SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL
DEVELOPMENT
MOVIE ANANLYSIS
Group Members:
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Azka Tariq
Bushra Nadeem
Maryam Bibi
Danish Waheed
Tooba Mohsin
Numa Nooruddin
Submitted to: Ma’am Nayab Zaffar Dheraj
Bahria University Karachi Campus
: INSIDE - OUT:
-:CHARACTERS IN “INSIDE-OUT”:Main Character:
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Riley: Riley is a to be teenage girl after 1-2 years, currently she is 11, and she the Riley is the main
character of this movie, or we can say Inside-Out is story of Riley, her mind, or specifically functioning or
emotional department of mind, and due to such functioning the outcomes in terms of memories, sometimes
ordinary, sometimes core(base of Riley’s personality), sometimes short-term most of the time long term.
Leading Characters:
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Joy: In the plot of Inside-Out Joy is female Emotion, which actually performs her responsibility of making
Riley happy, and make her enjoy her every positive moment of her life and also bring a virtue of courage
and hope inside Riley to deal with any negative or dis-comforting situation.
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Sadness: In this plot, again Sadness is a female Emotion, which brings the virtue of care, feeling of being
guilty, upset, truthful, cry or make Riley understand that its OK to be sad, to be upset, but to only realize
where were you wrong, where you need someone, how to be more supportive, how to not let situations
handle your life and how to make situations work for you not against you.
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Anger: Here Anger is the third category of Emotion, we have in plot as a male character, whose job is to
bring the suitable amount or we can say required amount of anger, dis-agreement, out from Riley’s mind, or
in general don’t let her mind full of toxic, by keeping her anger inside her mind.
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Fear: Fear is fourth category of male Emotion as a character in a plot, and his job is to make Riley aware of
dangers of her life, sometimes by watching, analyzing, touching, sometimes imaginative, and sometimes
intuitively, sometimes in dreams.
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Disgust: Disgust is another female category of Emotion as a character, her job is to keep reminding her
dislikes, and make her behave against dose like thing, situation and scenario needs. Like Riley don’t like
Broccoli, so Disgust’s job is keep reminding her disliking nature towards Broccoli
Supporting Characters:
There were numerous characters in supporting roles, like:
a
 Jordan the boy Riley accidentally bumped into him
 Riley’s friend Meg from Minnesota (old city)
 Riley’s Teacher from San Francisco (new city)
 Classmates and Schoolmates from San Francisco
 Pizza Girl at Pizza Shop in San Francisco
 Dreamland Characters: Characters which have existence when Riley fall for sleep
 Imagination Land characters: Characters who exist in Riley’s imagination when she was kid
 Darkest Fear characters: Characters of which cause Riley feel the emotion of fear by the heart or more
genuinely.
 Management Characters: Characters who are in management of Riley’s mind, which keeping order and
balance in Riley’s memories, imagination, fear, dreams, memories Riley don’t care about by throwing in
deep dark big whole, memories Riley still have in her long term memory huge and complex long term
channels, who manage Riley’s train of thoughts, who keep her darkest and heaviest fears locked so they
don’t disturb Riley’s minds’ peacefulness.
But the still there are three most important supporting roles or characters are:
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Mom: Mother of Riley (her mind also have same 5 emotional characters but Sadness is in command or in
lead)
Dad: Riley’s Father (his mind as well have the same 5 emotional characters but here in dad’s mind Anger
was is high command)
Bing Bong: Bing Bong is Riley’s imagination friend, she made or imagined in her childhood, from the time
when she had a picnic with his father, Bing Bong is cotton candy creature which is merged or blended
version of elephant, cat and dolphin, and most yummy thing about Bing Bong was when it cries his tears =
candies.
-:AN OVER-VIEW/BRIEFING OF INSIDE-OUT:Inside-Out is an animated movie, produced under production of Pixar Animation Studios, and released or
launched by or under the banner of Walt Disney. Its a story of a baby girl, who born with 5 major/basic/core
categories of emotions in her mind Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust(leading roles of movie/story), she
named by her parents(mom & dad; two major supporting roles of movie) as Riley(our main character). The story
of this movie revolve around the Riley, her personality building, and most importantly the balance the harmony
among her 5 major emotions and impacts of these emotions on her personality and personality building, as
theses will make either good or bad memories which in movie termed as orbs of 5 different colors(joy=golden,
sadness=blue, anger=red, fear=purple and disgust=green) containing memories filled of various combinations of
these above mentioned five core emotions.
And, in the starting or very early age of Riley her emotion of Joy was in high command, which was so best t her
that age because it makes Riley the Riley, she enjoyed, she lived, she understood, she reacted in all suitable
ways, like joy and happiness of being with parents and act like monkey and playing and travelling in rainbow
rocket with her imagination creation friend Bing Bong(third main supportive role of the story) she created by
blending cat, dolphin and elephant she saw with mom and dad during picnic, her likeness over ice skating in
snow in her old city Minnesota and loving hockey, her crying and being sad for not getting her desired things,
dislike and disgust emotion for Broccoli, anger over not getting desert on night, fear from electric cord, and in
result the character of Joy successfully help Riley in making her 5 core memories; Hobby of playing hockey, her
madness and craziness like mimic the monkey, her friendship, her honesty and her family, and these core
memories only have the element of Joy, which make Riley to build 5 main islands(family island=family love
and relations, hockey island=her hobby, her passion, Goof ball island=her goofiness, her craziness her joy,
honesty island=shade of being honest, and friendship island=friendship she had with her old city friend) in her
mind to store her all memories as her long term memories in huge complex long term memory maze or
channels, and those 5 main islands are actually responsible for the shades of Riley’s personality with which she
grown up, and that is why these islands were named as personality islands. This was so good at initials but not
perfect and best for future, that only the emotion of joy was in high command, and as the situation changes Riley
will sooner or later would be in trouble and unfortunately this happens very sooner as Mom Dad and Riley
shifted their home from old city Minnesota to new city San Francisco, when situations get changed, where dad
has to be more busy with work, where Riley found almost every situation against here emotion of Joy.
As she started growing and moving more closer to age group of kids who start exploring the new world’s
phenomenons in broad view terms, especially during the age(the age of 11 years, and sooner after this she will
be hit by pubic age) in which she started understanding the cores of aspects, the environmental, situation based,
conditional changes, the changes she is currently having or she might have in her future and way many more
aspect, and along with this her whole surrounding has been changed, where she found only Broccoli flavored
pizza, where she was not happy with either the location of the home and size and structure of the room and
interior and exterior was disturbing for Riley, over here she need a complete perfect harmony, a flavor of
balance in her all 5 core emotions, but unfortunately it was not there in Riley’s case, and in result as Sadness
touched the core memory in Riley’s mind, while she was introducing herself and her old city with feeling of
happiness, to her new classmates in her new school in-front of her new teacher, she cried and started feeling
upset over leaving her old city. Which eventually cause a heavy disturbance in Riley’s mind among the emotion
character Joy and Sadness, that they both with core memories sucked up into vacuum leading to long term
memory storage, and then the functioning console and Riley’s mind was left with 3 emotion characters Anger,
Disgust and Fear and then anger come in high command, which eventually cause the conditions more and more
harsh bad and worst, while on the other hand Joy and Sadness with core memories (memories that describe the
personality of Riley and make Riley, The Riley) now stuck into long term memory chamber. While on one side
Joy and Sadness was trying to figure out the way to main chamber, on the other side, the dealing of situation by
wrong emotion characters make Riley destroy her personality by destroying her personality islands in her mind,
first of all goof ball island destroyed when Riley left for school while before leaving the school her father ask to
be a goofy monkey to make her happy relax and smile, but she left that without responding, then second her
friendship island was destroyed when she convert a friendly conversation with her best friend Meg from
Minnesota into a anger and give it a shade of dis-likeness and end her friendship up.
Then on third her hockey island was being destroyed when she missed a shot to goal while playing hockey with
his new school friend and team their she lost her another favourite personality island, and on other hand Joy and
Sadness find the help of Bing Bong(the imagination partner of Riley which has been lost somewhere during the
ages and the time Riley start exploring realities of world), which then together tried so many different ways to
reach the main chamber like; Joy first tried to move along the thing way that connect goof ball island with main
chamber but she felt afraid of being fallen down in big dark black memory dump and she dropped that idea, then
she with Sadness and Bing Bong tried to catch the train of thoughts first from the danger zone or no go
area(where Riley’s first time understandings to shapes were stored), then second from imagination land where at
one point Bing Bong got disappointed when guardians and memory managers destroy princesses palace, bear,
biscuit house, and Riley’s and Bing Bong’s rainbow rocket by dumping those into that huge black dumped
memory hole, but sadness help him to get out disappointment and they finally entered to train of thoughts but
unfortunately train has been stopped because Riley was slept, then they took help from dreamland where they
bring Riley’s deep darkest fear of birthday clown out from cage of darkest fear, to wake Riley up, and Joy,
Sadness and Bing Bong got success as it is again the idea of Sadness, now Riley got up so the train of thoughts
started moving again but, but but, due to the Anger emotion character as he put new bulb to build new core
memory, he make Riley to decide to leave San Francisco all alone without letting her parents know, and for this
Riley stole the credit card from her mom, and here this is the point where she destroyed her another major
personality island the honesty island, and this time this destruction cause the train of thoughts to be destroyed as
well because the day we become dishonest we become an empty vessel and in result all three Joy, Sadness and
Bing Bong with core memories fall back to the point they were in starting.
Then during the initial of destruction of the final island the family island Joy figure out the remembrance tube
and decide to leave sadness behind because as she(sadness) come closer to core memories they start turning into
sad ones, but unfortunately Riley left home and went to bus stand all alone without informing her parents and
decide to leave San Francisco, the remembrance tube start disrupting and eventually Joy with core memories fall
into that black deep memory dump and Bing Bong try to protect her but he also fall into it, but sooner Joy
realized that for Riley and for her mind’s peacefulness, its very important that there will be a balance in her all
five emotions and then she and Bing Bong find the magical rainbow rocket and Bing Bong sacrifice himself for
Joy and Riley by staying behind in that memory dump and sending joy up back, here then Joy find Sadness
again and take her with herself to main chamber, where she give charge for a while to Sadness and make Riley
realizes what she was up-to, and in result Riley realizes that she was doing wrong she went back to home shared
her pain and feeling with her parents, there from that point Joy, Anger, Sadness, Fear and Disgust, realizes that
not one single emotion can always be in dominance, each of them have equal roles and responsibilities and
importance and they should work in proper balance.
And from here, from this point, these all five emotions started working in harmony, which make Riley build her
new vast personality, having 8 personality islands(family, hockey, goof ball, friendship, school, fashion and
social networking, boy-band, and tragic, vampire romance island) and along with this capacity of adjusting
many more islands or in specified terms, new Riley and her new personality, started accepting change and now
fairly figure out that which emotion is needed when and how much.
This was the overview an the briefing of the story describing what actually this movie is telling and how, still
there are lots of aspects remaining, some hidden, some crystal clear, which will be discussed in the next part of
this report.
-: SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENONS APPLIED IN
INSIDE-OUT:As being a student of Social and Psychological Development, we understand this movie and its aspects and
develop learning and knowledge by making the social and psychological phenomenons, the base and the ground
of this movie. And those phenomenons of psychology we extract from the movie Inside-Out by analyzing it are:
Eric Erickson’s Stages Of Development:
Eric Erickson’s stages of development usually in Psychology considered as a core of Psychology, this the
phenomena of 8 stages defines us, that how kid transform into an adult and adult into an old, what situations
they must or might or have faced in their lives, and how they get over those situation, that eventually reflect
their cores of personality or the personality an individual have or carry through out his journey of life, along
with this we also learn that individual face different challenges and crisis at each different stage of life defined
by Eric Erickson, and coping with those eventually form the individual’s personality, and that personality will
either be positive or negative depends on the ways of dealing, scenarios and situations individual go through, the
solution they choose the best, their learning as a form of memories, will eventually create a personality of an
individual.
And, the same we have seen here in this movie, in the case of Riley, we have seen the journey Riley cover from
her first stage of development (Trust v/s Mistrust; age: 0-1 year) to the end level of fourth stage of development
(Industry v/s Inferiority; age 6-12 years) where Riley is of 11 years and soon she will be hit by her last level of
this, the pubic level where she finally will be 12 years. And we have seen the good positive result at her each
stage, in stage 1 she successfully start trusting, loving and enjoying family love and support, in stage 2 she
successfully she independently start exploring her world in her own ways she created her imaginary land, her
own imagination friend Bing Bong and as well an imagination boyfriend here she started identifying things,
people and her likeness and dis-likeness her fears, in-short her all 5 core emotions (leading characters of story;
Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust), then in stage 3 she started taking initiatives like of being friend with Meg in
Minnesota, being honest on breaking or cause any damage to things, her initiative to do ice skating and playing
hockey and many more there will be, but here in this stage she developed the virtue of being confidence, which
again was successfully passed, but in at or during the stage 4 especially at the very end point of stage 4, Riley
found hurdles, problem while adjusting this stage positively, because of emotional discrepancy in her mind,
which for sometime make her fall into a state where she start being inferior, she start playing the roles of her that
stage negatively, which eventually start affecting her personality, by destruction in her personality island she
developed in her mind during previous 3 stages and most of this 4th stage.
Thou it was being rectified by Joy and Sadness mutually by realizing that each emotion has its own importance
in Riley’s life and in her mind, with in time, but it cause so many absurd things to be happened with Riley after
shifting from Minnesota with mom and dad and shifting to San Francisco due to dad’s job needs and
requirements, like being ruthless with her best friend and family, loosing a groofy Riley who love to mimic a
groofy monkey, anger and frustration on missing one shot while playing hockey with new school friends and
being dishonest by stealing the mom’s credit card to buy ticket for a bus to just ran away from San Francisco or
choosing to just escape not try to adjust and solve. But here we saw a flavor of being inferior, thou just for a
while but it can clearly be seen.
Emotions / Emotional Balance / Emotional Intelligence:
The very next or the most important or the core Psychological aspect of this movie was emotions, emotional
balance and harmony in their functioning, its the actual and main Psychological aspect around which entire
movie revolve, or its a core orbit of this movie’s system and story. In psychology we learned that emotions are
the state of feeling, that is a result of any change, and these emotions influence or impact or affect (either
positively or negatively) the thoughts, the behaviour, and most importantly working and first of all formation of
personality cores, which are termed as personality islands in this movie, their destruction is also again
influenced by these emotions, by embracing them in memories and making colorful memory orbs store in long
term memory vessels (either core memories or ordinary). And this is what we see through out this whole movie.
That how important harmony and balance is among each 5 emotions (Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust)
In movie as we discussed earlier in overview or briefing of the movie, that the emotions are classified as 5
different leading roles of the story; Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust. And in Riley’s early stages of life
and development she only had Joy in high command thou it was good and make her build 5 personality islands
based on her 5 main or core memories, which help or define Riley as Riley, but there was no influence of any
other emotion, which when tried by Sadness to influence Riley mistakenly during accepting the changes Riley
had in her life, cause a huge emotional discrepancy, and destruction of almost every single personality island;
goof ball island which polish the craziness madness and bring light feeling in Riley’s mind and in her
personality, hockey island which was hobby and passion of Riley, friendship island which was constructed by
being a best friend of Meg in Minnesota, and last and most important the honesty island the island which
eventually destroyed the path or follow of thoughts her mind was carrying through the train of thoughts because
when we start being dishonest we stop being thoughtful, the family island was only left with but it was as well
on the end point and will be destructed any time if the Joy and Sadness did not make to enter the main chamber
again, and take the charge of console(emotion controller, mind controller of Riley’s mind), which was
previously in absence of Joy and Sadness, under control of the rest 3 emotions Anger, Fear and Disgust in main
chamber and Anger specially in high command, which actually cause destruction of all those 4 personality
island and train of thoughts. Any how Joy and Sadness with the help and sacrifice of Bing Bong for Riley,
managed to settle everything, and come with new vast and broad view of personality core(8 personality islands),
and along with this, this time with a proper functioning, and harmony and balance among all those 5 emotions
(leading roles of story) in Riley’s memories. And this is what we learned under psychology.
Emotional Balance in our mind is the utmost important thing, the time we loose the balance in emotion and et
any one emotion deal our states, situations, scenario and behaviour, we always face problem and difficulties like
in this Riley faced, its way more important to understand the true essence of all those 5 major/core emotions,
and we give importance each of those equally, in movie Disgust comment or said to fear that “emotions can not
quit”, yes it is absolutely true that emotions can never quit, all is needed that is harmony and balance among
their functioning. This aspect is the major/core of the story as its crystal clear that it is the heart of the story that
we should keep balance in our emotions because choosing wrong emotion and make it function in wrong way in
wrong condition will cause miserable failure and convert easy situations into more more and more bad horrible
situations, which eventually destroy the cores of the personality of individual.
Anger / Stress Management:
The third psychological aspect, which is on 3rd in rank of most prominent is inter-related link in between Anger
and Stress, Anger is the emotion from list of 5 core emotions, and after or in absence of Joy and Sadness, he is
high command. In psychology we studied that stress is a physical emotional and mental response that has an
effects on our mind peacefulness and state of being health and effective in negative way, and Anger (leading
emotion inside the mind; emotion in command who make Riley to choose wrong choices of actions and
responses) in psychology is defined as a state of being in which individual show disagreement, dis-likeness,
anger is termed as anger when it is at mild level but when it crosses limit it become aggression and in Riley’s
case there was anger in starting but sooner it become aggression and a type of open aggression in which an
individual loose her state of balance and harmony completely and lash out physically and verbally and hurt
himself or others.
The time Riley shifted from Minnesota to San Francisco with her mom and dad, she started staying worried,
stressed and depressed in initial or at very beginning because, she was trying to understand her new change and
accept that, but due to emotional imbalance, her 5 core emotion characters were as well in state of confusion that
what will make her accept this new change, and this lead her in stressful dreams in night before attending the
new school in new city, and by the time she attend her school finally the emotional imbalance bashed out and
make her respond in inappropriate way in-front of new fellows and teacher, and then this emotional imbalance
lead up to lost of her two core emotions Joy and Sadness with all 5 core memories, somewhere in her mind, and
in the end she was left with only Anger Fear and Disgust, out which Anger come in command and eventually
she fall into phase of extreme anger (aggression) and this game now start destroying her personality islands or
the cores of her personality she started staying unhappy and aggressive with family(mom and dad), unadjusted
with new fellows, not interested in friendship with meg and hockey, instead of being more absorbent she start
being more and more aggressive, and the worst had come when her anger emotion convert her aggression into
category of open aggression, in which she finally took the most dangerous and harmful step/decision, the
decision of leaving new city new home family behind and go back to Minnesota all alone even without letting
her parents know and at the age of just 11 year, here she destroyed her honesty island and train of thought by
stealing credit card from her mom, this will become most dangerous to all three of them if this wasn’t stopped
by Joy and Sadness by reaching to main chamber in time. This is why psychologist says that anger is good but
when it is controlled the time it become uncontrolled and become aggression it cause only and only destruction,
So here, this psychological aspect of Stress→Anger(only)→Aggression→Open Aggression, is only and only
destructive, it only damages personality, person, minds peacefulness but never heals, so the stress should be
managed and the anger should also be managed and controlled in positive controlling and using of it, so that we
always have positive outcomes in our life throughout the journey.
Memory Plot / Game:
In this movie as we discussed earlier, that emotional balance and intelligence is on 1st rank of priority, and Stress
and anger management is on 3rd, then which psychological aspect is the link between the 1st and the 3rd and that
is memory or memories aspect of this movie with which the most, most and the most of the movie is
inter-linked, memory is the 2nd in ranking of core aspects of movie. In psychology we learned that memory is a
box that carries the process of encoding, decoding, understanding, remembering, forgetting, storing and
dumping of all those scenarios we have had in our previous lives, all those conditions and situations we have
been passed through, because these memories make us respond with coordination of our emotion in appropriate
and suitable manner, in-short these memories help us to build our personality either positive or negative. And
the same we saw in this movie Inside out.
In this movie, Joy clearly said that memories (colored orbs; golden=Joy, blue=Sadness, green=Disgust,
purple=Fear and red=Anger), are either core or ordinary, core memories are the base of personality of Riley,
which make her Riley by forming a personality islands, while ordinary memories our further divided into long
term and short term memories, where long term memories send to respective island for being settled in huge
complex long term memory vessels (like we studied in psychology that long term memories are unlimited in
capacity and semantically encoded with permanent presumed storage and highly organized information), while
short term memories the memories Riley do care for a specific period of time and then she forgot those (like in
psychology short term memories are limited in capacity, acoustically encoded, brief storage and conscious
processing of information), so when now these short term memories and some time even long term memories
faded away, or in other words Riley seem don’t careful about these, these will be dumped into deep dark big
black memory dump, and with this those memories will completely be removed and destroyed from Riley’s
mind and she will completely forget those (this in psychology be termed as interference theory in which one
information interfere and in result individual start forgetting some of his memories), it happens when the
personality islands were destroyed, it happens when imaginations of Riley’s imagination land were dumped and
forgot, it happens when train of thought was destroyed her most of the thoughts were dumped into memory
dump, it occurs when remembrance tube get damaged and Joy and Bing Bong fallen into memory dump and
Bing Bong sacrificed himself (removed himself from Riley’s mind by jumping out of magic rainbow rocket)to
make Joy reach the memory surface, everything Riley forgetting or removing or cleaning from her memory, it
was dumped into that memory dump and it was gone forever. And can only be regain by finding a correct way
like Joy did, she make Riley remember Joy, with help of magic rainbow rocket and Riley’s imagination friend
Bing Bong. This was the memory related psychological aspect of this movie, which we saw analyze and
understand that our memory gives us the way and direction to reflect our personality. In short, the type of
memory storage, the type or personality will be parallel to it.
Psychological Aspects Of Sigmund Freud Work / Personality:
Up-til now we discussed, the stages of development, the first main core; the Emotions, the second main core ;
the memory and the third main core; the stress and anger management/failure, of movie Inside-Out with respect
to psychology, and in all these we noticed one common thing that is personality, individuality which make
individual an individual, the personality is the 4th core of this movie, because success stages of development will
impact personality, emotions will reflect the cores of the personality, core memories are the elements of
personality which then further carried out by respective long term memories which then nourishes the
personality and stress and uncontrolled anger cause destruction of personality islands eventually cause negative
personality, every where in every aspect good personality is common and the actual need, and to get that the plot
of this movie and aspects of this movie were settled down and described by its makers.
In psychology Sigmund Freud was most re-known psychologist who worked on this 4th main/major/core
psychological aspect (PERSONALITY), and here in this movie Inside-Out we as well found the chunks of his
those studies. Those are as follows:
Theory Of Mind:
This psychological aspect gives us knowledge about the three main states of mind; Conscious (first level of
awareness; thoughts, perceptions, emotions, feelings, actions people are aware of) like in Riley’s case she was
aware of her state of not be adjustable in new city environment, like her new school and new fellows, like she
knew or felt that if she left San Francisco she will be happy again, Preconscious (second level of awareness;
learning and gaining awareness about certain things in the world around and about situations) like Riley learn
the difference of cat dolphin and elephant but and she blended those differences and created her own imaginary
friend, like she learn the shapes, like she learn the road map of new school in San Francisco, and Unconscious
(third and last level of awareness; in which actually person is unaware of his/her actions and mental and physical
activities beyond the normal awareness) like in this movie Riley’s dreamland characters, feeling afraid of her
own darkest fear in dreams etc. This is how this psychological aspect or work o Sigmund Freud is linked with
the core of this movie, like when Riley sleep she moved to unconscious state where her dreamland characters
make her dreaming various scenarios like only one flavored pizza she will find in her new city, like her new
school fellows making fun of her and she is struggling while introducing her to new fellow, like dreaming about
her deep darkest fears, and when she gets up and set herself in a state of consciousness her train of thoughts start
moving, bring, carrying and taking her new old good bad absurd odd even all types of thoughts from memory
chambers and islands to main chamber and from main chamber to the rest of the mind.
Personality Structure:
Personality structure is another piece of work done by Sigmund Freud, in this psychological aspect he define the
three different states of mind as different personality elements as per age factors, like Id; first type or category, a
category in which unconsciousness is at high level and kids are working on the basis of their unconscious mind
state, or simply we can say they follow the pleasure principle like Riley did and we saw in Riley’s case, that
when she was kid she use her imagination land characters to give her a pleasure joy and happiness, Ego; its the
second stage its the stage which carries the age factor from last level of pre pubic stage, pubic stage till parental
stage, where unconscious mind and imaginations are left only for bringing creative ideas and while dreaming,
while the rest work is of conscious and preconscious state of mind, where individual start realizing the
difference between imagination and realistic, and start follow the principle of reality and change, like we saw in
Riley’s case when she moved from Minnesota with her parents, she get exposed into a new changed
environment, which was way more different from previous one, and due to lack of emotional balance and this
eventually cause her personality start carrying negative ego (aggression, loneliness, stress, hatred etc), as she
was slightly far from pubic age the age in which she will face many more changes some big one some small
ones some good one some bad one so this negative ego should not be the right one for Riley’s personality, Super
Ego; state where pre-conscious state of mind is in high command, and its a parenting age, where individuals
internalized the social and the parental standards, like we saw in Riley’s mom and dad case, they shifted their
home due dad’s job, they tried to make Riley happy, they understood Riley and give her comfort when they
knew that she was having problem in adjusting and accepting this sudden new change, her dad scolded her while
she misbehaved at dinner table after her first day of new school, so here like by this, this aspect is connected.
Stages Of Development:
Under this study Freud stated that most of of people successfully meet the challenges of each stage of
personality development but some fail to do that and those some ratio of people became fixated to that stage of
personality development and so this is why the proper development get hindered, and in result due to fixation
the personality of the person start reflecting the signs of that stage with with that person is fixated. Its not found
in Riley’s character, but in this movie there was a character in the end of movie of young boy, who accidentally
bumped into Riley, and in that scene makers show the response of his emotions in his mind, in which it was
crystal clear that boy is being fixated with latency stage the fourth stage out 5 of Freud’s stages of personality
development(oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital), carries the age group of from 6-11 means before pubic age,
in which kids love or tries their best to play and be with same gender people and if accidentally they get exposed
to opposite gender they feel panic, stuck, dumb ends, like it was happening in the mind of that boy in the ending
of the movie that his all 5 emotions start giving red alerts regarding a girl(Riley), and this shows that he is stuck
or fixated with latency stage.
Anxiety / Defence Mechanism:
This is the fourth aspect of psychology studied by the Freud in which he defines anxiety as an emotional state of
a human being which occurred when ego of an individual faced influx of stimuli with which it cannot cope, like
here in the case of Riley, we discussed earlier that Riley is unable to adjust and accept new environment due her
emotional discrepancy and imbalance, and she start getting tensed about, and reacting very oppositely in various
positive situations. Along with anxiety Freud throw the concept of defence mechanism with which individual try
to overcome anxiety level, but this defence mechanism operate at an unconscious state of mind, and in some
extent it become successful but by distorting the facts and reality, like in the case of Riley, we saw that out of all
7 types of defence mechanisms(denial, displacement, projection, reaction formation, rationalization, regression
and sublimation) she choose the 5th one the rationalization in which usually individual come up with good and
acceptable reason, logistic, explanations and excuses for failure and on loosing, like Riley did, when Anger
character put bulb in console so that she herself make her new core memory, she justify herself that if she with
her parents won’t come here to San Francisco, so none of this will be happen, so this cope her up from anxiety
and stress problem, but make her strangle into many other major issues like she became dishonest, she decided
to leave home and went back to Minnesota all alone without letting anybody know, this how that defence
mechanism distort the reality of being lost, of being hurt and of being in big danger, and give her the most
dangerous idea or way to cope with her situation. This is how we can relate this aspect of psychology with the
movie Inside-out.
Still there are few psychological aspects we figured out in this movie which are quite prominent but not as
important as the above mentioned, those remaining psychological factors are as follows:
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Ulterior transaction: the category of level of communication in psychological level in which the real
meaning is just opposite to words speaker used, it occurred when after new school, Riley was having dinner
with her mom and dad, during which her mom ask her about the first day of school, that time Disgust was
the character on console she said good in such a that her mom understand that she had something disturbing
during her first day of school.
Berne’s Ego states: child ego, adult ego and parent ego in structural analysis; which are just parallel to
Freud’s ego stages: id, ego, super ego; child ego (defensive, emotional) like Riley was, she was emotional
but at that time her emotions were not working with harmony, which cause all damages we saw and
discussed before, adult ego (fact based, no helplessness) and sooner Riley join this age so before entering
this stage she should have her mind in harmonic way of functioning, so that in future in adult stage when
she face more difficult challenges and changes, so she and her mind’s peacefulness and cores of the
personality and personality island, and memories with mutual and proper functioning of all 5 core
emotions(Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust) won’t be destroy, get negatively affected every again. And
parent ego state(authoritative and talking down) we saw in case of Riley’s parent in each situation. This is
how this psychological aspect is found as well in this movie.
Last but not the least, Impression(portraying the characteristics of ones personality in such effective way
that it reflects the real positive you having strong and positive personality), this aspect is as well clearly be
noticed in both positive and negative manner in Riley’s case, like negative when she and her emotions were
not in balance while introducing herself and her old city to her new school fellow, and when she choose to
sit alone instead of taking initiative to talk to someone and make new friends, and when she showed not
anger but aggression while playing hockey. And positive when she and her all five emotions realizes that
they all are equally important and each have very important role and responsibilities in Riley’s life so they
should work with all needed balance.
And yes this is it, here our analysis of movie Inside out is completed.
Azka: Memory,overview, other psychological aspects
Bushra: Stress and Anger Management
Maryam: Eric Erickson’s stages of development
Numa: Emotional Intelligence
Danish: stages of Freud’s personality development and anxiety and defense mechanism
Tooba: Theory of mind and Personality structure
:THANK YOU: