Six Approaches in Psychology - Essay Example

Angelina Jolie, Movie Star

This paper uses the six approaches in psychology when analyzing a person, whether it be a historical figure, such as a cult leader or, as in this case, a movie star, Angelina Jolie. The six approaches are: evolutionary, biological, behavioral, cognitive, humanistic, and psychodynamic. Some psychologists also use a seventh approach, that of sociocultural (Rathus, 1996, 17).

INTRODUCTION

The choice for this paper is Angelina Jolie because she has a very varied background and much of what she does is fodder for publications, news stories, and on the Internet. She is the daughter of a movie star, Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, and has a brother, James Haven. When her parents divorced in 1976, she and her brother lived with her mother and used to watch her mother’s movies but did not really watch any of her father’s movies. She lived in both New York and Los Angeles and began taking acting classes. She has had her escapades of different fads, including wearing all black, playing with knives, and trying all the different drugs available. Up to the present day, she has had two husbands, divorced both, and now lived with Brad Pitts and has three biological and three adopted children. She has performed in numerous films and is also considered a humanitarian for the charities that she heads, making numerous trips overseas to oversee many of those operations.

 EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

While no interviews were conducted for this paper, her life is like an open book as almost everything she does is reported in the newspapers, Internet, and in magazines. Indeed, all of us live in an evolutionary manner, as each day adds to our growth and knowledge of the world and the experiences, however small they might be, which influence all of us. Therefore, we look more at the other six approaches as more defining of Angelina Jolie’s character.

BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

The biological perspective concerns the chemical substances that occur in the brain and govern our thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Jolie has gone through periods of self-mutilation, and depression, and tried all the different drugs on the market. It shows, that in her early years, she might have been influenced by her genes as being somewhat prone to suicidal tendencies and a predilection for drugs and alcohol (17). She also had her first physical relationship at the age of 16 when she and her boyfriend lived together at her mother’s house.

BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE

Jolie has exhibited what might be called ‘wild child’ tendencies from her teenage years and through her twenties as well. While not necessarily a criminal, she has behaved rashly, and some of this may be due to being something of an outcast while in school where she was not treated very well by other children. Between this and being a product of divorced parents, brought up only by her mother, there may have been tendencies to explore who she was at any given time because of a loss of stability in the family structure. Other behaviors exhibited have been her bisexuality and the notoriety gained in affairs with both men and women (20).

COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

Cognitive perspectives deal with mental processes of how the world is seen and how people dream and also daydream. Jolie, ventures into numerous lifestyles such as the episode of wearing all black and playing with knives at an early age, getting tattoos and having a live-in relationship at an early age, and wearing her husband’s blood in a vial around her neck, symbolizing conscious decisions to do things out of the normal realm (19). In an interpretation of this, it explains the lack of stability in her life and a desire to find out where she really fits in.

HUMANISTIC OR EXISTENTIAL PERSPECTIVE

This might be best represented by the charity works and organizations she has been involved in during the last ten years or more. She has been a Special Envoy and Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations for UNHCR on refugees and has visited many refugee camps around the world. She has a special interest in the Cambodian people which she first took on while filming “Tomb Raider” there in 2001. She is a true humanitarian in the work she does with displaced people, which might be a tie-in with her unstable childhood (19).

PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE

Her unstable childhood has influenced much of her early perspectives on life including as an outcast in her school years and certainly led to her search for love wherever she could find it and some of it may have been influenced by societal trends at a time of vulnerability in thinking (20).

SOCIO-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

While Jolie appears to have been affected by social and cultural trends, she has also been much of a mover-shaker of her own by applying to herself those things which seem very anti-societal, weird, or just plain different. It has been all about her growth as the person she has become today in finally finding happiness with her own family with Pitts (21).