Film Character Analysis

Psychodynamic theories describe the relationship between the personal and interpersonal relationships and their impact on personality. Reviewing psychodynamic theories demonstrates how personality develops in different stages of life and the impact this has on the individual. The film Forrest Gump produced in 1994 describes the life of Forrest Gump from his childhood to adult life. His character is interesting since he faced physical and learning disabilities that do not prevent him from achieving successes as an adult. With a low-than-average IQ of 75, Gump struggles with formal and informal learning and developing relationships with other people (Zemeckis, 1994). The film demonstrates the importance of key relationships including the love of his mother and best friend Jenny Curran. The analysis of film characters is an important way of testing and plying psychodynamic theories in real life situations (Hogan & Sherman, 2020). For this paper, the analysis will focus on Gump and use Erik Erikson’s Psychonomic theory and the humanistic theory to show how theorists would analyze the personality of the character.