Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl is a comedic drama that follows Lars, a sweet, yet socially inept young man, whose childhood has deeply affected his personality and ability to engage in social relationships. In an attempt to feel belonging and experience loving relationships, he purchases Bianca, a life-sized doll online. Lars journeys through dependence on Bianca for a sense of belonging and warm relationships, to engaging in ‘real-life’ relationships. The film illustrates Lars’ personality using Abraham Maslow’s humanistic conception of personality and Hans Eysenck’s trait conception. Humanistic conceptions of personality focus on our own natural progression towards achieving one’s full potential, having a holistic approach. Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) believes that growth and behaviour is motivated by a number of needs ranging from basic to psychological needs. He uses a hierarchy, commonly depicted as a five-tier pyramid in which the bottom 4 levels represent our deficit needs, shown in figure 1 below. Once the individual’s physiological needs are met, they may move to the next and so on. After all deficit needs have been met, an individual is capable of achieving self-actualisation. According to Maslow, fulfilling this need means reaching one’s highest potential and truly understanding one’s self. Figure 1 shows Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow believes childhood experiences play an important role in personality development. Childhood experiences, such as
Abraham Maslow was an American philosopher who was born in the early 1990 's in Brooklyn, New York. He was one of the leading theorists that promoted humanistic psychology during his era. Maslow sought to understand what motivates and inspires individuals. He theorized that individuals possess and hold a group of motivation and incentive systems not related to plunder or insensible desires. Maslow declared that people are motivated and provoked to attain certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fulfill the next one, and so on. The earliest version of Maslow 's hierarchy of needs includes five motivational needs, often viewed as hierarchical levels inside a pyramid. The five stage representation can be separated into basic needs and growth needs. The deficiency or basic needs are said to motivate and stimulate individuals when they are unmet and not fully attained. Also, the desire to fulfill and accomplish such wants and needs will become stronger the longer the duration they are denied. Once these needs have been relatively satisfied, an individual may be capable of reaching the highest level of the pyramid called self-actualization. Maslow though that self actualization is a state that exists when an individual is acting in harmony with his or her full capabilities. In Cormac McCarthy 's novel, The Road, we will examine the character 's physical journey towards self-actualization on Maslow
Abraham Maslow developed a Hierarchy of Needs (appendix 3) which is used to understand human motivation, management training and personal development. This hierarchy is used to determine the responsibility of employers to provide a workplace environment that encourages and enables employees to fulfil their own unique potential.
Craig Gillespie’s ‘Lars and the Real Girl’ explores meaningful ideas portrayed through Lar’s experience with mental illness. This is accomplished through the use of symbolism. Gillespie explores Lar’s isolation to the outside world linked to his emotional attachment to his blanket. The manipulation of Lar’s workplace scatters childish toy figures around the office with a stuffed teddy bear belonging to one of Lar’s main companions, Margo symbolising the immature atmosphere of Lars surroundings. Additionally, the handshake shared between Lars and Margo after the bowling alley exhibits the breakdown of mental barriers. Gillespie presents,
Psychologist Abraham H. Maslow is the developer of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The theory covers human behavior in terms of basic requirements for survival and growth (Cengage, 2002). The theory was developed in the early 1960’s. During this time psychology was taken over by two different views. One side was the human behavior and the other one was the behaviorist. Maslow explained that psychoanalysts had not accomplished the task to consider the behavior of healthy humans. He also mentioned that many subjective experiences that related with human behaviors were being ignored by behaviorist. In the beginning Maslow examined motivations and experience of many healthy individuals. He recognized that there are many requirements in this theory that are important for human survival and to help motivate individuals. He conceptualized different human needs as a pyramid with five levels in
Although the hierarchy of needs and Humanistic Psychology were innovative during it was and is still criticized today. One of such criticisms is self-actualization and that Maslow gave very ambiguous characteristics and examples of people he thought to be self-actualized. In addition, the hierarchy of needs is hard to prove scientifically. Self- actualization relies mostly on a person’s experience. Therefore, one can’t tell if an individual is self-actualized. However humanistic psychology changed the way human behavior was viewed during a time where behavioral psychology was more prevalent. This introduced a new way of
With these few thoughts in mind Abraham Maslow made up a hierarchy of needs. (Boeree, Page 2) The hierarchy of needs has five levels: the bottom one is Physiological Needs, the next one up is Safety needs, the next one is Belonging needs, the next one is Esteem Needs and finally the last one is Self-actualization needs. As Maslow thought he “saw human beings needs arranged like a ladder”, the most basic needs at the bottom and at the top the need to fulfill yourself. (pbs.org, Page 1) Below is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
In the film Lars and the real girl by Craig Gillespie, an important character developed is Lars. Lars lives in a tight knit community based in a small American town. Lars has a fear of human contact which results in him suffering form a delusional disorder where he falls I love with, Bianca, a life sized ‘real’ doll. Through his relationship with Bianca he is provided with unconditional love and lack of criticism he desires. This inurn helps him gain confidence he requires to engage in his community and begin to relate to those around him. Gillespie shows the development Lars undergoes through the techniques setting, costume and dialogue.
Abraham Maslow’s theory, Theory of Hierarchy Needs, is a motivational theory in psychology that has a tier model of the five things a human needs. Maslow stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and that some needs take precedence over others. The five stages, from bottom to top, include Physiological needs( food, water, warmth, and rest), the second stage: Safety Needs ( security and safety), third stage: Belongingness and love needs ( intimate relationships and friends), the fourth stage: Esteem Needs (prestige and feeling of accomplishment), and finally the last stage: Self-actualization ( achieving one’s full potential, including creative potential). The five stage model can be divided into
Through the use of this paper the agreement between Maslow and Rogers when it comes to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs will be shown. It will also focus on the humanistic and biological approaches to personality. According to Orana (2009), Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory that is considered to still be valid today in the areas of management training, personal development, and the understanding of the motivation of humans. This theory was first introduced in the book Personality and Motivation which was
The film Lars and The Real Girl is revolved around a withdrawn man who longs for a meaningful relationship after years of abandonment. The story is heartwarming and implements openness to change and acceptance. Lars’s character and his relationships with the real girl and the community’s response played a major part in his crisis. The movie gave a good demonstration that implemented an unconventional alternative to help Lars. Lars’ disinterest in relationships, his childhood trauma, and triggers of distress played an important part in creating a formulation as to what has happened to him, rather than what was wrong with him.
The character of Lars seems to be a fantastical person who couldn’t really exist in real life. Truth is, there are many people like him who struggle to have relationships with others due to mental illness. Lars is able to find a way to channel his insecurities of personal relationships onto Bianca, whom is a realistic looking sex doll. Ironically, Lars never has sex with Bianca, he treats her as a real human being and forces his community to accept Bianca in ways he never imagined. This acceptance from the community turns out to effect how Lars views Bianca over time, and they unknowingly help Lars grow to have feelings for a real girl named Margot.
Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist and at the forefront of the humanist movement in psychology, proposed a theory concerning basic human motivations that are based upon a hierarchy of needs. (Boeree 1998, 2006) Often described or pictured as a pyramid, basic physiological drives like thirst, hunger and sleep, as well as the need for safety, shelter and some feeling of security are the motivational needs that occupy the bottom tiers of the pyramid.. They provide the foundation for higher levels of needs to become present and available that the individual is aroused or driven to attain. Once those physiological and safety needs are met then the individual looks to love and be loved, to belong
As stated further by Maslow, there are five levels in the need hierarchy, which are physiological, safety, love and belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization and they are very often of unconscious nature and can be at certain times reserved. Unfortunately, there are not too many who are capable of reaching self-actualization and the ones who will are very creative and acknowledge the world very accurately. An individual however is always aware of the fact that he or she has possesses a choice and therefore he or she has the ability to influence their behavior and personality at anytime (Cloninger, 2008).
Lars and the real girl is a 2007 movie that follows the story of an extremely shy man, Lars, and his inadequate skills to socialise or even make friends. As Lars had poor social skills, his brother (Gus) and his sister-in-law (Karin) worrys terribly that he would be lonely forever, until one day, they are overwhelmed with the news that Lars has indeed met someone over the internet. They soon realise that Lars’ new girlfriend is infact a life-sized doll, whom he communicates with, fights with, and takes out to public places. Thankfully, a psychologist named Patricia Clarke guides Lars and his family through the delusions, enabling a new life within the community for Lars and his ‘real’ doll. As a young boy, Lars suffered with the loss
Comparing and analyzing the biological and humanistic approaches to personality can be a difference of opinions. Abraham Maslow studied the development of personality. Maslow developed his own personality theory based on the basic human needs. His hierarchy of needs pyramid shows the influences of human needs to the formation of unique individual personality. There are biological factors that influence the formation of individual personality that play a factor. By reviewing the relationships between biological factors and Maslow 's theory of personality you will be able to see focused similarities and it’s upcoming. Analyzing the basic aspects of the humanistic theory with the biological explanations of personality will