Forrest Gump: Jenny’s Personality

Monday, August 22, 2011
PSY202 – Principles of Psychology

In this character analysis paper the character of Jenny Curran from the award winning movie Forrest Gump will be the subject of discussion. This paper will present an analysis of the Jenny’s personality as it is applicable to Psychodynamic theory. The paper will present my rationale for the choice to use the Psychodynamic theory to describe Jenny Curran’s personality. In addition, this paper will present a description of the psychodynamic theory utilizing the work of Sigmund Freud regarding personality development. The paper will contain a description of Jenny Curran, as well as, an analysis of her personality utilizing Psychodynamic theory …show more content…

The id is the energy drive, as well as a childlike structure that makes demands for immediate gratification (Pervin, Cervone, & Oliver, 2005)”. The superego is the moral side that seeks perfection and is the source of a person’s internal retribution such as feeling guilty, humiliated, or inferior. The superego has been called the conscience according to Frank (1999), and the ‘self-evaluating’ component of the personality. The ego is the reality seeker that mediates between the id and the superego with logic and a sense of normalcy (Pevin, Cervone, & Oliver, 2005). According to Pervin, Cervone, & Oliver (2005), the ego is never static but always changing and is the expresser of “perpetual and cognitive skills”. The rationale for choosing the Psychodynamic theory to analyze the character of Jenny from the movie Forrest Grump is: “The Psychoanalytic theory places enormous emphasis on the role of early life events for later personality development (Cervone, Pervin, Oliver, 2005 p.112).” Psychosocial development theorizes that each person must go through a series of stages in sequence with the potential to develop new capabilities in each successive stage (Erikson, 1980).