Good Will Hunting: The Impact of Past Experiences on Personality

From the day we are born our experiences shapes the way we grow mentally and how we may interpret the environment around us. For this assignment, I chose to watch Good Will Hunting directed by Gus Van Stant in 1997. This film depicts the story of a man that is self-sabotaging his life. The film’s main character is Will Hunting a twenty-year-old that has genius-level intelligence and a talent for memorizing facts. He has the ability to prove sophisticated mathematical theorems; he works as a janitor at MIT and lives alone in a sparsely furnished apartment in a poor South Boston neighborhood. One of the things that I most enjoyed about this film is that there are many characters that want to help Will and look after him. There is Chuckie, Billy, and Morgan who are Will’s best friends that would do anything for him. Then you have Skylar who is Will’s love interest and wants to be with him forever. Then you have Professor Lambeau who pushes Will to use his potential. Then lastly you have Sean who is Will’s therapist that is helping him overcome his self-sabotage in both his professional and emotional lives. He is unable to maintain either a steady job or a steady romantic relationship (Stant, 1997).

Will Hunting's cognition and personality development

Cognition is defined as the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and sense (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). In the movie Good Will Hunting the main character was Will Hunting. As he grew up in a foster home because his real parents gave up on him when he was younger. The abandonment he felt from his parents affected several aspects of his life. The parts of his life it affected was his love life, school, behavior, and relationships with people. Cognitive process is where different functions of the mind are controlled or control a certain function like knowledge, attention, memory, working memory, judgment, evaluation, reasoning, computation, problem-solving, decision making, comprehension and the production of language happens. Cognition involves the mental processes and the manner in which information is received and processed. Through cognition, a behavior is shaped which affects the development of personality.

When it came to Will, his cognitive process was very different even though he was extremely intelligent. When he was a young child he was never nurtured or shown love like every child needs to be able to form normal relationships. It made it very hard for him to believe in himself. He always believed that everything that happened to him as a child was his fault. His therapist had to say it out loud several times for him to finally believe it. Will had three friends that he was very close with, they all believed he could make it far in life. Professor Gerald Lambeau as was amazed at how well he was at math and that was made him want to help will get therapy so he could make it far. Will tried to psychoanalyze every therapist that the professor hired for him. The only therapist that was able to get through to him was Shawn. Will, in the beginning, tried to get out of therapy but the therapist kept pushing him to come back and built a trust between the two. Shawn even shared some of his own experiences to get Will to understand why we must face our setbacks head on to get to the problem. Cognition and personality development both play a big role in why a person may behave a certain way.

In Will's case, he behaved in a very negative way. He was constantly in trouble with the law. He was forced to go to many different foster homes. When he would get into trouble with the law he would talk his way out of getting in trouble until one day he met a judge who sentenced him. He appeared to have a very tough exterior like he didn’t care or wasn’t scared of anything. Deep down inside he did but he just felt so broken that he didn’t believe anyone could really like or love him for who he was. He was extremely intelligent which also hindered him from perusing an education. He felt this way because the people who were supposed to love and take care him didn’t love or take care him and broke up with his girlfriend Skylar because she was moving to California. Part of the reason why he broke up with her was that she kept wanting and asking about his past which he didn’t like that because that meant he has to relive it. He felt that like he was broken and that she would find someone who wasn’t broken like him, that was his defense mechanism. In a way, he was just expressing in a negative way and lashed out at her. His thought process was why I should care if no one else cares. In reality, he had professor Lambeau, his friends, Skylar, and his therapist Shawn who believed in him. Not opening up about the past hindered him for many years. Before he got into a relationship with Skylar he would sleep around with any woman, which was another way he would cope. When he would do that he didn’t really have to get close to anyone because of his abandonment issues and because he didn’t know how to create real lasting relationships with woman.

These past events he went through affected his personality in many different aspects. As we all age we have a lot of environmental and biological factors that play a big part in our personality development. In Will's case, he had more environmental factors that affected his development versus biological factors. In the movie, it didn’t show what his parents were like. He went from different foster homes since he was very young. The movie shows that he lives in a bad area called “Southie,” also known as the south end of Boston. As therapy continued with Shawn, Will stated that his foster father would ask him what you want to get beat with tonight a wrench, belt, or stick; Will would always pick the wrench. The reason why the foster father would have him choose the source of punishment was so he could implement that Will deserved the punishment. Will choose the wrench as an act of defiance towards the punishment he was receiving. As he grew older he didn’t like to feel intimidated by men because it reminded him of when his foster father would abuse him. One night while he was out with his friends in a bar one of his friends, Chuckie, was trying to talk with a girl named Skylar another man came around and tried to do the same thing. The other man belittled Chuckie’s intelligence in front of the women who were there. Will then steps in to show how dominant he can be by asking the other man to step outside which is a result of the abuse he went through with his foster father. Will subconsciously asserts his dominance over other male figures who are attempting to display authority and this is a direct correlation to what he was unable to do to his foster father as a child.

Will was set up with several job opportunities that most people would die for but he did everything in his power not to get hired. He did this because he stated he wanted to be like everyone else and not be looked at differently. Will stated in the therapy sessions that his best friend was Shakespeare, Frost, and Locke. Learning was his escape from the abuse so it was a very positive sublimation of the very negative events.

On several occasions shows Piaget’s theory of schema because he developed many different ways to cope with his situation. From the day we are born we are genetically coded with certain codes and chromosomes. These codes and chromosomes determine how we may look, our behavior, and thought process. Our environment to which we are raised in also affects how we grow and develop in our personality. Our parents affect our personality’s they are first friends and care. Some of our personality is inherited and some of it is affected by the environment a person is raised in. In Will’s case the environment that his foster father raised him in affected him a lot because of all the abuse he endured. He didn’t trust the people in his life because of the things experienced with his foster father.

When we are born we go through an attachment stage. During this stage is where we form the bond with our parents, we learn to trust them. In this stage, we develop trust in getting our needs met by our parents changing diapers, feeding, sleep, and feeling safe. If Will’s needs were constantly fulfilled he would have learned how to depend on others and know how to build love and trusting relationships. In the movie Will did not experience a positive relationship with his foster father, therefore his attachments toward the majority people became dysfunctional and unorganized. The most positive relationship Will experienced was the one he formed with Shawn, his therapist. They both had experienced abuse and neglect as a young child. This showed Will that he wasn’t just another person trying to go into his personal life but someone who had similar experiences as him to help show him a way out of his problems.

Self-efficacy is the ability to believe that oneself can accomplish goals and succeed at different tasks. Although Will was extremely intelligent and could solve math problems that only a small percentage of people could solve, he still didn’t believe in himself and just wanted to be like everyone else. Through therapy with Shawn, Will began to believe in himself and eventually accepts Shawn’s nurturing relationship. The therapist then able to fill in the abandonment gaps that Will was missing. During therapy, Shawn picked the Boston Public Garden because that is where young children played it showed it was linked to significant figures from Will’s past. Empathy is very important during therapy and Shawn presented that to Will. Shawn must bring up past encounters that Will experienced so he could deal with them, if not then the issue will not get resolved. Through the therapy and showing empathy Shawn was able to make sessions less intimidating and overwhelming. For Will’s attachment disorder Shawn fills in the gaps so he can have better relationships with Skylar, his professor, Shawn, and others he may come in contact with. Children who have suffered from abuse and neglect often feel like things are their fault and a sense of guilt. Shawn had to make Will say it is not my fault for him to understand that it wasn’t his fault at all and to help let the situation go.

Conclusion

References

1. Bostwick, J. M., & Bucci, W. (2008). Nature and nurture in personality development: The case of neuroticism and extraversion. Journal of Personality, 76(6), 1395-1420.
2. Gagne, F. (2017). Nature and nurture in the development of intelligence. In Handbook of Intelligence (pp. 41-60). Springer, Cham.
3. Kim, S., & Cicchetti, D. (2010). Longitudinal pathways linking child maltreatment, emotion regulation, peer relations, and psychopathology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51(6), 706-716.
4. McLanahan, S. S. (1999). Father absence and the welfare of children. Marriage & Family Review, 29(2-3), 84-100.
5. Tesser, A., & Schwarz, N. (2008). On the relationship between trait measures of self-esteem and emotional vulnerability: A critical reevaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(4), 537-544.