Notes on Good Will Hunting
• Attachment style: avoidant or anxious ambivalent
• Self-loathing turned into self deprecating behavior
• Learned Helplessness
• Cynical of everyone
• An abused foster child, he subconsciously blames himself for his unhappy upbringing and turns this self-loathing into a form of self-sabotage in both his professional and emotional lives. Hence he is unable to maintain either a steady job or a steady romantic relationship
• Defense mechanisms such as ….. intellectualization, displacement
• Will's private self is just that, private. He had a painful childhood and as a result he buries his past deep in the back of his mind, to the point where he doesn't even acknowledge it. As a child Will was an abandoned orphan who had been physically abused by his foster parents. One can assume this does not set a good precedent for high self-worth. He was deserted by the people who were supposed to love him the most and as a result this Wills reflected-appraisal affects every aspect of his life and set the tone for his relationships.
•Will Hunting is a 20 year old Boston janitor who works cleaning classrooms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the best and most famous universities in the world. He is an orphan who grew up in various foster homes, where he had been physically abused as a child. He is also an extraordinary mathematical genius with a photographic memory, who
likes to solve math problems that an MIT professor writes on a hallway chalkboard. For the students, these problems are too difficult to solve, but for Will, they're easy!
One day, Professor Lambeau sees Will writing the answer to a problem on the chalkboard, but Will runs away before they can talk. Lambeau soon discovers many disturbing things about Will, including the fact that he is stuck in jail for having just physically attacked someone who had beaten him up many years earlier. Lambeau arranges with a judge to keep...