The Breakfast Club Psychological Analysis

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This paper is a psychological analysis of five distinct adolescents, the main characters in John Hughes' 1984 film, The Breakfast Club. These individuals represent a cross-section of middle class high school students, brought together to share a day of detention. In the process, they reveal much about the factors that shaped their personalities, the problems each faces, and their possible futures. This paper uses elements from many of the principal theories of personality development to understand who these people are and who they are likely to become. "The Breakfast Club" is a disparate group of high school students at a suburban Chicago school in the mid-1980s. They have each done something to violate school rules and been punished by spending…show more content…
It is, after all, a sport that relies on individual achievement and could help him build his low self-esteem. However, this would be possible only if he decided to stay on the team of his own volition, not simply to satisfy his father. Allison Reynolds is an especially interesting case. Presumably, she has been dubbed "the Basket Case" because she is already seeing a therapist, an experience that has made her watchful and taught her how to manipulate others by what she says and how she says it. She claims to have slept with her psychiatrist, but she also claims to be a compulsive liar and, later, still a virgin. In fact, for most of the day, she chooses to remain silent, observing the others but keeping to her own world. When she finally does speak, the first thing she says is to tell Andy that she drinks heavily. Later, however, when the others smoke pot, she is the only one to abstain. For most adolescents, substance abuse is unilateral; if she is indeed a drinker, she would be likely to also abuse drugs. Her "confession" may simply be another one of her lies. She is one of the two whose parents are never seen, only referred to. According to…show more content…
The film deals with various topics but for this essay I will only focus on the group dynamics such as communication, the development of the group, and primary, secondary needs meet by the group. The film shows five kids which each fit a stereotypical teen model. The princess, the rebel, the brain, the jock, and the basket case. They are all forced to spend a day in detention pondering what they did to get in their in the first place. In the beginning each character comes in to the situation with varied perceptions of each other, this variance of character analysis leads to a verbal environment that is both tense and lacking any real communication. Each character plays an important role but John Bender the rebel, carries many important character traits that create a catalyst to communication. Bender was cocky, arrogant, confident, and overall very rude and pushy. You see this when he gets into an argument with the principal, Bender would not allow the principal to have the last word, Bender wont back down this gets him 2 months detention. Even though he knew he could never
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