Regarding Henry Analysis

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In the movie, Regarding Henry, we follow the life of a man named Henry. Henry had just about everything. He had a wife, kids, and an amazing job. He was a very successful lawyer who had won many cases in the past. He was very rich and had an amazing social standing. Yet one day, all of that changed. After one almost fatal incident, Henry’s outlook on life completely changes. We can see the battle between the id and the superego as he figures out who he is and his new life. At the beginning of the movie, we see Henry uses his superego, yet sometimes his id. For example, we learn later in the movie that the case he was working on, he lied in to guarantee himself a win. This shows him using his id, since he purposefully lied so he could win the …show more content…

Henry goes out to buy cigarettes, but ends up getting shot in the head. This tragic incident leaves him with severe memory loss, not remembering most of his life at all. He had to learn to walk, speak, and basically live again. Yet, after this accident, everything in his life completely changes. He does not think the same as he did before. At first, his id had complete control over him. He acted according to what he wanted in life. For example, when Henry had to leave the hospital, he yelled at Bradley, his physical therapist, that he didn’t want to go because he didn’t remember them. This was an amazing example of the id and not the superego. He was not using the superego here, because it would be the right and ethical thing to do to go home. Soon after he comes home, he still uses his id quite a lot, but we see his superego start coming out. He uses critical thinking in a lot of his decisions. For example, towards the end of the movie, we see Henry decide to leave his old life behind and start a new one. Even though one might think this was an id decision, as it was something he wanted, this would most likely be a superego decision. We can see him thinking very hard throughout the end of the movie, until finally deciding it was the right thing to go back to his wife and daughter, and create a new life

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