Families can go along for years without ever facing the underlying problems in their relationships. The Academy Award drama, Ordinary People, depicts this tendency through the life of a white upper-class family living in the suburbs of Chicago dealing with several life issues such as, love, loss, depression, marriage, family life and renewal. In this essay I will explain the concept of perception, self-esteem belief and the hidden self relate to these real life experiences and give examples from the film that correlates to the concepts of character, situation or issues in the text.
As the movie unfolded I discovered that its main problem is focused fearfully around the difficulties of love. Each member of the family all “love” each other, but all perceived it differently. The most obvious case of perception was between son Conrad and his Mom Beth. Beth displays somewhat a cold withdrawal from Conrad, which left him to believe she loved his deceased brother more than him.
On page 62 of the text, Devito defines perception as the process by which one becomes aware of objects through senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. He also went further to explain how important perception is in interpersonal communication because of how it influences your communication choices. A scene that demonstrated the concept of perception is when Conrad’s mom avoids taking a picture with him. To some she might have been viewed as being nice and offering to take their picture instead, however, Conrad perceived this as his mother withdrawing from him and in return became hostile with his dad.
The second concept from the film was about self-esteem. On page 59 of the text, self-esteem is described as a measure how valuable you think you are. The concept of self-esteem took shape through the multiple scenes where Conrad attended psychiatric counseling sessions with Dr. Berger. During one session, Conrad felt overwhelmed with emotions to the point…
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