Essay on Good Will Hunting

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RUNNING HEAD: Good Will Hunting

GOOD WILL HUNTING

Myriam Smith
St. Thomas University
May 3, 2012

Good Will Hunting

Good Will Hunting is a poetic story of a young man who works as a janitor at MIT while living in one of the rough neighborhood in South Boston. Despite his gift in Mathematics, he is still having a hard time finding his place in the world. Matt Damon plays a young genius with a troubled childhood and a troubled mind that was severely abused as a child and has been in trouble with the law on numerous occasions. The movie is a passage through the mind of Will Hunting as he is required to undergo therapy instead of going to jail. Stellan Skarsgard who plays Professor Lambeau …show more content…
Because Sean is going through his own difficulties due to his wife’s death, he can somewhat relate to Will’s issues. Therefore, Will was able to open up to Sean like a father and son type of relationship. Will tend to over generalized things in order to protect himself from getting emotionally hurt, which is based on cognitive distortions. According to Aaron Beck who developed the approach known as cognitive therapy, overgenarilization is a process of holding extreme beliefs on the basis of a single incident and applying them inappropriately to dissimilar events or settings (Corey, 2001. p.311). An example of this is that Will believes that besides his three friends, he cannot find true love because true love does not exist. Because people always abuse and leave him, he believes that Minnie Driver who plays Skylar (his girlfriend) would eventually leave him. He is not willing to let his guard down nor tell her that he loves her. He would rather hurt her feelings by replying to her after she confessed her love to him by saying he did not love her. Since he was abandonned as a child, he is terrified that Skylar would abandonned him as well. Instead he rather lied to Skylar just to safeguard his emotions. Consequently, Sean became somewhat close to Will. He gives Will some good insights on ways to remove the fear from him in order for him to embrace life as it comes. He uses existential therapy with Will. His intention is to help Will discover the meaning of his
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