Precious Movie Psychology

The movie Precious is a movie about a sixteen year old girl nicknamed Precious. The movie shows her difficult life as she lives with her mother. Precious is a teen mother expecting her second child, who is also her father’s child due to him raping her. She is verbally and physically abused constantly by her mother and lives in a very unhealthy environment overall. She takes care of herself and her mother and is told what to do everyday. In the movie she begins to turn her life around when a teacher has faith in her and she begins to get an education, and learns she is not what her mother thinks she is.

I feel Precious is more mature than most people are at her age. She experienced sexual encounters far too young, and gained much responsibility at an early age. She became pregnant as a teenager, and constantly takes care of herself and her mother. She does the cooks and takes care of chores, and goes out by herself. She had no choice but to

grow up faster than she had to. Though she has matured greatly from these experiences it appears as though she is still somewhat in the adolescent psychosocial stage. She wants a sense of belonging and wants desperately to fit in. She wishes she was thin, white, and blonde. These are what society sees as beautiful in the movie and she wants to fit in that beauty stereotype. She somewhat creeps into the early adulthood psychosocial stage of intimacy vs. isolation as well. She dreams of having a boyfriend and desperately wishes she had a relationship. At first she hides the fact that her dad raped her and that she was carrying his child, and later admits she has never actually had a relationship. She wishes she had a boyfriend who treated her well and thinks highly of her. Having children is also making her begin to enter the adulthood stage, as she has to experience parenthood early. This takes a great amount of responsibility.

Precious’s personal intelligence is most definitely different than the average person in the beginning of the movie. Her analytical intelligence appears to be rather low in the beginning of the movie, but as it progresses she begins to learn and understand what’s going on in the classroom more. She learns how to read and write. She was however good at math throughout the movie, as it seemed she was good with numbers but not with words. I feel as though she can be rather creative though. She begins to love to write and she is always imagining scenarios in her mind. That takes creativity in itself. She also seems to handle change well. She relocates away from her mother in a halfway house and faces becoming a mother. These are both very big changes that she seemed to handle excellently. I feel like she may be below average for practical intelligence. She let’s others take control of her easily and doesn’t defend herself much. Though through the movie she begins to stand up for herself and handles things better. She gets away from her abusive mother and seeks the help of her teacher. This shows she begins to use her practical intelligence even more. It appears as though precious lacks emotional intelligence. I feel as though she doesn’t think about others emotions right away. In the movie she bullies a girl, and is rude to those who try to help her after becoming upset due to her mother. She doesn’t think how things will affect them. She understands her own feelings more than others though. She knows she's miserable living under her mother’s abuse. Precious also does not seem to want to think about the terrible situations in her life. She wants to escape and imagines herself living a nice life.
Precious’s personality appears to be imbalanced. First, for her id it seems she is lacking a little too much. She doesn’t allow herself too much pleasure. She isn’t that selfish and doesn’t require instant gratification. She has grown up giving her mother instant gratification rather instead. She cooks her meals as soon as she asks and does what her mother wants her to do. This leads to the ego part of her personality. She seems to possess a larger ego. She has to think about survival more. She withstands her mother because she doesn’t know what she would do without her. She obeys her to stay out of trouble and takes on the insults and abuse. She lies to people outside her home so her mother doesn’t get mad and so no one finds out about the physical and verbal abuse. She does what she can to get by. She especially shows this later in the movie after she has her second child. Her mother nearly kills her and almost hurts her baby, and she gets away at whatever cost it’ll take. She breaks into her teacher's office just to have shelter and would do anything to protect herself and her baby. She protects herself physically, but also mentally as well. When she is going through traumatic times her mind tries to protect itself by dissociating. She imagines she is somewheres else where she is loved and famous. This happens several times throughout the day when bad things happen to her. One moment she dissociated was when she was being raped as a way to protect herself and not realize fully what was going on. Her superego may be normal. She seems to have good morals and overall is a good person. She doesn’t intentionally hurt others and tries to appreciate the help that is given to her. She easily obeys what she is told to do most of the time. Although she has a good ego and a decent superego, it still causes conflicts. The lack of an id makes it easy for people to abuse and take advantage of her, and make her believe the things they tell her.
Precious may have multiple mental disorders.

One that was immediately noticed she may have is a dissociative disorder. When traumatic events are happening to her she dissociates to protect herself. She becomes a famous singer everyone loves and admires. Although it may not be dissociative identity disorder as she does not dissociate into more than one person when it happens. She becomes a famous star all the times she dissociates so this may rule out that disorder. Dissociative amnesia may be a possibility. I believe there would be enough evidence to show she has a dissociative disorder. Another mental disorder she may have is depression. It is very noticeable how unhappy she is due to the abuse and bullying of others. She believe’s them when they say awful things about them and thinks very negatively of herself. She wishes she was dead and always keeps to herself. All her traumatic life events including rape and abuse could most definitely bring on depression. I feel there is enough evidence to diagnose her with

this.