Disney's Tarzan Relating to Children's Pschology

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Chelsie Douglas Midterm Paper PSYC 2314 Disney’s Tarzan Psychological Analysis Disney’s Tarzan is an appealing movie to people of all ages. It’s a fun yet, emotional movie that everyone can enjoy and relate to. It not only displays the emotions of the characters, but let’s the viewer feel those emotions also. When looking deeper into the movie, the viewer will see that there are many psychological experiences that happen to Tarzan that can occur in everyday life. These experiences include coping with relationships, parenting styles, neglect, self-esteem and self-consciousness. Tarzan must decide when he discovers that he’s human, where he really belongs. “Tarzan must choose between two worlds and two loves.” (Lister 1999) As Tarzan grows and develops, he goes through many different psychological stages. From losing his parents as a baby, gaining a new mother, growing up in the jungle, meeting other humans, and facing his could be life-changing decision; Tarzan shows what people go through every day. The first psychological stage I noticed was when Tarzan gained a new mother. He was a baby, probably around 5 or 6 months and lost his parents due to living in the jungle and getting killed by a tiger. Tarzan was still in the critical period. The critical period is a period of time during which development is occurring rapidly and the organism is especially sensitive to damage, which is often severe and irreversible (Child Development, An Active Learning Approach). He grew an attachment to his new ape mother, Kala. Kala took the place of his human mother. While Tarzan was still in the critical period stage, he hadn’t gained any sense of object permanence. According to the textbook (Child Development, An active Learning Approach) object permanence is the understanding that objects will still exist when an infant does not see them. Therefore, Tarzan adapted to
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