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Precious The Movie Essay

Decent Essays

Precious’ most basic needs of food, air, and sleep are met although not always daily and she has not successfully met any other needs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. As a result of constant sexual, physical, and emotional abuse since early childhood Precious has failed to development psychologically and emotionally as well as academically. Using Erickson’s theory of development Precious could have completed stages one and two; at stage three is where she appears to be lacking and therefore has regressed to negative responses to crisis in the previous stages. She does not take initiative, because she was not encouraged to do so, it was demanded she do tasks such as cooking and cleaning. Demanding and encouraging are opposites in healthy development. …show more content…

Her lack of trying and actual deliberate nonparticipation in school is the outward manifestation of little to no confidence, and feelings of extreme worthlessness. She sees no hope, no reason to try. The relationship with her mother is one of physical and psychological abuse; all Precious hears at home is how she is dumb, lazy, unlovable, ugly, and fat. Her mother repeatedly telling Precious that she ‘stole her man’, when it was rape is such a cruel way for a mother to respond to her daughter being raped by the father. To Precious a life without constant misery and abuse was something only available to white people. Living in Harlem in the late 1980’s the struggle is real, with her mom collecting welfare and not trying to do anything more than watch television, eat, and play the lottery, Precious had no vision of how her situation could be any different. The white people were in authority, the math teacher, and principal but at the alternative school, the workers there were black. At the welfare office Precious asks her caseworker if she is black or mixed when the questions get too personal. Precious is attempting to cause a barrier between herself and the caseworker, she looks for the differences she

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