Movie Review – Mean Girls Essay Example

would say about this movie is unrealistic. Instead the paper will mostly be focusing on his defense mechanisms and how they relate to the movie with mentioning of both his topographical model and his structural model. Freud developed psychological defense mechanisms which included the following: denial, repression, rationalization, projection, reaction formation, displacement, regression, identification, compensation, fantasy, intellectualization and sublimation.

We use these mechanisms to cope with anxiety created by the id, reality, and the superego, so the ego creates these mechanisms (Cherry, n. d. para. 2). Freud’s topographical model consists of conscious, unconscious and preconscious. Conscious is everything your aware of, unconscious is the part of our mind that is very difficult to retrieve and contains everything we are unaware of and our preconscious is everything that is retrievable that you are not currently aware of. Then there is Freud’s structural model which contains the id, ego, and the superego (Fritzley, 2010, p. 0-13).

The story begins when Cady meets two friends, Janis and Damien, who show Cady the ways of high school. This is a very normal way in reality and most would not think much of it. Unconsciously, Freud would say, that there is some sort of motive behind this behavior and that there is no possible way that there doing it just to be nice. But as the story goes on we do find out that Janis used to be best friends with Regina (queen bee of “the plastics”) and that their friendship ended due to Regina spreading a rumor that Janis was a lesbian.

When Cady is asked by Regina to hang out she is very hesitant to

do so and tells Janis what is happening. Janis gets overly excited and instantly her id, the pleasure seeking principle, of her behavior jumps into play causing her to completely ignore both her ego and superego, which are the reality and the internalized parent of her mind. Janis’ id jumps into play because she is excited about the opportunity that has just opened itself up (Fritzley, 2012, p. 12). Janis now sees that she can use Cady to get total revenge on Regina.

In this scene, Janis is using sublimation. She is taking her socially unacceptable urges to be aggressive with Regina and instead is turning it into socially acceptable behavior by trying to ruin her reputation (Ciccareli, Hannigan, Fritzley, 2010, p. 474). Another example of Freud’s defense mechanisms would be when Cady begins to be just like “the plastics”. In one scene it shows the four girls walking in a row, all in pink and all with their hair down, all because Regina tells them too.

Freud would say that the girls are showing us an example of identification which is trying to become like someone else to basically mask your own insecurities (Ciccareli, Hannigan, Fritzley, 2010, p. 474). This is also seen with many of the characters in the movie because everyone wants to be like Regina. In the movie, we also see an example of denial. There is a scene where Regina finally confronts Cady about kissing her boyfriend. Cady reacts completely blind sighted and denies this situation ever happened. Denial is when you refuse to recognize a threatening situation (Cherry, n. . para. 1).

Cady did not want

to look like a bad person in front of everyone, so to get out of the situation she used the denial mechanism. Cady is not only confronted by Regina but also by her former friend at this point, Janis. Janis accuses Cady of being a fake and a liar and continues to tell her that she is a bad person. Instead of using denial in this situation Cady was quick to use rationalization. Rationalization is when someone makes up acceptable excuses for their unacceptable behaviors (Ciccarelli, Hannigan, Fritzley, 2010, p. 474).

She tells Janis that is was all her idea in the first place to sabotage “the plastics” and that she was just sticking to the plan. Although this seems like a good excuse, it is not good enough for Janis and Cady is forced to realize that what she has been doing all this time has actually been horrible and that in fact she has changed. The two scenes where Cady is confronted shows that people do not just have one defensive style. Freud says that actually as we grow up our defensive styles usually change, he says that denial is mainly used amongst preschool children while older children begin to use projection.

Projection is when you place your own unacceptable thoughts onto others as if the thoughts belong to them and not yourself (Garland, 2001, p. 477). One exception to the idea that denial is only used amongst preschoolers is the fact that older girls (between 10 and 12), when facing social rejection, turn to the denial and projection mechanism together (Cherry, n. d. para. 1). This is shown when Cady

is facing issues with everyone at school, so she begins to deny all the bad when she is perfectly conscious of what she has done and knows how she hurt many people in the process of this excursion.

Overall this movie has many examples of how defense mechanisms are used. I would recommend to getting a better view on how high school works, for a psychologist to actually watch this movie because of how much information you can pull from it. Although some people believe that it may not depict what high school is really like, it does do a great job skimming the surface of how it is. For example, in my high school we had all the same cliques as the movie portrayed and although it was not as clear, people do tend to hang out with people who have similar interests.

It also shows the hardship of what a new student would go through, which I also found was true. The director did an amazing casting job and picked perfect roles for each star he hired on. The movie is well written and contains many funny references that have been remembered for quite some time now. I love the concept of the movie, I love the comedy that comes from the movie and I love lessons learned in the end, although they may not be as drastic as it portrayed. I would recommend this movie to anyone dealing with these high school problems and anyone who would like a better understanding on how life can treat you.

I learned that concepts in personality psychology surround us and are actually

comparable to real life experiences. I also learned that defensive styles are not bad for your behaviors and that it is okay to use them as long and you’re not completely relying on them and that you know when to use them and when not to. To conclude, Freud gives us many things to kind of take in and although his views may seem a little extreme, they do in the end make sense and we can see that though media and our everyday lives.