepared to know them?
References
Theoretical and Psychoanalytic Sources
Brady, M., Tyminski, R., & Carey, K. (2012). To know or not to know: An application of Bion’s K and −K to child treatment. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 38(3), 302–317. DOI: 10.1080/0075417X.2012.720103.
Source for the discussion of knowing, opposition to knowing, and the difficulty of tolerating the emotional meaning of experience within Bion’s framework.
Freud, S. (1920). A general introduction to psychoanalysis (G. Stanley Hall, Trans.). Horace Liveright.
Source for the distinction between psychical reality and external reality, and for the discussion of fantasy and unconscious conflicts.
Freud, S. (1925). The “uncanny” (A. Strachey, Trans.). In Collected papers (Vol. 4, pp. 368–407). Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1919).
Source for the concepts of the uncanny, the double, and the return of something familiar in a form experienced as alien and threatening.
Lacan, J. (2006). The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious. In Écrits: The first complete edition in English (B. Fink, Trans., pp. 671–702). W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1966).
Source for the discussion of desire, the subject’s relationship with the Other, and the question of one’s place in the Other’s desire.
Melanie Klein Trust. (n.d.-a). Depressive position.
Source for the explanation of the depressive position, tolerating the coexistence of love and hatred, concern for the other, and responsibility for harm.
Melanie Klein Trust. (n.d.-b). Envy.
Source for the discussion of envy and its distinction from romantic jealousy in Klein’s theory.
Melanie Klein Trust. (n.d.-c). Paranoid-schizoid position.
Source for the concepts of splitting, idealization, and keeping the good and bad aspects of the self and the other separate.
Melanie Klein Trust. (n.d.-d). Reparation.
Source for the discussion of reparation, recognizing harm, and concern for the other person’s independent reality.
Sources on the Film’s Narrative and Interviews with Its Cast and Filmmakers
Mangalindan, J. P. (2026, October 5). Making sense of the ambiguous ending of Verity. TIME.
Stivale, S. (2026, October 3). Verity cast reveals if they’re Team Letter or Team Manuscript—and Anne Hathaway has a strong opinion. Entertainment Weekly.
Thomas, L. M. (2026, October 3). Breaking down the ending of “Verity”. Cosmopolitan.
Utley, R. (2026, October 6). Verity ending explained: How that letter changed Lowen’s feelings, according to Dakota Johnson. CinemaBlend.
Note: The theoretical sources underpin the psychoanalytic concepts used in this article. Connecting those concepts to the film’s characters and situations constitutes the article’s interpretive reading, not a clinical diagnosis of the characters or a claim to establish the filmmakers’ definitive intentions.
