Psychology in Precious

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Precious, a movie based on the book Push written by Sapphire, is an interesting movie directed by Lee Daniels. Precious can be easily analyzed using basic motivation and emotion theories in psychology. The movie is about Claireece "Precious" Jones and how she becomes a strong, independent woman after breaking through her curse of physical and sexual abuse which she has endured since she was three months old. At the beginning, Precious is physically and verbally abused by her mother. In addition, Precious was raped by her father multiple times and impregnated twice. After being kicked out of her school because she was pregnant, Precious willingly joins the Each One Teach One alternative school so she can improve her reading and writing skills while, eventually, taking care of her two children. After some guidance from her teacher, Ms. Blu Rain, Precious starts feeling safe and starts to love herself and others around her. A lot of the behaviors in the movie can be easily explained by biological needs, psycho-social needs, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

There are many biological needs a person has. These are usually things that drive species to do things in order to survive. Especially, since Precious is pregnant, she must have food, water, oxygen, sleep, and avoidance of pain. At one point in the movie, when Precious’ mother would not give her money to buy food, Precious goes into a restaurant, orders some chicken wings, and runs out without paying. Precious was very hunger and her biological need to have food and water drove her to do this. Precious was always psychically abused by her mother, Mary. However, after giving birth to her second child, she started to defend herself against her mother to avoid pain. These are just s...

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.... Precious was finally proud of herself for doing well in school. In addition, her friends, her teacher, and her social worker were recognizing her efforts–these were some of her external esteem needs. Finally, at the very end of the movie, it is arguable that that she was self-actualized, even though this stage is never able to be satisfied because as one grows psychologically there are always new opportunities to continue to grow. However, for the time being, she was happy and free from her mother.

Precious is really an inspirational movie. It makes the viewer sympathize and empathize with Precious, the main character. Even though Precious’ story is not common, she is still like every other human being, in regards to her psychology. In my opinion, Precious was a great movie to analysis and connect to psychology, especially, emotional and motivational psychology.

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