In the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, a twenty-year-old named, Will Hunting worked as a janitor at MIT in Boston. He likes to go to bars and hang around with his three close friends. He is aggressive and mistrustful at such a young age. His sense of worth has been severely compromised by his traumatizing childhood. Because Will experienced so much abuse in foster homes, he becomes avoidant. Anger developed within him because of the violence and abuse from the people he surrounds himself by. When he wins a prize for solving a difficult math problem, the young genius attracts the attention of a mathematics professor named Lambeau. Professor Lambeau takes Will under his wing after he is about to go to jail for insulting a police officer, He then …show more content…
McGuire would have not been successful if he used a softer approach. McGuire used confrontation intentionally because it was the most effective. Will was only in therapy for a total of eight sessions, and few clients will stay in therapy much longer. Confrontation was effective in that moment because the therapist was able to challenge Will to help him overcome a painful past. Will is an interesting character to observe in terms of personality and behavior because the film is devoted to his anger issues and subsequently psychotherapy. Will is highly complex, emotionally, distraught and hostile. Above all, Will has suppressed painful anger within himself. The abuse he has undergone in foster homes has hardened his heart against the world and it has taught him not to let people into his life. This has also given him, a sense of longing for a father figure like his therapist Sean McGuire. Will’s pervasive mistrust of others is most likely the basis for the rest of his psychological and personality struggles. His sarcasm, arrogance, and pessimism are a series of weak characteristics that he portrays in front of others, so he can cover up the fact that he is struggling with his own identity. T tines it is difficult to understand why Will is so stubborn when it comes to listening to others, but his personality traits come from his morbid …show more content…
Learning about psychology has positive effects especially in my life. The concepts that were learned in class has helped me know myself better, and to understand my family members, friends, and people around me. Also learning how to improve my own personal relationships with others. Many of the topics in psychology contribute to the skills that can be used to improve studying habits, deal with stress, and tips to improve your memory. This course has allowed me to improve my observations skills. My observational skills include recognizing people’s facial expressions, and body language, and being able to understand how people think and behave can be extremely
Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby explore the themes of trauma and redemption through the creators unsystematic stories. Traumatic events and it’s effects on both protagonists are the main focus of the texts. Sant’s troubled genius, Will Hunting has difficulties connecting with individuals due to a history of emotional abuse. Fitzgerald’s famous romantic comes in the form of, Jay Gatsby, a financially successful man that has difficulties moving on from his former lover, Daisy. Both Jay and Will are on the path to self actualisation. Equally notable is the negative effects of the past on their personal lives and the different methods each character takes to overcome these experiences and grow. The creators
Good Will Hunting is the graceful tale of a young gentleman’s struggle to find out where he belongs in the world, by first finding out who he himself is. In this film, Matt Damon takes on the role of a disturbed genius that has a keen understanding of the deepness of human character. The film is a voyage through the mind of Will Hunting as he is required to undergo psychotherapy as an alternative to serving jail time. With the assistance of a psychologist, played by Robin Williams, Will learns about himself and recognizes his individual worth in the world by comprehending what is most important to him in his own life. This motion picture serves as a source of superb example for film technique. Gus Van Sant’s directing ability joined with the writing skills of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who also plays Will’s best buddy, Chuckie, is a vibrant mixture of technical features used to induce sentiment and compassion amongst the viewers of this heart-warming film. Characteristics of the color, angles, shots, camera movement, editing, and distortions are all each particularly noteworthy to the general composition of Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting.
The character this film is primarily centered around is Will Hunting. Will lives in a tattered house in a bad neighborhood in the city of Boston. He grew up in foster care where he sustained continual physical abuse as a child. Will has a few close friends he is always with but never opens up about anything below surface level. Will is incredibly gifted with intelligence however he works as a custodian at the highly prestigious school, MIT. Professor Lambeau teaches advanced mathematics at MIT and is the one who discovers Will’s incredible talent for solving advanced mathematical theory. Professor Lambeau has high hopes for Will and pushes him into getting jobs with prestigious employers so that his gift is not wasted working as a custodian. Chuckie Sullivan is one of the closest of Will’s friends. They’ve known each other for years and Chuckie drives Will to work every day. Chuckie cares for Will and realizes the gift that he has and tries to convince Will he should be doing something of greater importance with his life. Skylar is a college stu...
While the other masters of various crafts saw no promise in Will, Halt saw his true potential not only physically, but also morally. Like any hero, Will is an honest, responsible, and respectful person. Though he is soft spoken and quite shy, he is very kind, friendly and also very curious. While Will’s tendency to get distracted and ask many questions annoy Halt, he eventually becomes very fond of him, serving as not only a mentor, but a fatherly figure as well. Always ready to follow orders and do the right thing, Will is an excellent apprentice and a likable character that keeps the audience immersed in the book. The relationship between the apprentice and the master is quite hilarious throughout the book because they serve as foils of each other in many
But when Will interacts with the therapists, the good Will that others are obsessively trying to create is in reality still the bad Will, even though in the eyes of the alert audience the counselor is ethical and caring and trying to work with Will.
Sean McGuire had similarities in terms of their feelings. In observing the movie, Sean demonstrates his ability as Will’s therapist to provide him with an encouraging attachment relationship. A bond was developed that enabled Will to create a significant understanding regarding his self worth. With this understanding, Will display an ability to engage and interact effectively with others. According to Hutchinson, the meaning of attachment is “An enduring emotional bond between two people who are important to each other Provides affection and a sense of security” (Hutchinson, 2008, p.546). Examples of this process were the shared experiences of being raised in the same area of South Boston, a similar interest in books, their passion for baseball, and their common experience of having been physically abused in their childhood. In most therapists’ opinion, commonality creates hope for any future connection between therapist and client. While watching the movie, it was evident that shared experiences forced Will to see Sean as a human being, not just another adult trying to hurt him. Patients who are very guarded and defensive, the commonality phase provides them hope of change once
Wegenek, Amira & Buskist, William 2010 The Insiders Guide To The Psychology Major: Everything You Need To Know About The Degree And The Profession APA
Psychology is an ever growing field in today’s job field. Psychology comes from the Greek words “psych” meaning soul and “ology” meaning logic, it translates to “the science of the soul” (Ferguson). It was founded by a man named Wilhelm Wundt, he founded experimental psychology which later led to others discovering more in psychology Psychology is both a science and a profession, it is counted as a science because it’s about understanding people's behavior (Ferguson). Psychology is a great and interesting career choice for many generations
The purpose of this report is to analyse the personality of the character, Will Hunting from the film Good Will Hunting using the psychodynamic and humanistic theories of personality. The main characters discussed in this text and their relationship to Will can be seen in appendix 1.
...erhaps in another social location, with different social forces, Will may not have become a deviant but rather took on another role. If Will had been socialized properly, with normal parents and friends, perhaps his role and identity would be different. In different social locations, there are different institutions what require different roles and there are different social forces to control these roles. The sociological perspective has many concepts that examine the underlying reasons for why Will’s actions and identity are the way they are. Social location determines all aspects of one’s life, how they are going to be socialized, what friends they are going to have, what career, what role they will take on, etc.
(Erikson, 1980) Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development theory are in my opinion one of the best ways to look at Will Hunting’s changing personality and behaviour in the movie. Will’s avoidant and defensive personality is due to his abusive foster parents, he never received sympathy from his foster parents which made him accept the abuse as well as him becoming the abuser, as we see in the film when Will fights a former classmate that bullied him in kindergarten years ago. Another example of abuse is in the form of psychological abuse towards the marriage of Macguire and his deceased wife in which Will continually insults. Will seems to fluctuate stages throughout the movie, due to being an orphan and abuse from his foster parents he is fluctuating between the stages of basic trust vs. mistrust, and Initiative vs. guilt. Then when he meets Skylar (Minnie Driver) his development shifts to intimacy vs. isolation. (Erikson,
This paper will discuss the relationship between Will Hunting and the psychologist Sean Mcguire in the movie Good Will Hunting. The struggles that occur between these main characters will be analyzed and their meanings found. A basic outline of the movie will be included to give the larger picture and its influence upon the two men.
As college professors, do you ever consider exploring the world? Christopher McCandless once stated, “The core of man's spirit comes from new experiences.” This quote resonates throughout the movie adaptation, Into the Wild. Based on a true story in the 1990’s, the film explores a man’s existence and the meaning of life. Although released in 2007, I discovered the movie three years ago through the internet. Instantly, it became my favorite movie. Into the Wild describes an eye-opening adventure, an influential message, and a story that I, and possibly others, can relate to.
This movie starts off as Jordan Belfort, the main character in the movie, losing his job as a stockbroker in Wall Street. After losing his job, he goes and gets a job in a Long Island brokerage room. In the brokerage room, he sells penny stocks. Thanks to him being aggressive in his selling skills, he was able to make a profit. With the new income, he gives his wife a bracelet and she asked him why doesn’t he go after the people that can afford to lose money, not the middle-class people or lower income people. That is when he gets the idea to get a lot of young people and train them to become the best stock brokers.
Throughout this course I have learned a lot about psychology. I will talk about how it affected me personally, socially, organizationally/societal, and the lasting impact it had in my life.