Instruction
Individuals exist in a culture that is reliant on social relations whether with the outside community or close family structure. Individual personality and behavior mirrors who we are as persons. Our behavior and personality are factors that can be viewed to be beyond our control and psychologists have taken quite some time to study how people behave and the reasons for the divergent behavior in human being. This paper shall seek to analyze the character of Jenny Curran from the movie Forrest Gump using the personality theories of psychoanalytic and traits. Jenny Curran, though not a chief character, is very influential in the meaning of the movie and can be to explicate personality theory.
The trait theory is a theory about personality typically connected with the nonexistence of people’s fathers (Engler, 2013). The absence of an individual’s father figure shapes the personality of an individual into a more outspoken, willing and confident person. According to this theory, traits differ across persons, from time to time, and influences behavior. Individuals have a tendency of looking to the outside world so as to gain their own pleasures. However, people maintain their social interaction while closely monitoring the aspect of reality in their actions and deeds. For instance, people tend avert risks as it is obvious that some risks might have an adverse effect on their lives.
Sigmund Freud developed the psychoanalytic theory in which she perceives behavior to be a result of scuffles among determinations and needs that unavoidably clash (Engler, 2013). Personality is developed gradually as an individual moves gradually through the different psychosexual stages. The events in one’s early life dictate the individual’s personality in later years. However, this theory lacks objectivity that is quite emphasized on in the trait theory. Despite this, the trait theory is considerably weak since traits are regularly poor forecasters of behavior.
Curran’s traits change throughout her lifetime. During childhood, she was a giving and caring child. Additionally, Curran is afraid and very unsure of the surrounding. She did not leave this but continued to undergo various changes. A she grows old, she continues holding on to that fear and chooses to wander in a bid to find her individuality. Although she did not know how to accept his love for the forest, she continues holding onto that love.
We can associate her traits to two main motives; his inability to accept the love from the forest and the lack of understanding of her own identity. As a child, she has been trauma and she therefore had no idea of what love is supposed to be.
In the movie, it is indicated that Curran’s mother died when she was five years old. Whoever, the cause of her death is not known. Additionally, her father had psychiatric problems that were mainly brought about by the abuse that Curran and her sisters underwent (Silvestri, 1994). Curran’s environment changes throughout her lifetime and consequently her personality changes. New issues arise in the new environments and she tries to cover them up using drugs. However, this fails and she starts learning how to understand the underlying issues.
It is due to the lack of parental guidance that Curran had to develop new traits such as creativeness, untraditional, curiosity and imaginative. At some point Curran becomes very reliable and responsible. The insecurity that Curran feels makes her to constantly change her environment and she becomes submissive with men that treat her badly.
Curran’s traits change throughout her life and at the end of the movie she finally returns to the same traits that she had as a child. At the end she faces her fears of love and embraces peace. She knows that she was living in a world that she had to survive without guidance’s assistance.
Curran’s behavior can alternatively be explained by Feud’s psychoanalytic theory. Curran’s developed obsession in the oral and the anal stages of her psychosexual phase (Silvestri, 1994). She acts out in comportment characteristic of those stages to moderate the stiffness she was undergoing in her life. Jenny experiences conflict between her ego and identity.
When she was a child, Curran was sexually abused by her father and this greatly influenced and possibly ruined her early life. The bad life that she went through during her childhood coupled with her own personal needs and struggles to survive change her personality (Silvestri, 1994). She becomes a prostitute as she perceived this was the only way of consoling herself as well as meeting her personal needs. Furthermore, she contemplates suicide as life had become quite unbearable to her. However, her affection for Forest remains constant. Later in the movie, Curran becomes stable possibly because of the fact that she was nearing her last days and her character changes once again. She stops taking drugs and prostitution becomes a thing of the past. The hard social and economic life that she undergoes changes her life in her various psychosexual stages.
As elucidated above, Feud’s psychoanalytic theory and the traits theory can lengthily be used to discuss the behavior of Jenny Curran’s behavior and personality in the movie Forrest Gump.
References
Engler, B. A. (2013). Personality theories. Belmont: Wadsworth.
Silvestri, A. (1994). Forrest Gump: Original motion picture score. New York: Epic.
