Erikson's Psychosocial Development In The Movie: Good Will Hunting

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II. INTRODUCTION

The film “Good Will Hunting” follows the story of Will Hunting (Matt Damon) a self-taught genius who works at one of the most prestigious technology schools; MIT, as a janitor. Will is an orphan with a criminal record of Assault, grand theft auto, assaulting a police officer, etc. Will solves a complex math problem, which leads to him being discovered by professor Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard) as a genius. Professor Lambeau makes a deal with the judge when Will is incarcerated to be on parole under Lambeau’s supervision and Will is ordered to see a therapist once a week. Will Outsmarts many of the therapists, which forces Lambeau to go to his last resort, college friend and psychology teacher Sean Macguire (Robin Williams). …show more content…

(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, …show more content…

Will Hunting uses many defense mechanisms to cope with his stress, anxiety, anger, and fear some example of these defense mechanisms are denial, because Will blocks his true genius potential from entering his consciousness. A second example would be sublimation, due to him satisfying his anger and stress by smoking cigarettes, which Will does frequently throughout the movie. The third example is probably one of the most common defense mechanisms, repression, Will represses the memories of his foster parent not caring about him, showing no sympathy towards him and using him as a scapegoat and abusing him physically and psychologically. We see the result of Will’s repressed memories burst into his consciousness when he sees the pictures of his bruised body, then he bursts into tears showing a lot of emotion, which from that point on, lets him begin to heal from his traumatic

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