The Wild Child Analysis Essay

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For our paper we’ve chosen to analyze the film, The Wild Child. The film helps to serve as a great example for multiple psychological phenomena and concepts pertaining to the material that we have learned throughout the course this quarter. Right from the opening scene of The Wild Child, the viewer is able to make note of the complexity that is the life of the young Victor; otherwise known as the wild child in this film. The viewer is able to view Victor’s lack of social awareness, his inability to cope in a way society deems fit when placed in a stressful situation, quintessentially he lacks the basic skill of language to voice his distressed thoughts. All of this can be analyzed from the opening situation in which he frightens a women picking …show more content…

This is important to note due to the explanation it helps give for why Victor acts the way he does and struggles to learn. It also explains why he can’t analyze people’s facial expressions, since the part of the brain, the amygdala, that helps in facial recognition is under active in autism patients. Also the following, “ Stereotypical behaviours such as echolalia, twirling, rocking, flicking and hand flapping... act as self-calming strategies for children with autism. Despert (1965) interpreted common obsessive behaviours as defences against the overwhelming anxiety experienced by children with autism,” are signs that are mentioned by Alinda, Furniss, and Walter in the journal article entitled “ Anxiety in High Function Children with Autism.” These signs are actually presented by Victor in the film The Wild Child. For example the first instance in which this acknowledged is toward the beginning of the film (time: 21:00) when Victor is being observed and he keeps rocking back and forth. Another instance in which we can note signs of Autism is when a key is misplaced (time: 52:00), and Victor keeps putting it back in its proper place, thus showing obsessiveness mechanism of Autistic children, which is seen as coping. As a result these circumstances show that the effects that Autism has on his brain affect the actions in which he

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