For the video assignment paper you are to select a video of your choice and submit request via email to me. Be sure to select a video that has good “behavioral” examples for you to analyze and assess and explain via a theory or framework noted in the course. Beginning with Chapter 8 (Evolutionary Perspectives on Personality) through Chapter 17 (Culture and Personality). Your task for this paper is to select a character from a movie you can analyze and assess from a specific scholarly perspective. Key points towards a successful paper are listed 1-3 below:
Main character’s role has multiple examples of behaviors that you can illustrate and explain via a perspective presented in this course.
Apply the framework to the behaviors in such a way that you provide an interpretation of the character’s behavior such that the interpretation leads to an explanation that illuminates and illustrates a coherent view of the behaviors within a personality theory or perspective. The example I provide is from the classic movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” featuring an inpatient psychiatric group.
The main emphasis here is to use a scholarly approach that you can learn from in assessing behavior related to a dominant personality perspective.
Select a video you can view and analyze a main character by applying the perspective you are most comfortable with. In selecting your perspective to work with be sure to select based on how well you know it and feel comfortable in applying to interpreting and explaining behavior. Using the framework, you select you then explain the main character’s behavior, personality and/or pathology depicted in the movie you selected.
General Guidelines
This paper should follow APA guidelines save for an abstract (not applicable given this is a case study not a research paper).
No references beyond text are needed to complete this term paper although if you find a reference that can assist you are welcomed to utilize – must include in references. Be sure to appropriately reference when you do list sources (most papers will reference text or authors within text only).
Paper Length: 5-7 pages total of written material – with cover and references total accepted 9 pages.
Section 1 Introduction of Case
This section introduces your paper. Inform your reader of the theory or framework you will utilize in a summary manner and state who is the subject of your focused study and the video utilized for the paper.
Discuss the individual you have selected for your paper as a subject of study (case study). In as much detail as possible permitted by your movie describe relevant biographical data such as age, race, gender, sexual orientation, cultural background, family data, income, etc. as well as all relevant life contexts (born during wartime, poverty, discrimination, severe life stress, etc.)
Section 2 Personality Framework Account
Connect your selected personality perspective to the case you are analyzing by outlining the symptoms, behaviors, or relevant data that the perspective permits you to better understand, elucidate or explain. Note: as you construct your subject data (think of a portrayal to a reader: making a case) select carefully: note data, contexts, and historical information in relationship to what you deem relevant to explain via theory, theories, concepts and postulates.
Examples: (1) As noted earlier, at age four D lost his father to a motorcycle accident. From this point on it was noted by his mother that D would behave strangely. Ms. P stated that little D would often sit for hours staring out at the road. He would also come into the den and ask her if they could go on the road and start a pop rock band. About once a week, little D could be found reading Archie comic books, dressing up like Betty and Veronica and singing into a cardboard microphone and playing a cut out cardboard guitar with guitar strings made out of yarn. Repeated offers to play on his guitar purchased for him by his grandparents (actual instrument) failed. He continued to play the cardboard one. Ms. P. notes, “All of this might be normal except after he would do these things, and I mean every time, he would stomp around his room, cry and begin to throw his 45 rpm records at the cat, the dog and me! He would then moan about how he wanted to paint a bus, take it on the road, tour and to forget about old dad.”
(2) Clearly, D.P. suffered from some sort of emotional reaction, perhaps one could term it a grief or loss reaction. However labeled it is clearly not normative and the level and type of emotional expression is concerning. To explain this the author borrows from psychoanalytic theory. Psychoanalytic theory, pace Freud’s work, outlines the concept of displacement (redirection of dangerous or threatening emotions to a more acceptable object). D. developmentally speaking, is unable to come to terms with his father’s death, was forced to “move” that pain “into his” ritual acting out (and somewhat bizarre) behaviors.
(3) “D’s prominent behaviors outlined in this essay were largely to control and keep others distant from him or at least his well-protected self-shame. This pattern cuts across a majority (indeed if not all) of the areas of his life. He is arrogant and dismissive of family members and those he claimed were his intimates in scenes throughout the video. Only in one scene, does he pause and reflect on his behavior. He becomes tearful and even asks his lover to stay with him… but he cannot tell him he is afraid and that it is the fear of unknown that dominates him. This is fleeting and followed by exploding and destroying his cardboard guitar in isolation (leaves the room immediately) in the basement.
(4) Psychodynamic Theory, in its earlier formulations specified that persons fail to grow and develop due to intrapsychic stress that leads them to deny their emotions due to a lack of differentiation or anxiety: if their true emotions were apparent the object they are cathected to, even dependent, on for nurturance might reject and deny them access to needed affective expressions and connections. J, in his relationship with L, simply cannot be honest and true about his emotions and if taxed or stressed he becomes distant and then demeans L. This is clearly connected to the psychodynamic framework: it is an example of reaction formation and protecting the intrapsychic structure she cannot be free from: one of inferiority and caustic shame. In turn when threatened by others, due to this arrestation (that in turn robs the interpersonal of authenticity and honest), cruelty, harshness and “meanness” occurs within interpersonal contexts.
Section 3 Summary
Summarize and provide an overview of how your case subject as it is accounted for via your selected framework. Base this on what you have detailed and connected in prior section 2 of your paper.
Example: (5) The Partridge Family’s decision to buy the bus and go on tour as a band exemplifies an entire family system’s alliance with an external activity to permit the system to cohere after a significant loss, which in turns supports the concept of systemic sublimation. Olson as outlined in Enlger (2011) notes that “family systems often need to align systems activities and behaviors with the identified patient”.
As noted above, during part two of the movie all of D.P.’s lovers and friends have left him. As this paper has articulated this type of retraction is explained as D.P. projecting his fear and anxiety about ever being loved by his parents on those around him now in his adult life. Freud outlined this in terms of struggle and an inability to bring one intrapsychic stage to closure while a new one demands attention or intrapsychic energy. D. P. never had the opportunity to solve basic stage tasks like proper toilet training given all the stress in his family’s life. From these segments, it is clear that both family system theory and classic psychoanalytic theory are applicable in explaining, psychologically the behavior and personality function of Dr. Byers and his adopted family: the Partridges.
The example my professor used was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” starring Jack Nicholson

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