Good Will Hunting Essay

Will Hunting also uses the defense mechanism of being extremely smart and by reading people and exploiting their weaknesses to shift their focus away from him. This would be a characteristic of the Post-traumatic Stress Disorder avoidance state, where he is dealing with it throughout the movie, which causes him to stay withdrawn from people and society (NCBI). Will uses manipulation to change the subjects and focus’ of others from himself. He is also sarcastic when he talks. Such examples include the several psychologists who he visited before he found Sean. He would read their books before he met with them to decipher the way they worked. Then, when he worked with the psychologists, he would exploit their weakness and what they were uncomfortable with and push it right into their faces. He would also use sarcasm to make a point that he thought all of these psychologist meetings were useless to him and pointless.

These being: family, schools, peer relationships, mass media, and work. Throughout the film, we see the growth of character in Will. He begins in the movie as the mishap trouble maker with a brilliant mind that’s being wasted because his inner demons are holding him hostage. Through the progression of his time in therapy, we can tell that will did not have the best home life. We discover that he was a victim of child abuse, both physical and mental. Because of this, he grows up believing that he is not worth much and will not amount to anything. Family is a big part of the way we grow up to perceive ourselves and present ourselves to others. Wills family did not show him that he was good enough so he believed he wasn’t and found solace in his school work. With the help of his peer relations and school, Will was “re-socialized” and succeeded beyond what he could have ever imagined. With the help of this therapist and time, Will resolved the resentment and attachment issues he has had since he was a child and begin to form new relationships while allowing others into his mind a bit more. This change in his life was all brought on by the professor teaching him. If he hadn’t intervened with the court and suggest that in place of jail time, Will could study under him and see a therapist, will would have never gotten better and advance much further in life. With the help of peer relations and school, will became a new and improved

His presenting self was the safeguard to his private self. Will was very much aware of his gift and his enormous potential but shunned it like some burden, or at least that's what he wanted others to believe. He often told Sean Maguire, his shrink with whom he had developed a bond, that his gift was something he didn't ask for, and he'd be perfectly fine working an honorable blue-collar job with his buddies. Despite his assertion regarding his gift as an aggravation Will's actions contradict, for he is asked why he just so happened to get a custodial job in the world's foremost institute for technology, M.I.T if he wanted nothing to do with his genius. Maguire sees behind Will's visage, he realizes Will is a wounded soul who really knows nothing about life for he hasn't experienced it, it is so much more that what he read in a book. It is hard to say what Will should have done for he had a difficult past one that most cannot relate too, or have any idea what it may be like to live it. However, If Will had been a little more open to the people who wanted to love him he would have been much happier. In his quest to never be hurt he was headed for a life where he would never be loved. His thoughts were becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy; where one's expectations of an event make that event more likely to occur (Adler, 65). Had Will been honest with himself and more willing

For example, when confronting an old foster home “Friend”, by the name of Carmine, Will unleashed an onslaught of punches, which lead to Will Knocking out Carmine then being arrested for assault by the local cops. When Will saw his old friend, memories of the abuse that his foster family gave him sprang onto Will’s head and triggered his mind to give some payback for everything that he experienced as an abused kid in the foster home. Not only that but his mood drastically changed from the moments prior to seeing Carmine. Before seeing Carmine, Will was planning to have a good time with his friends at a baseball game, But that changed as he saw Carmine at the game as well. Once he saw Carmine, Will was determined to beat Carmine up, as carmine did to him when he was a kid. Clearly in the movie, Will is a mathematical genius, as he was able to solve the problem that Professor Lambeau wrote on the chalkboard outside his room. However when Lambeau confronted Will, after he found out who solved the problem, Will ran away from the professor instead of being congratulated for his success in solving the problem. A valid reason why Will did not accept the praise from the professor was because he had a negative self-image of himself. To understand what a negative self-image is, it is important to know what the term self-image means. Karl Perera, from the website, More-selfesteem.com defines the term self-image as, “ how you see yourself. This may be how you see yourself physically or your opinion of who and what you are which is normally called self concept. It is important as it

Will 's group of friends seem to pick on him and judge him, which questions if they are truly his friends or not and if he truly fits in with him.

The main focus is placed on Will, whom has a rare genius to put together abstract math problems and finds it hard to relate to world without getting arrested for doing something violent and rebellious. He grew up in South Boston and the hard streets have jaded him, while his intelligence further isolated him from people and made him hostile to other people. In the beginning of the film, Will is discovered by Lambeu (Stellan Skarsgard) a professor of mathematics, and his well-being becomes a serious issue and he is pursued. While placing a difficult math problem on the chalkboard

Good Will Hunting is a story about Will Hunting who works as a janitor at MIT cleaning classrooms. Will is an orphan who grew up in various foster homes and was physically abused as a child. Will is also an extraordinary mathematical genius with a photographic memory, who enjoys solving math problems. Will blames himself for his unhappy upbringing and turns this self-loathing into a form of self-sabotage in both his professional and emotional lives. Because Will blames himself he is unable to maintain a steady job or a steady relationship. Will must learn to overcome his fear of abandonment in order to learn how to trust and love people who

While working a part time job at a janitor at MIT, Will solves an advanced math algorithm on a chalk board and is confronted by the professor in which Will smarts off and walks away. Here is a prime example of how he is almost ashamed of his talent, and wishes to cover that up by putting on this tuff guy persona. What you might not think, is that Will only has a high school diploma, never attempted college, going directly into the workforce as soon as he graduated. Even though he had the intelligence to go to any place, he has low self of steam, and doesn't think highly of himself (Sant, G. V.).

Good Will Hunting explains story of a young man who goes by the name of Will Hunting. He is a very intelligent man who has had a troubled life and lets it control him day to day. He doesn’t want anybody to know about his talents because he thinks they’ll think differently about him and he doesn’t want to get hurt. Like Will, almost all of us in college and even in life go through blocks of trouble, big or small, in our life and can relate to him. I myself can relate to Will in many aspects of his life.

In his last therapy session, Will reveals to Sean that he was beaten as a child. As a result, he has a tough time believing that he is capable of achievement in life. Children who endure such hardships can feel unworthy and not have a desire to succeed in life. Will also has a tough time accepting love. When Skylar, his girlfriend asks him to go to California with her, he chokes her. Shortly after, he breaks up with her. This most likely resembles Cluster C avoidant personality disorder. Avoidant personality disorder occurs when people have feelings of insufficiency and are extremely sensitive to rejection. Connors wrote, “Specifically, individuals with an avoidant attachment style who have been rebuffed by caregivers in childhood will be defensively constricted and unable to love in adulthood” (475). Will did not feel like he was capable of being loved and feared being rejected, so he ended things with Skylar. It wasn’t until he was court ordered to see a psychiatrist that he began to value himself.

The movie Good Will Hunting an American Drama Film was directed by Gus Van Sant, and starring Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver and Stellan Skarsgard in 1997. This movie is about a man named Good Will Hunting who was a genius but chose not to live as a genius because of fear of past experiences and the ill treatment he received when he was in foster home. Some of the other characters in the movie were supportive and some were not supportive of him. This essay discusses Good Will’s personality traits and his interaction with the other characters in the movie. Good Will Hunting possessed the following personality traits, namely: independence, intense interest in a problem, and the need for stimulation.

In the 1997 indie drama film Good Will Hunting, the protagonist, Will Hunting, is a young man of genius intelligence that chooses to work as a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A victim of child abuse, Will takes his past and uses it in a form of self-sabotage. He works labor jobs, deters himself from women and any form of love, and spends time with his low-life friends. One night at a bar, a Harvard student named Clark brags of his comprehension of the market economy evolution to Will’s best friend, Chuckie, and attempts to make him appear ignorant for not knowing of such. In Chuckie’s regard, Will steps into the conversation. Through a strong sense of pathos, he makes Clark feel guilty and small for how he treated his

Will uses anger, denial, and sarcasm as defense mechanisms to push people away from him. He told people that he did not have a problem and that they were the ones with the problem. He used

Will has Traumatic and Stress Disorder. Rightfully so, he was in foster care all throughout his child hood and was beaten, stabbed, and burnt with cigarettes. He learned how to fight and be defensive with the abusiveness. No family gave him the time of day since he was so defensive and got into trouble often. Will throughout his life struggled with trust issues, anger issues, and not being confident in himself. Will was book smart and full of aggression, he allowed his past to overshadow his future. He used reading as a coping mechanism from his reality. He would get lost in the books and was starving for knowledge. Will used being smart as another defense mechanism. He talked his way out of court several times and talking back to therapist by reading their books, also to people that thought he was stupid. He would show them that he was actually a genius and made them feel stupid. However, as Will soon figures out that the therapist knows exactly what he is doing and that he can read all the books he

Though the film fails to delve into the specifics of his childhood, it does become evident that Will bounced between foster homes and was often a victim to physical and emotional abuse. These childhood factors play a huge role in behavior as an adult. A recent study concluded that, “Toxic childhood stress alters neural responses to stress, boosting the emotional and physical arousal to threat, and making it more difficult for that reaction to be shut off” (LaBier). An inability to rationalize and control emotions and responses after abuse would indeed be seen as true in this film. This can be seen in the numerous fistfights Will found himself in. Despite the fact that Will could typically weasel his way out of convictions, he was convicted of assaulting a police officer. His conviction would turn out to be life altering. When Professor Gerald Lambeau saw potential in Will, he was offered a life that could include more than beers with friends and janitorial work. The arrangement Lambeau worked out