Throughout the movie Precious, there are several times when the audience witnesses trauma and its effect on Precious’ life. These traumatizing events include sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and emotional abuse. When people go through these events, their mind will find ways to cope with their situation. These coping mechanisms are depersonalization, derealization, detachment, and dissociation.
Depersonalization is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-5) as “experiences of unreality, detachment, or being an outside observer with respect to one’s thoughts, feelings, sensations, body, or actions” (DSM-5, 2013, p. 302). According to Mayo Clinic, a symptom could be that a person feels like
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Towards the end of the movie, Precious looks out the window and sees her dream guy. As her mom walks by, she chooses to walk away from the window. At this point, I believe that she is disengaging from the fantasy world that she had been trying to live in for so many years. Detachment is another experience that is seen in Precious. Detachment is defined by Science Daily (n.d) as “an inability to connect with others on an emotional level, as well as a means of coping with anxiety by avoiding certain situations that trigger it”. Another way of thinking of this is a lack of physical emotion during a situation (R. Stensrud, lecture, February 21, 2017). An example of this would be when her father rapes her. Precious shows no physical emotion during this time. She lies there and slips into her fantasy world. The same thing occurs when the boys in the alley way shove her down onto the sidewalk. Instead of fighting back, she lays on the ground and goes into this numbing state, letting her mind slip into this fantasy world where she is dancing on a stage in front of everyone. By refusing to feel anything and blocking out the traumatizing event, she is better able to cope with her negative experiences in life. Last but not least, dissociation is clearly present in Precious. Dissociation is defined by betterhealth.vic.gov.au as “a mental process of disconnecting from one’s thoughts, feelings, memories, or sense of identity.” We see this each time that
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines socialization as “a continuing process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to his or her social position”(Merriam-Webster, 2011). However, this disorder can become a double-edged sword because it protects the individuals from awareness of the pain, yet the individuals who dissociates themselves often find personal history and identity is affected. Furthermore, these actions do result in serious pathology, trouble forming or maintaining relationships as well as failure to function when under stress. Individuals with Dissociated Disorders tend not to remember
In order to do this, she must meet with a Psychotherapist for individual counseling once a month for a period of 1 year. In addition, she must also attend group counseling to develop the appropriate coping skills necessary. According to Larry E. Beutler, Rebecca E. Williams and Heidi A. Zetzer, authors of the article “Efficacy of Treatment for Victims of Child Sexual Abuse” (1994), some of the most common and popular forms of treatment interventions available to victims of abuse include individual, family, and group counseling. Research found that these “programs focus their most intensive treatment efforts on the child victim” (Beutler et al., 1994, p.159). Treatment through individual and group counseling is achieved through 4 therapeutic aims: “relieving symptoms, destigmatizing, increasing self-esteem, and preventing future abuse” (Beutler, et al., 1994, p. 159). The second treatment objective Precious must address is to learn about breaking the cycle of abuse. In order to accomplish this goal, she must speak with her mother about the trauma she encountered and learn to manage her anger in a healthy way. According to the article “Effective Practices for Sexually Traumatized Girls: Implications for Counseling and Education” (2007) by authors Lee Underwood, Sarah E. Stewart & Anita M. Castellanos, “Mode Deactivation Therapy (MDT) was
The next assessment is the Psychological assessment. Precious has experienced Sexual abuse from her father and physical abuse from her mother since she was a baby. Precious has flashbacks, low self-esteem, socialization problems, and depression. These are all signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). According to Merriam Webster online dictionary, PTSD is “ a psychological reaction that occurs after experiencing a highly stressing event (as wartime combat, physical violence, or a natural disaster) outside the range of normal human experience and that is usually characterized by depression, anxiety, flashbacks, recurrent nightmares, and avoidance of reminders of the event” (citation). Despite the traumatic issues she was dealing with, she managed to show resilience in some ways. “I'm gonna break through or somebody gonna break through to me” (movie quote). Although she easily could have, Precious did not allow
*Trauma narrative and processing— Precious will be participating in gradual exposure exercises, which will include verbal, written, or symbolic recollections of the traumatic events that she endured. With these traumatic events will most likely come thoughts that are negative, such as her being overweight is the reason she was abused or simply because she is african american is why she is abused. All of these thoughts have come to Precious’ mind and with this portion of the treatment those negative thoughts would be targeted.
The specific trauma that has effected the survivors in the film is domestic violence and sexual trauma. The trauma from all of the survivors is very severe. It includes:
We’ve all experienced the feeling that we’ve moved into a different life, dissociation from reality, just mild like when we daydream, delve into a good book or become engrossed with a project. But then after that, we do still come back to reality. However, some people are diagnosed with a dissociative identity disorder or the popular multiple personality disorder (MPD). This differ from mild dissociation that all of us commonly experience. People who have this live a fairly complicated life. Sadly, people who have this experience traumatic physical, sexual or emotional abuse during their childhood.
In chapter 15 of Exploring Psychology, the author discuss the basics of psychological disorders. Within this assignment, the psychological disorder of my choosing is Dissociative Identity Disorder. The commonality of the disorder is rare. Although we’ve disassociated ourselves in some form or the other with our ability to daydream, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is more severe and is usually linked to trauma. Formerly the disorder was known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Individuals who suffer from this disorder usually have more than one aspect of themselves or personalities, whom he or she is completely unaware of. Sufferers of the disorder have to deal with a variety of symptoms such as memory loss, depression, anxiety, hallucinations, black-outs, impulsiveness, and perception of being detached from the self. The severity of the trauma is usually extreme, repetitive, and long-term. The individual may have an extensive history of physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse.
You Cannot Spell Harlem, Without Harm In Push by Sapphire, Sapphire demonstrates how broken the government systems are for the minority community in Harlem. Sapphire accomplishes this by showing that there is an abusive relationship present among several characters on the poverty line and the government systems in Harlem, which are set in place to help the less fortune. All of the characters are struggling whether it be financially or academically. Through Mary Jones, Claireece “Precious” Jones, and Rhonda Patrice Johnston, Sapphire shows that these main characters have an abusive relationship with governmental systems.
Precious dissociated from her traumatic daily life by absconding into daydreams. Perry defines dissociation as “the mental process of disengaging from the stimuli in the external environment and attending to inner stimuli” (Perry, 2003). Perry describes dissociation as “a graded mental process that ranges from normative daydreaming to pathological disturbances that may include exclusive focus on an inner
Depersonalization Derealization Disorder Is characterized by a persistently or repeatedly feelings of being you are observing yourself from outside your body or have a sense of thing around you are not real or both. This kind of feelings is very disturbing and are similar to living in a dream. It is considered depersonalization/derealiztion disorder when these feelings keep occurring or never completely go away, and accompanied by intact reality testing. The disorder is common after traumatic experiences, do not attributable to the physiological effects of substance, medical condition or do not better explained by another mental disorder. Depersonalization-derealization disorder can be severe and may interfere with relationships, work and other
Researchers sought to understand if there was a neurobiological explanation for the sensations of disembodiment that DPD patients experience. Interoception- cognitive processing of body signals- has extensively been considered to result in one's self-awareness. This experiment desired to determine if there were apparent differences between a DPD patient's interoception and a control groups' that might explain the feelings of detachment.
Dissociation is when someone loses track of time and/or guy, and instead finds another representation of the self to be able to continue in now. Somebody who dissociates often loses course of time or themselves along with their ordinary thought processes and memories. People who get a history of any form of youth maltreatment often suffer from some type of dissociation. In remarkable cases, dissociation can cause someone contemplating they have many selves ("multiple personality disorder"). People using dissociation normally have a disconnected view of themselves inside their own universe. Time as well as their unique self-image as it does for many folks, might not stream nonstop. This way, somebody who dissociates can "disconnect" from real life to get a span, and live in an alternative universe that is not littered with thoughts, feelings or memories that are intolerable.
Patients with depersonalization disorder (DP) feel like outsiders.They feel like they are observing their own life event and are not experiencing them.They start to experience a detachment from their own senses and surrounding events.The most common syptom is emotional detachment from the surroundings. This study studied the comparision between the neural responses and the emotionally salient stimuli with the help of FMRI . Six patients with DP, 10 with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and six volunteers were scanned whilst viewing standardized pictures of aversive and neutral scenes, matched for visual complexity. Pictures were then rated for emotional content.
Rich successfully uses strong images and an extended metaphor to establish a theme that shows that by re-examining a hurtful experience one can experience a rebirth of their
The motion picture ‘Precious’ gives us a powerful experience, mainly because the story line has a thin hopefulness in the dark-clouded life of Precious, Precious is resilient, even though her tragic life influences her personality greatly.