Phenomenological Analysis Of Blanche Dubois

The character I chose to write about is Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. From the opening scene I was intrigued by her character and was compelled almost immediately to watching her story develop and to pay close attention to her erratic behavior. Five minutes into the film and you recognize Blanche displays a wide range of emotions, and those rather quickly. What was most fascinating to me was the lack of congruence Blanche possessed between her actual self and her ideal self, therefore making Phenomenological/Humanistic Theory the focal point of this paper. The sudden and drastic changes in her behavior are interesting and by the end of the film you emerge with a clear understanding of why she behaves in the manner she does. "She is, from the onset, a moth that is fluttering too near to the flame, Knight says. And she never

This system allows a person to organize all of their beliefs, their feelings, and the thoughts they have about themselves in a sacred space---in other words, it is the place where they develop their values. When people are aware of these values, it enables them to operate in ways that are consistent with these ideals. Through self-consistency, Blanche can seek to find commonality between her ideals and her experience. On the surface, it may be questionable how this would be possible because of the vivid difference between her ideal self and her actual self, however, this process of self-consistency gives her the space to work through these conflicts. For example, Maslow writes “That is to say, the person who thinks he is hungry may actually be seeking more for comfort, or dependence, than for vitamins or proteins. Conversely, it is possible to satisfy the hunger need in part by other activities such as drinking water or smoking cigarettes. In other words, relatively isolable as these physiological needs are, they are not completely so”