forest gump prognosis

Carrigan O'Connor
Dr. Reyes
PYS 1012
23 November 2014
Psychological Disorders
Part 1: Main Character
The main character of focus in the movie “Forrest Gump” is a boy/ man names Forrest Gump.
Forrest Gumps psychological disorder would be identified as Mild Mental Retardation and Asperbergers. Asperger syndrome is often considered a high functioning form of autism. It can lead to difficulty interacting socially, repeat behaviors, and clumsiness. Mental retardation and intellectual disability, (MR/ID), exists in children whose brains do not develop properly or function within the normal range. There are four levels of retardation: mild, moderate, severe, and profound. In Forrest Gumps case he was diagnosed with a mild form. The inferred symptoms that he has was slow mental processing, lack of empathy and understanding of others feelings, no concept of thoughts and feelings, and had a difficult time reading. Since the character also had scoliosis that caused him to wear braces on his legs, but since he was younger all of the kids thought it was funny and weird and made fun of him. That may have caused him to lose empathy for other people’s feelings.
Forrest’s’ mental disorders effected his level of educational factors because he didn’t get things as fast or as well as others. He had a low IQ of 75, which caused him to not be exactly accepted to be in a normal public school, yet he got in because of his mother’s actions. His disorder also affected a lot of his social life because most people thought he was too stupid and slow to understand real life situations. His mental disorder did not really take away his family because his mom loved him for him and told him he is no lesser than any other person. His mental disorder also did not affect his occupational factor of his life because he was still able to do the things he wanted like go to college and go into the war.
Part 2: Integration of Psychological Perspectives
Forrest Gump never had any troubles with his sleeping patterns that could affect his level of functioning. In the movie Forrest Gumps says “When I got tired, I slept. When I got hungry, I ate. When I had to go, you know, I left.” This quote that he said says to me that he did not have any problems with sleep.
Forrest Gump was still not very intelligent coming to school work and such. He had problems reading, but his childhood friend Jenny helped him learn how to read. He at first was not accepted to a regular public schools like the other kids his age, he was admitted to go to a special school, but his mom did not want him to be left out. He had a very low IQ of 75 which was a sign of mild mental retardation. The might of lead him to have less sympathy for others emotions because people would call him dumb and stupid and that would bring him down, so he wouldn’t care if something happened to his bullies.
The motivation that I chose for Forrest would be the Humanistic Theory of Motivation, he was really focused the whole movie to be like regular people and to get the love of his life back Jenny. His mental disorder goes with this theory of motivation because he was motivated to be like others in hope that Jenny would like him and to let her know that he can be like any other guy but treat her better than all the other guys she picked. For Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs I would chose Belongings and love needs for Forrest because all he was doing was to be normal and to show Jenny that he is capable of anything. He also felt like he needed the love of his Father who was always on “vacation” and he felt like he needed to be there for his son that he had with Jenny, even though he though of himself as dumb. With him trying to win over the love of Jenny that situation forced him from getting better because he knew that just being with Jenny can make him smarter and learn more because Jenny taught him a lot of things as a kid.
One developmental factor that Forrest had when he was a little boy was scoliosis. This is what caused him to have braces on his legs. People made fun of him from looking different from all of them which caused him to care less about people. Once people heard him speak and explain things to him they would all call him dumb and basically say he doesn’t belong in school. So that factor of being bullied with already have a Mild Retardation might have explained the factor of having Asperger’s. He was probably lacking in self-esteem from being bullied form the leg braces that he was not able to recover from. This is what could have hindered his social awkwardness.
Carl Rogers says that “human motive is the actualizing tendency—the innate drive to maintain and enhance the human organizations. According to Rogers, all other human motives, whether biological or social, are secondary. He compared the actualizing tendency to a child’s drive to learn to walk despite early frustration and falls” (Discovering Phycology, 2014, p. 434). This means to me that biological and social human motives are not the reason for you disorder, it is the way you look at your disorder. Rogers believed that feelings could be good or could be disordered. So Forrest does have a high chance of getting better and smarter, as well as developing more feelings towards other people’s emotions if he has the motivation inside of him. He sees people around him doing well, so this should influence him to get better with having good role models.
Stress did not really have a big impact on Forrest and his level of functioning. Yet when Forrest was stressed and did not know what to do he would run, he ran until he just said he didn’t want to anymore. Running was a way that he would cope with stress because it helped him forget everything that was happening in his life. I think that this was a very healthy way to cope with his stress.
Part 3: Reflection
I think that my prognosis is very accurate to what Forrest Gump really had. In the movie you could see he was slow, and he wasn’t even supposed to go to regular school. I believe that the way he treated others showed that he did have a touch of Asperger’s with his Mild Mental Retardation. He was unable to gain meaningful relationships and this is why I think he did have these disorders. I think that without Jenny leaving him and going and doing her own world that he would not have done all the things that he has succeeded in such as going to college for football, and surviving the Korean War. He knew that Jenny did not want a guy that couldn’t do things for himself so he knew that he had to fight through his disorders and to make a life for himself. Forrest was smart whether people thought it or not. He just had to find a different way to interpret things into his understanding.