Dangerous Minds Movie Review
A Former Marine, LouAnne Johnson, leaves an officer's commission and military career to pursue her dream of becoming an English teacher. But while earning her credentials at a Northern California high school, she is assigned to a group of students who change her life forever. She also changes theirs. Although each of her students displays a seemingly impenetrable wall, they are desperate to connect with someone who cares about them. As their new instructor, the spirited Ms. Johnson defies all the rules, creates her own curriculum and instructs this class of tough, inner-city teenagers from college-level texts. Frustrated that her students, whose standardized test scores range from average to excellent, have come to accept failure as a way of life, she persuades, tricks, and even bribes them into learning. More important, she loves them and helps them to believe in themselves, in their spirit, and in their potential.
Psychoanalysis is based on the concept that individuals are unaware of the many factors that cause their behavior and emotions. These unconscious factors have the potential to produce unhappiness, which in turn is expressed through a score of distinguishable symptoms, including disturbing personality traits, difficulty in relating to others, or disturbances in self-esteem or general disposition. Freud explains the principal tenets on which psychoanalytic theory is based. He begins with an explanation of the three forces of the psychical apparatus, the id, the ego, and the superego. The id has the quality of being unconscious and contains everything that is inherited, everything that is present at birth, and the instincts. The ego has the quality of being conscious and is responsible for controlling the demands of the id and of the instincts, becoming aware of stimuli, and serving as a link between the id and the external world. In addition, the ego responds to stimulation by either adaptation or flight, regulates activity, and strives to achieve pleasure and avoid unpleasure. Finally, the superego, whose demands are managed by the id, is responsible for the limitation of satisfactions and represents the influence of others, such as parents, teachers, and role models, as well as the impact of racial, societal, and cultural traditions.
The id is driven by the pleasure principle, which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs. If these needs are not satisfied immediately, the result is a state anxiety or tension. For example, an increase in hunger or thirst should produce an immediate attempt to eat or drink. In the movie Dangerous Minds, Ms. Johnson’s second period class is full of adolescences whose needs and wants are not being met by their parents, their environment, nor the school system. Those students were separated from the rest of the students in the school and put in the “academy program”, which was actually a way of keeping the less presentable and disruptive students from interrupting classes for the students who had higher expectations. In one scene, Mr. Griffith’s class was struggling to pay attention because Ms. Johnson’s class was being very loud. Mr. Griffith’s only response to his class was “come on, you know what they are like”. He expects his students to understand that Ms. Johnson’s students are socially inferior to them and that is why they behave in such a way. According to Erikson’s theory, these students are at the stage when the goal should be for each student to develop roles and skills that will prepare adolescents to take a “meaningful” place in adult society. Ms. Johnson’s students have been labeled as disruptive problem children that will not be productive members of society
The ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality. According to Freud, the ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world. The ego functions in