Human Behavior and Psychology in “The Good Will Hunting” by Gus Van Sant Term Paper

Background

The movie ‘Good Will Hunting’ is directed by Gus Van Sant. The script of this movie is written by co-stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The screenplay is quite thought-provoking, with a touch of irony.

Good Will Hunting is a movie that is emotionally and intellectually stirring, with straight, honest, but engaging dialogues. This movie centers on Will Hunting, who is a foster child, and has been abused during his childhood. He grew up in orphanages in South Boston. Emotionally he is unstable, angry, and confrontational. He is a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Will Hunting has a photographic memory. He is self taught in the fields of arts and history. He is inherently an expert at mathematics.

Current situation

Will solves a graduate-level mathematics problem from algebra which Professor Gerald Lambeau, a Fields Medalist, and an erudite, leaves on a board to be solved by his students. When it was anonymously solved by Will Hunting, Lambeau asked from the class who had solved it, to which no student took responsibility. Then, Lambeau posed a more difficult problem; he saw janitor Will Hunting solving it. Lambeau is dumb founded that he found the correct answer to it.

On the other hand, Will attacks a youth who had messed up with him during his kindergarten days. He even attacked a policeman. Meanwhile, Lambeau comes to his rescue because he finds Will quite intelligent. He gives him two options: either to face imprisonment or to study mathematics and see a therapist. Will finds the second option more convenient.

Five expert therapists left Will one after another because he behaved with them with contempt until he met Sean Maguire, who had been an old friend of Lambeau’s. He and Will had grown up in the same neighborhood. He finally overcomes his sarcastic replies and defense systems. Sean somehow convinced Will that he missed an important show just to meet a stranger to whom he got married. This indirectly seeded his mind with thoughts of Skylar, a young woman, he met at a bar.

At another point, Sean Maguire convinces him that it was not his fault that he has been a victim of child abuse, and that he is not responsible for his misery. Finally, he accepts these facts and overcomes his defense systems, bursting into tears.

The second important person with him is his best friend Chukie, who he tells that he would love to be a laborer for the rest of his life. But Chukie feels that it is not becoming of Will to waste his talent, he thinks that Will is full of hidden talents. He imagined him to reach a higher position with his latent abilities.

Difficulty in Social and Psychological Functioning

Will Hunting has passed through very tough times. He has been through orphan houses. He has not experienced the relations of love and mutual trust and care. His environment during the initial days of his upbringing had been the worst. He was abused during his childhood. He came to believe that he was responsible for his faults. He felt guilty about it all the time (Greene, R. Roberta, 2002). He had formed such a firm opinion that he doubted his inner talents and felt that he was good at labor, and would continue to do it for life. He had read street books, so he developed a fear, thinking how his knowledge could compare to that of well-read students. Later in life, he had been in contact with four people who tried to bring him out of his state of fear and baseless defense mechanisms. Sean Maguire teaches him to believe in himself. He indirectly gives Will a clue that sometimes strange people can have a lifelong affiliation, after which he falls in love with Skylar. He has to overcome his fear of being lonely and left out to develop trust, care, and love that people extend towards him.

Theories that apply

• Personality Theory by Sigmund Freud – The elements of personality as depicted by Sigmund Freud is three in number, namely, id, ego, and superego. We will examine the personality traits of Will according to this theory. The three systems mentioned above represent biological, psychological, and social forces.
• Id – The newborn is stimulated by his biological urges such as hunger, thirst, need for warmth, and need for sleep. These all are inborn in the human personality. These are called id. Id functions on the principle of pleasure. It aims at pleasure. It seeks immediate gratification of his needs. When a baby is hungry he wants food right away. If it is not available he may suckle on his fingers. Acting on the principle of id, an individual only responds to impulses, regardless of circumstances.
• Ego – As the biological needs of a person continue for life, so is id; in other words, it is an essential attribute of our personality. But what happens with time is that id becomes modified, keeping in view changing circumstances. That is, a child adopts to take a world view in his mind. Simply put, he identifies reality. The reality principle asks the child to suspend his biological needs until the right time. It includes remembering, learning, perceiving, and reasoning. It emerges out of id. The ego will make the person act or refrain from acting in a certain way which he has learned through his worldview (Goldstein, E., 2004).
• Superego – In reacting to his environment, a child finally learns values, social standards from his parents, peers, and other settings in which he has been. These aspects of personality are called superego.

Superego has two components both of which are of relevance to our study of Will. One is ‘conscience’; it usually discourages a person to act in a certain way in society because it is thought of as undesirable. As such conscience develops under scorn, and threats of punishments. For example, a parent may say to his child, “You are bad”. If a child acquires this trait in his personality, he will behave much like his parent.

The other component of the superego is the “ego ideal”, which is the behavior encouraged by elders. It develops through rewards received, and appreciation gained. Statements such as ‘good work’ and ‘excellent job’ serve as an example of this variety.

Together, this conscience and ego ideal shape the whole personality of an individual and determine what he should do and what he should avoid. The development of personality is ensured when there is advancement in ego and superego concerning id. The ego develops in response to the problem-based learning of animate and inanimate objects, whereas the superego develops only when a person comes into contact with human beings.

In addition to the above-mentioned theories, others are oral, anal, and phallic development. According to this theory, if breast milk is sufficiently available, an infant will likely be optimistic and trusting, and if the same is not available, the infant may develop a pessimistic view of life and lack of trust. Furthermore, Sigmund Freud argues that if anal training was not properly started then the infant may prefer messiness and disorder, over cleanliness.

At this juncture, the mention of the Freudian theory of consciousness, and its importance is necessary. Mental life as described by Sigmund Freud consists of three levels of awareness. The first level is the conscious level, at which the person is aware of what is going on in his environment. Below this is the area for feelings and thoughts, which are not available at any time but maybe recalled. Then there is the unconscious. This area of our brain is deep-seated. Freud believes that this area of our mind is sitting on the driver’s seat. He believes much of our behavior is formed because of this area. Unconscious is not easy to tap but it can be discovered by using special techniques of psychoanalysis, such as free association.

It is believed that traumatic experiences are deeply buried in the unconscious. To avoid pain with their expression these are repressed and buried.

As is evident, Will Hunting has passed through severe orphan houses training. It is possible that he has not been completely satisfied with his basic needs of ‘id’. In orphan houses, individuals being many are not properly taken care of. Additionally, there is the absence of warmth of a mother there. As he has been brought up in such an atmosphere where there was no proper care, his superego had learned values that were best fitted there. He became a person of low esteem and no self-worth.

It is quite possible that oral and anal phases have not been done properly, which could be the cause of sarcastic use of language, absence of trust, care, and love. Messiness of his living place may be due to an improper anal stage (Freud, S., 1938).

Cognitive Theory and Rational Emotive Therapy

This theory deals with the acquisition of thought and knowledge; and a reflection of these in our actions and feelings. So it is a holistic function of thoughts, memories, feelings, and our reaction to the environment as a result of which we all have unique expressions depending upon how we perceived our world view.

Cognitive theory is not a single theory but a combination of many, each presenting certain aspects of human personality and behavior. For example, the effects of id, ego, and superego in Freudian concepts, and the shaping of our behavior in relation to the environment. They believe that the human mind is like a computer, and his environment is like information. The information gained is processed in the mind and then individuals react to it. In essence, theories of Gestalt psychology by Wolfgang Kohler, Kurt Koffka, and Jean Piaget incorporated the development of moral values over some time.

Environmental influences on a person are many and varied. It is interesting to see how an individual who is made of certain biological traits and has certain psychology, reacts to the environment in which he is placed. Environmental theorists claim that human behavior is a product of two-way interactions between an individual and the environment he is faced with. This provides him with an external environment according to cognitive theorists. He thereby attaches personal meaning to the behavior of others, circumstances, and events (Berzoff et al, 1991). This leads to the formation of a uniquely real environment for him. This reality may be different from that of others, such that it may either create hopelessness or optimism and forward-looking behavior. When an individual learns from this environment, there is some ‘poor fit’ between him and his environment. In other words, the individual cannot completely grasp the message of his environment, and there can be misconceptions. These misconceptions and gaps in personality can be filled up by the active involvement of a helper who seeks to rectify some of the concepts that the individual has learned through interaction with his environment. Therefore, certain specific therapies may be implicated to change his perspective about his environment to make them more compatible socially. One such therapy is rational-emotive therapy which focuses on irrational thoughts which contribute to a person’s self-defeating behavior and emotional distress (Applegate, 1990).

Basic assumptions of cognitive theory state that the growth spectrum is a continuous one. There is cognitive growth in every individual. It is because of a person’s physical maturation and interaction with his environment at a specific age. A person’s intelligence, problem-solving, and decision making vary with age, due to different treatments of environment upon us and our specific reaction to it. Any individual only specifically reacts to the environment. He focuses selectively on events (Vourlekis, B., 1999).

In the movie, it is quite clear that Will Hunting has a distorted view of reality, which is hampering his matching in society. It is due to the environment he has lived in decision-making and was brought up in. He blames himself for all his miseries and behaves in a self-defeating way, such that he prefers to be labor throughout life. He does not understand that he can be elevated to a high rank which many people covet their entire lives but never reach there. For this reason, Lambeau, who has seen Will, admits in these words to Sean Maguire that he should change his irrational behavior if he could. He tells Sean, “This kid’s special, Sean. I’ve never seen anything like him.”

After Sean is convinced, he engages in multiple therapy sessions with Will. Here we will discuss some important points of rational emotive therapy, which Sean involves in with Will Hunting; we shall also see any reaction of Will towards these developments and visible change of behavior. At first, Sean is unsuccessful to break into his reality constructs of Will. But at one point where Sean tells him, he missed a game show, which he had waited for night to get the tickets, to meet a stranger girl whom he had just seen there. This is the first breakthrough that Sean gains in Will’s personality. Will says in response, “So wait a minute. The Red Sox haven’t won a World Series since 1918, you slept out for tickets, games gonna start in twenty minutes, in walks a girl you have never seen before, and you give your ticket away?”.

At one point, Sean tells Will the importance of being in relation, to overcome unforeseen fears that may arise due to break up, “That’s what I’m saying, Will. You’ll never have that kind of relationship in a world where you’re afraid to take the first step because all you’re seeing are the negative things that might happen ten miles down the road.”

Finally, Sean makes Will realize that it was not his fault; therefore he had no reason to be guilty about himself. He tells Will his story thus: “My dad used to make us walk down to the park and collect the sticks he was going to beat us with. Breaking the worst of the beatings were between me and my brother. We would practice on each other trying to find sticks that would break”.

After some time, Will tells him that he was also beaten and abused he says, “He used to just put a belt, a stick and a wrench on the kitchen table and say “choose” when Will admits that he was beaten; Sean Maguire capitalizes on it and insistently tries on Will to express by his mouth that it was not his fault but it was the circumstances that he had been in. Here, from these few lines we can realize how Will bursts into tears upon conceding that it was not his fault:

SEAN (cont’d)

This is not your fault.

WILL

(nonchalant)

Oh, I know.

SEAN

It’s not your fault.

WILL

(smiles)

I know.

SEAN

It’s not your fault.

WILL

I know.

SEAN

It’s not your fault.

WILL

(dead serious)

I know.

SEAN

It’s not your fault.

WILL

Don’t fuck with me.

SEAN

(comes around desk,

sits in front of Will)

It’s not your fault.

WILL

(tears start)

I know.

SEAN

It’s not…

WILL

(crying hard)

I know, I know…

(Good Will Hunting script).

This narrative clearly indicates that Will’s views about his reality concepts had changed. Rational-emotive therapy can bring about behavior change. It presents in vivid by a therapist about his patient. What is unconsciously driving his thoughts, without the realization of a patient that he has changed, is a misfit view of reality? A therapist’s role is to make his patient think differently about his environment, in a way, which is more suitable, to his environment, to change the defeatist view that blocks his communication with people, resulting in at the end of relationships.

Genetic hereditary theory

When a person is born, he brings with him many hereditary qualities, which are transformed into one form or the other, with time. Whatever he comes with into this world has to influence by his genes, taken from his parents, the mother, and the father. The hereditary factor is that, which shows coinciding qualities of a person with those of the parents. Genes are automatically transferred to the offspring, and the qualities of parents and children match.

Among the various psychological aspects that the human possesses, are certain factors that distinguish him from others. Every individual has his or her quality to boast of, and no two persons are the same. But some individuals have special character traits in them, due to the environment they have been brought up in, or with the kind of upbringing, they have undergone. The same is the case with Will here, that his behavior is different and distinguishable due to his environment in childhood. But the environment is not solely responsible for human behavior. The heredity factor, and adoption of genes from the parents, also affect the behavior that is carried out by an individual.

Each individual can learn things and accept or adopt things from their surroundings or the environment in which he is placed. Will adopted his strange behavior patterns and irritable behavior due to the conditions he was kept in while being brought up. His parents beat him up, but they still lay inside him, some form of hidden talent, which the professor wanted to be explored, and made use of it. So the question is, where did that capability come from, to answer the toughest of questions, and perform outstandingly on the one hand, but on the other, he was so unconfident and uncertain about his future endeavors, that he thought he could do nothing worthwhile and would stick to being a laborer for life.

The famous English scientists Francis Galton came up with the nature-nurture debate, which speaks of the relationship between nature, and the effects of the nurturing of individuals, which are the results of the human being’s personality. It says, that whatever genes the individual brings into the world with him, are linked to the environment he grows in. the two factors are greatly dependent on one another, the nature side states that intelligence is based on the hereditary factor, and the nurture side emphasizes on the environment affecting the intelligence and mental capacity of the individual (Neuroscience of Intelligence).

Studies have shown that the IQ or intelligence quotient of an individual is dependent upon heredity factors. Scientists have shown the influence of genetics on the IQ of individuals, and the heritability factor amounts to about 50% for IQ (Kaufman, A., 1999). However, genetics and environmental factors overlap one another, and are interdependent, as aforementioned.

Coming back to the nature and nurture factors of heredity, the natural genes a person is born with are solely said to be responsible for the intelligence that a person possesses, as well as the behavior that is a result of this intelligence (Neuroscience of Intelligence).

Will, in the movie, is seen to be distinct from his character and had some sort of a genetic influence apart from the terrible abusive environment he was brought up in. On the other hand, Francis states that the mental aptitude of an individual is markedly influenced by the atmosphere that has been created for him to nurture. Both of these aspects are right to their extents, but it cannot be stated that only nature or only the environment is independently influential.

Thus it is clear from the genetic theories that relate to intelligence, that genes and heredity plus the environment play a role in the intelligence acquired by an individual. Will had a unique intelligence which was noted by his professor and wanted it to be enhanced, by the help of his friend, Sean, who was attempting to treat him out of his complexities. His professor was stunned at the fact that Will could answer those questions that others could not, and was sure that he had some sort of hidden talent that could be utilized efficiently. This hidden talent that Will possessed was probably genetically transferred, and he may have had some hereditary transfer of intelligence genes, that made him an introvert, but at the same time, exclusively intelligent.

Genes are passed on from one generation to the next and are contained in the human cell, in DNA. Some physical traits such as eye color, or hair color, are evident when transferred, but the secondary traits which are invisible, like the intelligence, or personality of individuals, are also incorporated in a person’s DNA. There is proven evidence of the effect of genetics and genes on the offspring. Children share 50% of the genes of their parents, and that also, with each of them. Heredity influences the intelligence levels of people substantially, and research has shown such results through tests performed on twins also, to signify the effect of genes on the intelligence they possess.

Some findings in France and Canada have shown that an infant’s earliest environment affects the IQ level that is reached in later years (Kaufman, A., 1999). This is proof of the fact that Will in the movie, had some hereditary intelligence, then had a reasonable environment to reside in, which made his IQ reach a certain level, and finally, he got all the beatings, which led to his furious nature, and irritable moods.

Critique of Theories

The personality theory put forth by Sigmund Freud is very factual, in that it speaks of the necessities of life, and how the human reacts to the elementary and most essential needs of life, like hunger, and thirst. It is very rightly stated, that each person has an ego to take care of, and performs accordingly, in his life, and for all the activities that he undertakes. The superego of individuals includes those aspects which he has learned from his families, which are inclusive of all the values that have been set forth, to follow. These may also include the standards set by peers, and which are the norm of the society, which he is to follow. This is also a positive point of the personality theory, as whosoever does not wish to follow the norms of the society, is considered an outcast and each individual’s elders teach him what is best for him to lead a successful life. The theory has not included any instances of people not living successful lives on not following the norms of society. There is also no mention of the types of standards that are meant to be followed.

The cognitive combination of theories relates the thoughts of a person to his actions. This is true in the sense that whatever each person thinks is executed in daily routines. The thoughts that are accumulated in a person’s mind are brought into practicality.

The genetic theory of intelligence has to influence approaches that since other elements are inherited genetically, so can intelligence be inherited. This is convincing to quite an extent.

Conclusion

It can be seen that psychology has a great impact on the personality of an individual, and the entire life span is dependent on psychological factors. Will also showed offensive behavior in his daily acts due to the psychological disturbances caused during his upbringing. The behavior of Will has been influenced due to the psychological gains and losses he faced during his upbringing. Psychology plays a vital role in a person’s life, and all theories put forth concerning human behavior, are authentic, practicable, and worthwhile.

References

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3. Kaufman, A. Genetics of Childhood Disorders 1999. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 1999 38:4.
4. Neuroscience of Intelligence: Nature vs. Nurture Debate.
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