This is a very nice psychoanalysis text, and it also remind us that the dangerous of exposing oneself in a specific situation. The elements of Gothic horrible film always shows how unconscious worked : archetype projected to everywhere and appear in the image of ghost. Especially at that time woman are actually repressed in sexual aspects- as we all know, the more you repress, the more the unconscious is evoked.
Losey keeps everything to a disarming cool, downplaying psychological irregularities with elliptical cuts and treating exaggerated genre clichés with a straight face. The film crystallizes the contradictory tug between materialism and humility, anxiety and hope, and faith and distrust that defined the US consciousness in the early postwar years.