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 earlier phallic stage because of his obsession with his penis, he actually more accurately fits the later point of psychosexual development, since his developmental arrest stems from being abandoned by his father, Earl, during early adolescence, the point at which Freud contends is the start of the individual's focus on sexual stimulation and the full involvement of the genitalia. Frank has built a career on showing other men how to get as much sexual satisfact...