A Psychological Analysis of the Film Precious - Essay Example

Personal Reaction At the beginning of the film, Precious, Claireece Jones is sitting in her preferred position at the back of the class, enjoying her fantasies. The girl has no friends in class, and her classmates mock her due to her physical appearances. For this reason, she never talks in class but looks at the Mathematics teacher, Mr. Wicher, and pretends he is her husband. The principal sermons Precious to his office as she is suspected to be pregnant again. At that moment, she presents herself as an unacceptable and psychotic girl with little self-control on her sexual urge. However, after watching her experience and seeing the changes she finally makes, I feel depressed but more uplifted by her changes. When she commences writing he ‘Why Me?' article on her notebook, I could not stop tears falling from my eyes. Specifically, the knowledge that Precious got the HIV infection from her father is disturbing and distressing. The narration of the event reminded me of the early scenes when Precious faced suspension from the school, and she responded, “I ain’t do nothing!” At this point, it is clear that the girl was telling the truth since she was no pregnant out of her will but due to the sexual abuse committed on her by her father. Despite being an innocent girl, he parents abuses her illustrating the unpleasant nature of life. Unfortunately, her mother is jealous of her, confuses her, and abuses her without any particular justification. Nonetheless, Precious keeps loving and listening to her mother until she realizes the real perception of her mother towards her. Precious experiences many psychological problems owing to the environment in which she was born and raised. In addition, her personal experiences aggravate the emotional glitches that torment her life. At some point, watching the film makes me weaker as I doubt my capability in handling the situations experienced by the girl. Indeed, as she tells the social worker “none of these you can handle.” Notably, Precious’ assertion is true as real life overwhelms individuals such that social workers and psychologists have little input to propose or provide any meaningful solutions. Precious’ life and struggles provide valuable insight for teenagers and parents to learn about the emotional and psychological health. Specifically, it illustrates how the environment and personal experiences shape their psychological well-being. Case Formulation Precious is a sixteen years old black illiterate girl who lives with her abusive biological mother, Mary Johnston in Harlem, a Ghetto in New York. From the movie, it is evident that Precious is going through some emotional and psychological turmoil. There are dissimilar elements that act as a basis for the mental condition exhibited by the girl. First, her family has an inadequate housing in the ghetto characterized by poverty and social deviant. In addition, since her mother is unemployed, they have to live on the federal welfare program. Precious’ dream is to be a celebrity with light skin, a skinny body, and very popular. However, being poor and struggling to survive places her on a lower social status in the real life. Consequently, her self-esteem and confidence are frequently challenged, as she has no opportunity to actualize her goals. Mary, Precious’ mother, is abusive and treats her in a manner that is not expected from a loving biological parent. For instance, the mother forces Precious to eat even when she is not hungry. Additionally, she violently forces her to cook fatty food. In many instances, the mother unleashes venom and demeaning put-downs on her daughter. She uses wrong languages on her and calls her names. In one case, the mother tells the girl “You are a dummy, bitch. Nobody wants you and nobody needs you”. A girl that feels unloved by her mother is more likely to feel unloved and rejected. Consequently, this influences her interaction with peers and exacerbates a lower her self-esteem and confidence. In addition, Precious experiences sexual abuse from her father and there is no one to protect her from him. Mary, who would ideally protect her daughter, supports this practice, as she does not want her husband to leave. Unimaginably, Mary even feels jealous that her husband rapes the girl. Sexual abuse from the father and violence from the mother contribute to the severe physical and emotional effects. Precious experiences dissociation when she feels overwhelmed by the situation. Accordingly, she “escapes” from the trauma in her real life by creating a world of imagination, where she feels cared for and loved. There are four times that she “escapes” the real world and drifts into the fantasy world. In her imagined and ideal world, she becomes the polar opposite of her silence in the real world. Notably, Precious “escapes” when her mother hits her head with a frying pan, after being raped by her father, when walking on the street and being cracked by a street boy and when she realizes that her father is HIV positive. Every time she feels overwhelmed, confused, and cannot handle, she hides from her own imagined world, where she models herself into a star dancer or a well-known film actor who is both famous and loved. She pursues comfort not only by escaping, but also by over-eating. In effect, this contributes to her abnormal physical appearance that encourages mockery and bullying from peers. Hallucinations also occur to Precious experiences hallucinations both in the auditory and visual senses. In particular, she sees and hears things that do not exist. At the beginning of this movie, after her mother beats her, she goes back to her bedroom and sees a picture of her mother that says, “Mommy loves you." Precisely, the director portrays the heartfelt wishes of the girl and the desire to hear such compassionate words from her mother. In addition, Mr. Wicher, the math teacher, speaks to Precious from a photo saying he loves her. On a similar account, this shows her desire to experience love from a man and not the abuse perpetrated by the father. Later in the movie, when Precious is sitting in the classroom, all walls and the blackboard around her start to move and she sees nonexistence TV news, and Martin Luther King. Precious also has a distorted body image when she looks herself in the mirror, she sees herself as skinny, light skin, and blond hair. Specifically, these hallucinations illustrate the world Precious envision and her perception of a real life. Therefore, she yearns for a life full of love, celebrity, and hope as expressed by the vision of Martin Luther King. Diagnosis Precious’ social interaction illustrates the possibility of a Social Anxiety Disorder. Specifically, this is due to the evidence of child abuse, domestic violence, incest, mental, and physical abuse perpetrated by close relatives. Precious has a low self-esteem thus choosing avoidance strategies as an alternative to face people. Using the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-5, the first symptom of SAD is fear or anxiety specific to social settings. On this parameter, Precious hardly interacts with people, not even eye contact evidencing the possibility of the condition. In addition, she has no friends and people ignore her existence. Individuals with SAD fears that others will negatively evaluate him or her and judge him or her as anxious, weak, crazy, stupid, annoying, intimidating, dirty, or unlikable. Therefore, based in the DSM-5, this is the reasons that Precious does not interact with people. According to DSM-5, the onset of social anxiety disorder may follow a stressful or humiliating experience (for example bullying or vomiting during a public speech). Applying this criterion to Precious' life, bullying and abuse are part of her daily meal. Furthermore, her mother forces her to eat fatty, unhealthy food to enforce social rejection at school and the community. Since she experiences bullying at home, social interaction implies more victimization and name-calling. People with SAD experience an impairment of functioning in one or more domains. In this case, Precious struggles with her academics as evidenced by her poor progression at school. Specifically, she is stuck in grade 6 when she is supposed to be a couple of grade higher. Additionally, Precious loses control over her body, including how to feed her physical hunger. She admits that she overeats, and the results are evident on her weight and size. According to the DSM-5, the anxiety in SAD is not related to medical disorders, substance abuse or severe medical effects (Spitzer, Lilienfeld & Miller, 2005). Notably, the girl neither abuse drugs nor have an acute medical condition to associate her SAD. Therefore, her obesity is a condition acquired in the course of her troubled life. I also consider Precious to be having an eating disorder. She always eats a lot of unhealthy foods at McDonald. From the movie, she stole a bucket of 10 pieces of fried chicken and ate alone. As portrayed, she ate so fast that finally felt very uncomfortable and threw them up. According to diagnostic criteria for the binge-eating disorder from DSM-5, people with binge-eating disorder eat a larger amount of food than most people do within two hours. Specifically, they eat fast and only stop when they feel uncomfortably full. Nonetheless, I am not sure how many times Precious does binge eating with/without purging. Correspondingly, I do not know if the vomiting was due to being ‘uncomfortably full,’ Bulimia, or a pregnancy reaction. Based on the evidence from the film, Precious suffers from psychotic disorders, as she experiences abnormal thinking and perceptions. Precious expects something to fall from the sky, such as a sofa, piano, or her mother. She also tells the social worker that she sees vampires, and she belongs to them. Furthermore, she hallucinates both in the auditory and visual sensory. According to DSM-5’s types of psychotic disorders, I think she suffers from Schizophreniform Disorder. The reason for this match is that Precious satisfies Criteria A as she experiences hallucination and delusions. Additionally, there are some negative symptoms such as a lack of drive in her life. At school, she does not show positive progress in both the classroom and progression from one grade to the other. In socializing, she is withdrawn into her fantasy world, and more eating to fill the voids in her life. Subsequently, she experiences diminished emotional expression and avolition, which leads to lack of drive to pursue meaningful activities such as work and socializing (Heckers et al., 2013). There are no any major depressive or manic episodes exhibited in the film. Schizophreniform disorder does not require impaired social and occupational functioning, even though such impairment may be present. The only problem hindering an accurate assessment is the lack of a historical background since I do not know how long Precious has experienced the symptoms. Conclusion From a closely integrated analysis of the film from a psychological perspective, Precious suffers from Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and psychotic disorder, which I think is a schizophreniform disorder. The DSM-5 diagnostic criteria support the diagnosis of these disorders as discussed in the paper. Eating disorder such as binge eating matches Precious’ situation but there is a lack of some information to confirm this assessment. Overall, the factors that cause and contribute to the psychological situation include disturbed relationship with family, sexual abuse, financial difficulties, pregnancy, and lack of a support from family, friends and the society. In conclusion, the film is important for psychology classes as it illustrates how social interactions shape our cognitive perceptions. References Heckers, S. Barch, D., Bustillo, J., Gaebel, W., Malaspina, D., Owen, M., Schultz, S., Tandon, R., Tsuang, M., Van, J., Carpenter, W. & Gur, R. (2013). The structure of the Psychotic Disorders Classification in DSM 5. Schizophrenia Research. Retrieved from Spitzer, R., Lilienfeld, S. & Miller, M. (2005).The Scientific Credibility of Lauren Slater’s Pseudopatient Diagnosis Study1. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 193 (11): 734-746. Read More