Psychology
Personality
Name:
Date
The Breakfast Club: Character Personality Analysis
As you view the movie, consider the five main characters and their unique personalities. They have little in common except for the fact that they’ve all offended their school in some way, enough to get them sentenced to Saturday school. As you watch the movie and observe their adolescent personalities and behaviors, I’d like you to recall the different personality theories we’ve studied, which are summarized below. Your assignment is to pick two of the characters and write a paragraph about each one that analyzes their personality using one of the theories we’ve studied.
For example, how would Freud explain Bender’s rebelliousness? How would Erikson explain
Allison’s tendency to lie?
Please write or type this on a separate sheet of paper.
Characters:
Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez)
John Bender (Judd Nelson)
Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy)
Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald)
Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall)
Personality Theories:
Psychoanalytic Theory: our personalities are based on needs and impulses that exist in the unconscious; emphasizes the importance of experiences and relationships in the first six years of one’s life; divided lives up into five psychosexual stages: oral (unresolved conflicts could lead to eating disorders, too much dependency on others, rejection of others), anal (unresolved conflicts could lead to excessive stinginess or generosity, rigidly following rules, rebelliousness, irresponsibility), phallic (unresolved conflicts could lead to depression, anxiety, guilt, phobias).
Jung also argued that our personalities are the result of archetypes, or inherited universal beliefs.
We try to model our behavior and personalities to resemble these archetypes.

Social Psychoanalytic Theory: Accepts the importance of the unconscious, but emphasizes the importance of social forces on our unconscious; Karen Horney argued that the unconscious develops due to the need for love, and that if we don’t get enough love, our personalities will be built around fighting rejection.
Adler also argued that people behavior in ways that make them feel important and worthwhile around others. If someone is insecure, they will spend their life trying to dominate and control others, and putting others down.
Erikson argued that our personalities are the result of social forces and relationships. In particular,
Erikson claimed that during your adolescence, you are struggling to figure out exactly who you are, what social group(s) you belong to, and the extent to which you belong to that group. In the process of self-discovery, you may experiment with different roles and behaviors. Ideally, you emerge from this stage with a strong sense of self, independence, and control over your destiny. Or, you may emerge confused about your identity and insecure about your future.
Behaviorism: the behaviorists argued that our personalities develop from a series of rewards or punishments. Skinner argued that it was that simple, while Bandura argued that we also think, analyze, and interpret information in a less mechanical way. He argued that we are capable of sophisticated thinking, whereas Skinner argued that we respond automatically to rewards & punishments. Bandura also argued that we develop our personalities by observing others and modeling ourselves after others.
Discussion Questions: Answer these questions on the same sheet as your character analysis paragraphs.
1.
Do you think this is a good movie for a psychology class? Why or why not?
2.
What psychology themes, ideas, or messages do you detect throughout the movie? Identify at least three. Give at least one example of each theme, idea, or message from the movie.
3.
As a teenager, what do you think about Brian’s answer to Vernon’s essay question “Who do you think you are?”