Tortilla Soup, an American romantic comedy shot by the director Maria Ripoll, is the story of one family, in which an elderly father-chef and his three grown up daughters are going to the kitchen to take part in Mexican meal and discuss their problems. In this connection, the paper aims at the identification of three characters, namely, Leticia, Carmen, and Maribel applying psychosocial and lifespan developmental theories to determine their psychosocial crises.
Leticia
The eldest of the daughters is Leticia. She teaches chemistry at the high school and cannot make clear her views neither about religious beliefs nor about men. Leticia suppresses her feelings and lives alone. In order to become a Christian, she rejected Catholicism. At the same time, she realizes that she is attracted by Orlando, a coach of a baseball team, who sends her love letters.
However, it is found then that the letters were sent by her student. According to the Twelve Stages of the Human Life Cycle by Armstrong, Leticia is in a midlife contemplation crisis (Fingerman, Berg, Smith, & Antonucci, 2011). By this time, a person has a lot to catch: to settle down, to enjoy a free life, start a family, and to find a high-paying job. Leticia’s soul asks to love truly and be loved, asks for purity of heart and purity of relationships. The elder daughter questions God, religion, and the meaning of life. Suddenly she realizes how narrow her horizons and how many interesting things she did not know and had missed.
In this connection, as a councelor, I note the problem of the midlife crisis. She feels a deep nostalgia for the real life and dissatisfaction. Speaking of the developmental tasks, it seems important to mention the following ones:
- Choosing a partner;
- Establishing a family;
- Managing a home
- Establishing a career (Fingerman et al., 2011).
In my point of view, through the development of the above tasks, Leticia would overcome the crisis.
According to Erikson’s Stages of Development, the woman suffers from the Intimacy versus Isolation crisis (Greene & Kropf, 2009). The lifespan of Leticia supposes proximity with others. Under the concept of proximity, Erickson understands not only physical intimacy but also the ability to care about the other person and to share everything without fear of losing himself. Proximity might be understood as self-identification – success or failure at this stage does not depend directly on the parents but only on how well a person has passed the previous stages. Consequently, Leticia’s social conditions can facilitate or impede the achievement of intimacy.
This concept is not necessarily linked to the sexual desire but also to friendship (Greene & Kropf, 2009). Leticia’s psychosocial crisis, if one considers it from the point of view of evaluation, contains both positive and negative components. If the conflict is resolved satisfactorily, in other words, in the case the ego enriches new positive qualities, then it incorporates a new positive component (for example, basal confidence and independence) and ensures a healthy development of the individual in the future. On the contrary, if the conflict remains unresolved or gets poor resolution, in other words, the ego is harmed, it integrates the negative component (for example, basal distrust, shame, and doubt). Therefore, Leticia should develop her relationships with friends, colleagues, and family to overcome the psychosocial crisis.
Carmen
The middle daughter is Carmen, who once wanted to follow her father’s footsteps and open the restaurant, but preferred another career of the business analyst. Likewise her father, Carmen is quick-tempered and feisty yet all her time is given to work. She is offered a high-profile job in Spain, but suddenly returns from the airport before the flight. Carmen lives through the beginning of adulthood, during which young people tend to orient themselves to the profession and career. The main danger of this life stage is an excessive concern.
The inability to establish a relationship based on trust leads to a sense of loneliness. As a result, Carmen tends to take a position of alienation and lack of interest in relationships with colleagues and friends. However, the positive criterion for the passage of this stage is love as the ability to commit to another person and to remain faithful to this relationship even if it will require concessions or loss of the freedom. Carmen manifests her love in a relationship of mutual care, respect, and responsibility for the family and father, in particular, when she returns home.
Based on the above representation of the character, it seems that Carmen passes through the Intimacy versus Isolation crisis. Therefore, her development tasks match with those of Leticia. However, Carmen is more one-sided as she concentrates exclusively on her work while it would be better if she pays attention to the family and friends as well.
Maribel
The youngest of daughters is Maribel, who cannot determine her place in life while her young men annoy her father. On the one hand, aggressive reaction, moods, feelings, unpredictable behavior and thinking, romance surges, and, on the other hand, depression, passivity, laziness, isolation, feelings her imperfection – all that is inherent to Maribel.
The crisis occurred due to the fact that, despite the rapid growth, physiological maturation and obvious outward signs of an adult, the character remains a child to some extent, a naïve and anxious child, willing to be looked after as well as protected from the difficulties of life. At the same time, Maribel is well aware that childhood is over as she wants to look like an adult. Thus, there is an Identity versus Role Confusion crisis according to Erikson’s Stages of Development (Greene & Kropf, 2009).
During this period, young people face various social demands and new roles. The developmental task is to bring together all available at this time knowledge about themselves (that they are sons or daughters, students, athletes, musicians, etc.) and combine these to include numerous images of themselves in a complete picture, which is the awareness both of the past and the future. Consequently, the following list of the developmental tasks is relevant to Maribel:
- Establishing emotional independence from parents;
- Equipping self with skills needed for productive occupation;
- Achieving gender-based social role;
- Establishing mature relationships with peers of both sexes (Fingerman et al., 2011).
Maribel also needs confidence that her internal integrity will be accepted by family and friends. In other words, she seeks to achieve greater confidence in the fact that the internal and external images of the integrity coincide. Her self-image might be confirmed through communication with others. The social and emotional maturation of the identity includes new ways to measure the world and the relationship to it.
Maribel can come up with the ideal family, religion, philosophical systems, social systems, and then compare and contrast with very imperfect personalities and organizations, knowledge of which she learned from the limited personal experience. Integrity crisis is often characterized by the inability to choose a career, continue the education, or choose a partner as in the case of Maribel. The majority of teenagers who suffer from the inherent conflict of this age are experiencing the poignant feeling of worthlessness, mental disorder, and aimlessness.
In her turn, the girl feels inability, alienation, and sometimes throws in the opposite direction from the way offered by the father. A deceased and serious conversation can calm the teenager, help to understand a variety of issues, and, most importantly, do not get hung up on her experiences. The father and elder sisters should show that in mature human life there is something else, more important, interesting, and inspiring. Otherwise, there is a risk of growing up the abnormally neurotic and anxious person.
Nevertheless, the positive quality associated with a successful exit from this crisis period is loyalty in a sense of the ability of the young woman to be faithful to her affections and promises, despite the inevitable contradictions in her system of values.
Family
An elderly Mexican Martin Naranjo is not only a talented chef but also a father of three adult daughters. In spite of the fact that he lost his sense of taste and smell, the life of Martin is hardly fresh as his daughters are able to add some spices to it. Once out of work, Martin focuses all his culinary talents on those who are near. For the sake of his great girls, he is ready to create true masterpieces of Mexican food, thus helping them to overcome the most difficult periods in their lives.
Girls meet their caring father with sincere love, but they became too old to continue to be under the care of Martin. All three dream to fly away from the parental nest. However, although the relationships in the family are very stormy, all disagreements will be overcome at the end as there is no such a unifying force as a common meal.
Erikson is developing a new view on personal relationships with parents and the cultural context of the family. If Freud was interested in the influence of parents on the development of the child’s personality, the Erikson emphasizes the historical context in which the individual was formed (Greene & Kropf, 2009). Based on the results of observations of people belonging to different cultures, the author shows that the child is bound to develop and is closely linked with the changing features of the social provisions and the system of values. Speaking of Naranjo family, it is possible to note the mentioned tendency. Looking at each other, sisters pass through the different life crisis. Undoubtedly, crises are associated with a particular age of women, but their influence on each other is also obvious.
Speaking of the resilience models, Zimmerman (2013) states that “Resiliency focuses attention on positive contextual, social, and individual variables that interfere or disrupt developmental trajectories from risk to problem behaviors, mental distress, and poor health outcomes” (p. 1). It seems appropriate to apply the compensatory model that is determined by the need to compensate for some deficiency of personality’s disharmony. It is of great importance to be able to divert to overcome the crisis applying a plan.
First, the problem generating the motive appears and entails the implementation of specific actions. Then, the difficulty of causing a negative emotional state should be realized. Finally, a way to overcome this difficulty should be found resulting in a decrease in the level of negative emotions and improvement of the mental state. For example, a philosophical attitude to life makes a good effect on the psychological stability (Reich, Zautra, & Hall, 2010). Mental health of the person is closely related to humor, positive thinking, and self-criticism.
Only if people can look at things without excessive seriousness, they might obtain psychological resilience. Another effective method for the formation of psychological stability is a positive self-image. It is understood that a person should cultivate a positive attitude towards his personality and accept himself being positive. However, the person should be careful to not to cross the line that leads to the perception of the world from the position of the victim that would grow psychological instability.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it should be emphasized that the paper examines three characters belonging to the same family focusing on such theories as Erikson’s stages of development, Armstrong’s life periods, and Zimmerman’s resilience model. It was stated that every stage of life has its own strengths and weaknesses so that the failure on the one stage of development does not necessarily doom a person to fail in the next period of life. In a person’s life changes are inevitable as people solve more and more problems associated with their development, they experience turning points in their lives, and acquire new experience while human development and self-improvement occur throughout the life course.
References
Fingerman, K. L., Berg, C. A., Smith, J., & Antonucci, T. C. (2011). Handbook of life-span development. New York: Springer.
Greene, R. R., & Kropf, N. P. (2009). Human behavior theory: A diversity framework (2nd ed.). New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction.
Reich, J. W., Zautra, A., & Hall, J. S. (2010). Handbook of adult resilience. New York: Guilford Press.
Zimmerman, M. A. (2013). Resiliency Theory: A Strengths-Based Approach to Research and Practice for Adolescent Health. Health Education & Behavior,40(4), 381-383.