Good Will Hunting And The American Dream Analysis

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Good Will Hunting and The American Dream In the movie Good Will Hunting and in the story The American Dream there are a lot of the same concepts behind the characters and what they deal with as the stories progress. There are three key concepts that Will from Good Will Hunting and the young man from The American Dream go through. They are transference, repression and trauma. Although each of the characters goes through these three concepts, they both deal with each one differently. The first concept and probably one of the most obvious in Good Will Hunting, is transference. In psychoanalysis it is the process by which emotions and desires originally associated with one person, such as a parent or sibling, are unconsciously shifted to another person, especially to the analyst. Freud described two forms of transference, negative and positive. Positive transference covers all aspects of attachment to, and confidence in, the analyst; it is essential to successful treatment. Negative transference denotes hostile cathexes or excess cathexis, which may lead the patient to break off…show more content…
Although he and Will are also similar in the fact that they both have something deep down inside them that is eating away at them. They are also the same because after they talk about their experiences they both are able to move on. Will is able to leave Boston behind and go visit and live with Skylar in California while the young man is able to become the child that Mommy believed would provide her with satisfaction, replacing the murdered child. The young man is able to talk to Mommy just like Will is able to talk to Sean. Without transference the young man wouldn’t have been able to become Mommy’s child and turn his negative energy into positive energy and live a happier
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