Magnolia & Psychological Theories

This paper is a discussion of three major developmental theorists -- Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, and Jean Piaget -- using examples from Paul Thomas Anderson's film, Magnolia, as illustration of some of the highlights of each approach. It examines how each theorist considered the question how personality develops within the individual. Freud argued that early events and progress through psychosexual stages form identity and response to the world. Erikson expanded on Freud's concepts but suggested that personality grows from the way each person deals with a specific sequence of crises, while Piaget believed that the development of thought processes had the greatest influence on behavior and response. Magnolia offers intriguing examples of all three ways of considering personality development.

Freud's theories were groundbreaking, establishing the modern science of psychology and creating a new vocabulary with which to discuss human behavior. One of the fundamental theories on which he based his work was his argument that each individual progresses through a series of psychosexual stages, each focusing on sexual pleasure gained from a specific area of the body. Psychological dysfunction comes when an individual becomes fixated at an earlier stage and is therefore unable to progress to fully mature adulthood.

In Magnolia, the character of Frank T. J. Mackey is an excellent example of an individual trapped at the genital stage. While he may actually seem to be in the e

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ovides interesting examples of Erikson's theory in action. Stanley is a growing celebrity on the long-running game show, What Do Kids Know?, and he has already struggled with the crisis of initiative versus guilt (trying to answer questions that stump the adults he is pitted against on the show) and industry versus inferiority (trying to be competent and win, week after week, while unable to achieve control over his own freedom to go the bathroom when he needs to). He appears to be just on the brink of adolescence, a time when Erikson argues that the individual is grappling with personal identity and the roles he or she should assume within society. Although Stanley is conflicted and troubled, he manages by the end of the movie to assert himself to his manipulative father. By saying, "You need to be nicer to me," he is standing up for his right to be himself. On the game show, he finally refuses to play the role that others want him to assume, again suggesting that he will weather this psychosocial crisis in a healthy way. One of Stanley's final scenes has him sitting in a library alone, bombarded with drawings of earlier child geniuses. He is clearly trying to find his own place within this pantheon. He is shaken out of

Category: Film - M