Psychological Analysis Of Good Will Hunting

Good Will Hunting is a movie written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon that was made in 1997. It follows a janitor named Will Hunting from the slums of South Boston with a secret talent of genius level intellect who works at the highly renown college MIT. Will is a very relatable character as he experiences some of the everyday struggles that we all go through as humans, but as we all do has his own inner demons that he is dealing with as well. Throughout this paper, I will go over the major disorders I fell the character has and explain why in both my own opinion and with research backed evidence. The two big ones are Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder which is the mental disorder I think the character suffers from. I will also go into detail his

The plot of Good Will Hunting is described as, Will Hunting, a janitor at M.I.T., has a gift for mathematics, but needs help from a psychologist to find direction in his life. But there is so much more to this story. The character Will Hunting very early on has very apparent psychological issues and behavioral issues. I will also go over some of the things that I noticed as well in his Psychologist that was obvious that he had some issues he was dealing with as well. Some of the main psychological and behavioral diagnoses in this review paper that I will be going over are: Traumatic Stress Disorders, possible emotional detachment, Inferiority complex, and mood disorders. Another big thing that I noticed were Will Hunting’s extreme defense mechanisms and how knowingly far he would go to mentally attack some just to keep the attention off his own personal problems and feelings. I believe this movie is very well written and shows a very plausible and highly possible result of how someone can turn out, if their problems are not addressed and fixed, based on things that they have experienced and had to deal with early on in their

Adler argued that children who were severely neglected by their parents could develop what is called an inferiority complex (“Introduction to Psychology” 568). An inferiority complex is described as “a psychological state in which people feel that they are not living up to expectations, leading them to have low self-esteem, with a tendency to try to overcompensate for the negative feelings (“Introduction to Psychology” 568).” Basically, this means a person with a inferiority complex will do whatever it takes just to show or prove they are superior in any situation no matter the consequences. I think that because of constantly being neglected and abused as well as always being the conformant he later developed this inferiority complex. This is directly applicable as to why he would make such a rash decision to hop out of the car and fight this man who he believed used to have dominance over him and he unconsciously felt he needed to assert his own dominance. Another instance of when he displays his inferiority complex is later in the movie he and his friends are out at a bar. Mind you, a bar where man of the MIT students hang out, and Will’s friends are stereotypical adults who grew up in the slums. Will’s friend Chuckie is talking to a girl in the bar named Skyla, a pre-med student at