Good Will Hunting Psychological Analysis

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The Good Will Hunting is a very touching film that is based upon the life of the main character Will Hunting. Will is a young man who struggles on a daily basis to overcome his haunting past and continue his journey to find his place in the world. He grew up as an orphan and went through many foster homes, and was abused and abandoned by his parents. He now lives in a more underprivileged neighborhood in Boston called Southie. Throughout the film Will reveals many signs about his personality that allow viewers to evaluate him and relate his personality to many studies and theories in psychology.
Looking at Will from a Psychoanalytic perspective I have found that Will is very much driven by his subconscious mind, or in other words, his id. …show more content…

He also demonstrates being anal expulsive because he is not very restrained at times, he’s careless, and he’s messy. Finally, he demonstrates an interesting fixation at the phallic stage because he really never had a mother that cared about him so he’s now very afraid to let a woman care about him. In the very end of the movie he opens up to his therapist Sean finally and tells him that his foster father used to abuse him and make him chose an object to be hurt with, and Will always chose the worst and most painful object. This reveals how Will might be fixated at the phallic stage as well because he developed a strong hatred for his foster father. This goes to show that the oedipus complex might apply to Will’s situation with his foster father because Will is very aggressive with men in his life. He insults them and tries to be the smartest man in the room even when they try to help him like when Sean and Professor Lambeau always tried to do what’s best for Will. Will tries to be dominate over all older males which relates to his past experiences of not being dominate or able to help himself when his foster father would abuse

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