Through Will Hunting

Introduction The way in which a person progresses throughout their life cycle will determine how successful they will be in their life. Will Hunting is a perfect example of how you are in control your own fate and therefore control your own life cycle. Will was an orphan and was raised by people who beat him, thus destroying his image on family and love, while also deteriorating his hope for his life to get better. Through this case study, the development of his identity from adolescence to adulthood is so severe that he is able to pick himself up from the slums and create an identity for himself. Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychological Development perfectly explains Will’s maturation process as he follows a life course that is not structured

The themes of personal growth, child-parent relationships and life transitions are blatantly portrayed throughout Will’s life.
Personal growth deals with whether or not an individual meets specific developmental tasks at certain points in their life cycle on their own. At the beginning of the case study, Will had a very tough time completing certain developmental tasks because he was not guided in the right direction, thus the reason he never continued his education or graduated from high school. However, when he began to understand his own identity and mature as a person, he took on the responsibility to complete certain developmental tasks on his own, such as getting a job, getting a girlfriend and living on his own. He used the money he made from his job as a janitor to enable himself to complete the developmental tasks at each stage of his life, and because he did not have any family, Will did not depend on anyone else to assist him. For this reason, Will’s personal growth throughout this case study has allowed him to meet the developmental tasks necessary at each stage of his

Will was raised as an orphan with a brutal childhood and many memories of being beaten by his foster parents. He never had parents to help guide him in the right direction or assist him in achieving his developmental tasks. However, his friends and peers have greatly influenced him in an expressive way rather than a providing way, and thus gave him the confidence to follow his dreams and complete his developmental tasks. This is evident when Professor Lambeau believes in Will’s potential to be a model member of society if he wants to be. He helps Will realize his potential which pushes him to continue his education in math and helps him achieve the developmental task of getting a job. Similarly, Sean helped Will realize that following your heart is the key to happiness, which is the reason he achieved the developmental task of getting a girlfriend. Not to mention that Will’s friends buy him a car on his twenty-first birthday as a way of expressing their care for him. In each instance, his friends and peers are not necessarily his parents, nor do they hand him all the things he has accomplished in his life, but rather they motivate him to strive for greatness. Without the help of Professor Lambeau, Sean, and his peers, Will would not have recognized his potential and would not have aimed to reach his developmental