Will Hunting Sociology

Will Hunting was a twenty year old Caucasian guy who lived in Boston. He was an orphan who used to be abused as a child by his foster parents at Boston. He worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Janitor; his work was to clean classrooms. Abused as a child, Will accused himself for his unfortunate childhood background and turns his self-hatred into aggressiveness, and mistrust. His life revolved around hanging out with friends, doing low-skilled jobs and fighting or doing minor crimes. He also did not seem to be ambitious. But despite all that, Will was also a mathematical genius who loved solving math problems written down on the board by an MIT professor named Lambeau. Due to his aggressive behavior, Will Hunting was arrested

(Early childhood) Normally in early childhood, children move towards maintaining attachment, exploring the world and the self, doing things on their own and improving their skill. “A child’s growing self-awareness and knowledge is paralleled by growing awareness of how the world—her family, immediate environment and, implicitly, her culture—is organized.” (Davies, 2010) On the other hand, children at Foster care undergo a variety of challenges that extend beyond the typical challenges presented to children such as poverty, neglect and abuse; this makes a bad impact on their healthy development. (Davido Durpee, 2002) Will Hunting also underwent similar challenges and had a dysfunctional childhood with his foster parents who used to beat him up and put cigarettes on his skin, but Will was too young to fight back. However his experiences as a child had an unhealthy impact on him, he never learned to trust his caregivers and believed that this violence is socially acceptable and he turned into an aggressive guy with a long criminal

(Davies, 2010) As suggested in Attachment theory, attachments formed with caregivers at an early age are helpful in forming healthy relationships throughout one’s life. (Groze, 1993) Failure to form a secure attachment may lead to emotional or behavior disorders as children age.
Subsequently, study shows that due to neglect or abuse in early childhood attachment becomes dysfunctional and therefore as needs of the child is not acknowledged by the caregiver a damaged concept of self develops. (Mitchell, 2007) Correspondingly, Will Hunting being raised into violence experienced insecure attachment with his foster parents and overwhelming feelings of worthlessness and