The Doctor Due 10/20 @ midnight

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This week's topical blog will be devoted to your analysis of the movie The Doctor.

You are to determine which chapters (1-9) are most relevant to this movie.

Watch the movie. Take notes.

Next, write your comment. Your comment does not need to provide an overview of the movie (we have all seen it). Your comment should be an in-depth analysis of one or more principles from your text. You should use scenes and characters to provide examples of textbook concepts. Your comment should reflect that you are in an upper division, university level Motivation and Emotion course and clearly link elements from the movie to the textbook.  This is a comprehensive assignment (linking course lectures, textbook, and the movie) and you cannot do that in just a few short paragraphs.

BE SPECIFIC. At the bottom of your comment, please put a list of the ME terms you used.

40 Comments

I found the moive to be enjoyable and I like how it showed how situational events can really change a person's beliefs and feelings toward someone or something in life. One of the main aspects of motivation and emotion that was very apparent to me was the charge and control that Dr. Jack MacKee had over his career and life. Dr. MacKee was a very well known and powerful doctor, he had the prestige title of a first class heart surgeon and knew he was good at what he did. Dr. MacKee was surely a man who wanted to have power and control in his life. Power is the psychological desire to make the physical and social world conform to one's personal image or plan for it. Like most people who strive for the need of power, Dr. MacKee had the desire to have "impact, control, or influence over another person, group, or the world at large. He controls those people below him and feels that the other doctors and the patients that he deals with and works with don't know as much as him and feels they should listen to him and do what he wants them to do. However, Dr. MacKee does have a need for affliation. Affiliation is the establishing, maintaining, or restoring a postivie, affective relationship with another person or persons. Dr. MacKee uses humor in his request for people to do something. He uses humor to take away the stigma of him making people do what he wants. He doesn't want to make it seem like he is forcing people to do things so he attempts to use humor to make work enjoyable and to be liked by his collegues and employees. You can also tell that Dr. MacKee has a high sense of achievement for his life. Achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. This is evident is the way that Dr. MacKee dresses, which is suits and expensive clothes, the car he drives, and the large and beautiful house he owns. However all this changes when he is diagnosed with throat cancer and he become the patient rather than the docotr. For awhile in the movie, MacKee is still demanding and showing his power. This is very evident in the scene where he is talking to a nurse and saying how he is a doctor and should not have to wait to be seen like those other patients. The doctor continues to have to deal with the treatment that patients go through all the time and this opens his eyes up to the treatment that they put patients through at the hospitals and he feels this needs to change. He then requires his staff members of doctors to be in a patient's shoes for 72 hours to experience what it is like to be on the other end of the situation and the treatment they get.
Another aspect of motivation and emotion I found prevelant in the movie was the concept of learned helplessness. I feel as if the patients of this hospital have developled a sense of learned helplessness because they have come to the conclusion that nothing they do will help them get seen faster by a doctor or be treated better. Learned helplessness is the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life's outcomes are uncontrollable. The patients get this learned helpless feeling because they have tried complaining and making a fuss about getting seen faster or treated better but nothing comes of it. They have come to learn that they have to deal with the outcome of filling out paperwork, waiting in long lines, and dealing with the enourmous amounts of questions before being seen. So patients just accept these things and just learn to deal with the waits and paperwork to be finally seen at some piont and time.

Terms: Power, Affilation, Achievemet, Learned Helplessness

The movie The Doctor demonstrated that you don't really know how someone feels until you take a walk in their shoes. Dr. MacKee is a very successful surgeon who enjoys his job and the people who work with him. He has a satisfied several of his needs by having this job. One of these psychological needs is competence. Competence is the need to be effective in the environment. He is challenged at his job and gets feedback that the job is done well when a patient makes it through surgery. MacKee also has a high need for achievement. Achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. As MacKee continues to do well at his job, it increases it doubles as continuing is satisfaction of gaining achievement. Mackee's high status job also proves that he has a high need for power. The need for power is commonly marked by having influential occupations. Another one of the signs of a high need for power is having prestige possession. MacKee is always dressed nice, drives a mercedes and lives is a beautiful house.

Dr. MacKee has satisfied various needs but the he has one flaw. He does not know how to relate to his patients. Relatedness is the psychological need to establish close and emotional bonds with others. Dr. MacKee is good at what he does but he doesn't really know what it's like to be a patient until he develops throat cancer and becomes a patient himself. Dr. MacKee meets June Ellis while waiting for his radiation therapy. At first, Dr. MacKee uses his power to his benefit and cuts in line while waiting to hear about his records. June allows MacKee to realize all of the things patients deal with including filling out paper work, being misdiagnosed and accepting that it's okay to be scared. MacKee lacks this kind of intimacy and relatedness with his wife Anne and doesn't open up to her about his true feelings. Even though MacKee's job as a surgeon satisfies his needs, he is neglecting the needs of his wife. Anne has a high need for intimacy and relatedness but it is not being satisfied. She hears news through MacKee's secretary and gets interruped with phone calls when she is spending time with her husband. At the end of the movie, Dr. MacKee uses the lessons he learned to help his co-workers. He sets up a situation where his fellow doctors have to become patients for the next 72hours so that they can feel what it's like to be a patient. This exercise will help to increase the bond between doctors and patients by increasing their awarness that everyone has the desire for relatedness..even when it comes to the doctor-patient relationship. Patients with terminal diseases often develop a psychological state known as learned helplessness. This state results when an individual feels that life's outcomes are uncontrollable. One of the side effects of learned helplessness is depression. When a doctor is able able to show empathy and compassion to a paient it is likely likely to change a patients negative cognitions. The exercise the Dr. MacKee created will hopefully give the doctors a first hand experience of what learned helplessness truely is so that they can relate to their future patients.

Psychological need, competence, achievement, power, relatedness, intimacy, learned helplessness

The movie The Doctor demonstrated that you don't really know how someone feels until you take a walk in their shoes. Dr. MacKee is a very successful surgeon who enjoys his job and the people who work with him. He has a satisfied several of his needs by having this job. One of these psychological needs is competence. Competence is the need to be effective in the environment. He is challenged at his job and gets feedback that the job is done well when a patient makes it through surgery. MacKee also has a high need for achievement. Achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. As MacKee continues to do well at his job, it increases it doubles as continuing is satisfaction of gaining achievement. Mackee's high status job also proves that he has a high need for power. The need for power is commonly marked by having influential occupations. Another one of the signs of a high need for power is having prestige possession. MacKee is always dressed nice, drives a mercedes and lives is a beautiful house.

Dr. MacKee has satisfied various needs but the he has one flaw. He does not know how to relate to his patients. Relatedness is the psychological need to establish close and emotional bonds with others. Dr. MacKee is good at what he does but he doesn't really know what it's like to be a patient until he develops throat cancer and becomes a patient himself. Dr. MacKee meets June Ellis while waiting for his radiation therapy. At first, Dr. MacKee uses his power to his benefit and cuts in line while waiting to hear about his records. June allows MacKee to realize all of the things patients deal with including filling out paper work, being misdiagnosed and accepting that it's okay to be scared. MacKee lacks this kind of intimacy and relatedness with his wife Anne and doesn't open up to her about his true feelings. Even though MacKee's job as a surgeon satisfies his needs, he is neglecting the needs of his wife. Anne has a high need for intimacy and relatedness but it is not being satisfied. She hears news through MacKee's secretary and gets interruped with phone calls when she is spending time with her husband. At the end of the movie, Dr. MacKee uses the lessons he learned to help his co-workers. He sets up a situation where his fellow doctors have to become patients for the next 72hours so that they can feel what it's like to be a patient. This exercise will help to increase the bond between doctors and patients by increasing their awarness that everyone has the desire for relatedness..even when it comes to the doctor-patient relationship. Patients with terminal diseases often develop a psychological state known as learned helplessness. This state results when an individual feels that life's outcomes are uncontrollable. One of the side effects of learned helplessness is depression. When a doctor is able able to show empathy and compassion to a paient it is likely likely to change a patients negative cognitions. The exercise the Dr. MacKee created will hopefully give the doctors a first hand experience of what learned helplessness truely is so that they can relate to their future patients.

Psychological need, competence, achievement, power, relatedness, intimacy, learned helplessness

The Doctor is a great movie that exemplifies many of the social and psychological needs that people encounter in day to day experiences. One good example from the movie is Dr.MacKee’s high need for achievement. I believe most people in his profession, medical doctors, have high need for achievement. Every day he is faced with having to perform lifesaving surgery on his patients. In order to even have a skill like this, he is required to have a high level of excellence. In order to reach this level, he is driven and has the desire to do well. I believe he would be categorized as having high-need for achievement because people who do normally chose moderately difficult tasks compared to non-difficult tasks. In my opinion, surgery is a very difficult task.

I also think that Dr. MacKee has the social need of power. This is social need is defined as having the desire to see the environment move or change in a certain direction which is in their favor. Many times people with high need for power try to impact others, control the situation and influence others to expand on their power. An example from the movie is when Dr. MacKee gets very upset that he can’t control the staff at the hospital. First, when he arrives, he explains to the receptionist that he is a doctor at this hospital so he shouldn’t have to fill out the forms. Unfortunately, she essentially takes away his power in this situation because he is forced to fill out the papers. Another example is when he shows up to one of his appointments and is told that his doctor couldn’t make it in that day. While in the waiting room he gets very upset and aggressive and ends up yelling at the receptionist. Also, because he is a doctor, I believe that shows he has high need for power. Being in the position of a doctor enables him to have control over everything during surgery. He tells his nurses what tools to give him, tells them they need to sing and many other tasks.

At the beginning of the movie I believe Dr. MacKee uses avoidance coping. This is when someone choses to walk away from problems instead of taking control and trying to fix the problem. This is evident when he tells his residency students that they should not get attached to the patients at all. You can also tell he uses avoidance coping when he is with patients and instead of confronting them, he often times makes jokes. However, as the movie progresses Dr. MacKee changed his way of coping. A good example of this is when he is driving to Reno with June. While they are sitting outside of the car in the desert he says “I tell myself to get in, fix it, get out.” This shows that he notices the way he is dealing with his patients isn’t appropriate. An example where Dr. MacKee uses approach coping is when he sees an older man who is crying in the parking ramp. While his associates laugh at the poor man (because this is the man who is suing one of the doctors) Dr. MacKee goes over to talk to him. He then finds out he locked his keys in the car. Instead of saying “oh that’s too bad” Dr. MacKee reassures the man and tells him to go to his appointment and that he will take care of getting the keys out.

The movie proves that many of the needs which affect our day to day lives can be changed or altered. Before Dr. MacKee was undergoing procedures for his throat cancer, he went through life with a high need for power, low need for relatedness and intimacy and tended to cope with his problems by avoiding them. However, after seeing what a patient has to deal with and go through he changed his ways of thinking and acting.

Terms: social needs, psychological needs, need for achievement, drive, high-need for power, aggression, approach coping, avoidance coping, relatedness, intimacy

The movie was about a doctor who is very successful at his job, has a wife and kids, but his who world gets flipped upside down when he finds out that he has a tumor in his throat. In the movie after he finds out that he has a tumor I feel like that is when goes through a multiple amount of concepts that we have discussed like autonomy, learned helplessness, power, relatedness, and intimacy.
So after he finds out that he has a tumor, I feel like he loses his control on his life, so the feel of autonomy is gone for him. But I feel like he tries to get some control over it by making light of the situation and cracking jokes about it. The next one is that he strongly begins to understand learned helplessness because he had everything and usually got his way about things and now the tumor threw him for a loop and is learning how helpless you feel as a patient. For instance, he multiple times in the movie announces that he is a doctor and thinks it’s going to work. So when he is in the situation with his hospital room and he is stuck with a roommate, he complains that he is a doctor at the hospital and wants a single room, but no can do he doesn’t get his single room. Also, when he yells and complains to the secretary that the radiologist had to cancel his appointment and even though he probably knows that she can’t do anything about it because he can’t do anything about it, so he takes it out on her. Jack sense of power is very prevalent with his high profile job as a doctor and telling announcing to people all the time that he is a doctor, it just shows that he likes his title and wants everyone else to know it too. I feel during the movie he begins to hangout out with another tumor patient, June Ellis who he begins to feel a strong relatedness towards. Like when finds out that his disease has not gotten better, he begins to bond with her and takes her on a road trip to see this concert thing that she has always wanted to see, but don’t see it and dance in the middle of the desert. Eventually that become good friends and when June dies he holds he hand in the hospital and feels depressed because she had become his friend through all of this. He also has intimacy issues because his wife and his marriage are on the rocks because he is always busy with work and now with this disease he seems like he is pushing her away. So, by the end of the movie the wife gives off the impression that she thinks that he might be having an affair with June, until June dies and understands that it was just a friendship. So, at the end he can’t talk and he wants her to yell at him and keeps telling her that he needs her and eventually she gives in and takes his apology.
Terms: autonomy, learned helplessness, power, relatedness, and intimacy

Jack has many psychological and physiological needs. His psychological need for competence plays a significant role. Competence is the need to be effective in interactions with the environment and reflects the desire to exercise one's capacities and skills to seek master optimal challenges. This is demonstrated when Jack is diagnosed with cancer and shows up at the hospital the next day to see his patients. His whole life has been dedicated to his career as a doctor and he has fulfilled his need for competence. Because of this, he cannot give it up easily and do nothing. He also has a high need for achievement in that he has a desire to do well and be a good surgeon. He is in competition with the other doctors and wants to be considered the fun, most successful doctor. Along with this, he has a high need for power and wants to make the world conform to one’s personal image and plan for it. When he receives his diagnosis, he is wants the least and quickest treatment possible so he can back to his life. He wants to be seen as a leader among his colleagues and does not want to be looked down upon because he has an illness. He is aggressive at first in saying that he wants to continue to treat his patients regardless of his diagnosis. Because of his influential occupation, he is seen as a man of power and doesn’t want to lose his status. He also has prestige possessions as we see in the movie. He drives a nice car, lives in a very nice house and takes a spur of the moment trip. Jack also believes he knows the best treatment for him because he is a well respected doctor and this is also showing his need for power. He cannot allow the other doctors to do their job and take care of him as a patient. Jack has a strong desire for affiliation. Affiliation is the desire to establish, maintain and restore positive, affective relationships with others. He develops a high need for affiliation throughout the movie. He is having problems in his marriage and doesn’t look to his wife or child to meet his need for affiliation. He instead turns to June because she is experiencing the same situation and Jack feels that she can relate to his problem more than his wife can. At first, he is rude to June, but they develop a relationship as the movie goes along because Jack is pushing away his wife and needs some sort of relationship to survive his treatment. Because of his fear and anxiety about cancer, he seeks out others and establishes/maintains interpersonal networks with June. In the beginning of the movie, Jack used humor with his patients and colleagues to gain their attention and companionship. However, these were more superficial relationships because they never connected on a deep, emotional level. After experiencing treatment, Jack realizes that he and fellow doctors need to have more compassion for their patients and don’t treat them just as a patient. Jack experienced straight to the point, no emotion doctors while undergoing treatment and was desperate for a deep companion. This is another reason why he and June became so close. Jack repairs his relationship with his wife when he tells her to yell at him and expresses that he needs her. He has pushed his wife away throughout the movie and realizes that after June (his strongest companion) dies, he needs to fill the void with another relationship. Jack also experiences learned helplessness, the expectation that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable. Obviously Jack does not want to have throat cancer, but this is something out of his control. He has to learn to make time for treatment everyday and put his normal life on hold for awhile. When he learns the tumor gets bigger, he experiences motivational deficits in that he doesn’t know why he is trying with radiation treatment anymore. He then decides to go through with surgery the next day and he has developed some control over his diagnosis. In the beginning he experiences learning deficits in that he is pessimistic. He doesn’t really believe that he has significant cancer that needs to be treated. He also does not want to undergo radiation treatment. He also experiences emotional deficits in that this depressing diagnosis depletes his emotions. He becomes somewhat depressed because he has pushed his wife away, cannot work as a surgeon that he has worked his life for. Towards the end of the movie, Jack experiences mastery motivation in that he will find a surgeon to remove the tumor immediately after he has learned the tumor is getting better. He “will find a way to get this done.” He chooses a colleague to perform the operation the next day despite the risk factor of permanently damaging his vocal cords. He chose a viable route to his desirable goal of being cured. In conclusion, Jack learns that he being a powerful doctor isn’t what his profession is about. He needs to show more compassion and develop relationships with his patients that he is treating. This is why he makes the other doctors be a patient for 72 hours at the end of the movie. He realized he would never have learned this lesson if he had never been diagnosed with cancer. He was on a power trip all his life until it was his turn to be the scared patient.

competence, achievement, power, satisfying power, affiliation, learned helplessness, emotional deficits, learned deficit, motivational deficit, goal

This movie “The Doctor” really opens one’s eyes to the fact that you really don’t understand what a person goes through unless you go through it yourself. I found it very enjoyable, which is odd considering this sort of movie isn’t normally the type of movie I go for.

In the case of this class of motivation and emotion, there are a number of concepts in the movie that we have covered in class. One that sticks out very clearly in the beginning is Dr. Mackee’s rather strong social need of power. Social needs being an acquired psychological process that grows out of one’s socialization history that activates emotional response to a particular need. Power itself is the psychological desire to make both the physical and social world conform to one's personal image or plan for it. This is usually accomplished through leadership and influential positions, as is clear in Dr. Mackee’s place he’s a very successful and highly regarded surgeon within his hospital. It’s shown in some of the first scenes that a fellow surgeon seeks out his opinion in a situation in his own patient. But also with the doctor, he has a high need of achievement as well; the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. Being a surgeon and a successful one, power and achievement go hand and hand, so Mackee lives a rich and nice lifestyle due to his achievements.

However when he finds out that he has throat cancer, well things make a 360 turn around. And suddenly the doctor becomes the patient in his very own hospital. When forced to be with other patents, Mackee tries to use his power as a successful surgeon there to pull rank. Soon enough it acknowledges that this doesn’t work at all. The control he had felt in his usual lifestyle is now gone. Control is a psychological need that means interpersonal sentiment and behavior to pressure another toward compliance with a prescribed way of thinking, feeling, or behaving is expressed. Using his power, he had control over the situations that made themselves known to him. The sudden appearance of cancer, and forcing to be a patient that control was gone. He tried to take back control when demanding a morning operation on his throat, but the lady doctor stated otherwise; saying he was the patient and she the doctor. I think it was then that he began to realize, there wasn’t much he could do about things and how they were.

That is where learned helplessness comes in I believe, just a bit. Learns that as a patient, he really can’t do anything on his own, unable to sort of cut in line of the other patients around him. He is unable to take control of the situation and with the rest of the patient engage in a bit of learned helpless behavior. Learned helplessness being, the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life outcomes are uncontrollable. These patients have no choice but to leave their lives in the hands of doctors and knowing they aren’t telling them the truth and knowing that aren’t doing their best to get the job done. I think June’s explanation of how she got to the point she was in the movie to be a great example of this. She’s dying and maybe could have had a good prognosis had her doctors caught the tumor earlier. But through all the time both Jack and June had together, being fellow radiation and cancer patients there was a relatedness that was occurring; a psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people. Because of their current situation and experiences, they shared a friendship that they were able to relate to one another, June actually giving Jack more insight into everything, encouraging him to let people in and telling him how even when she was gone.

Through what he had learned being a patient and learning what he had from June, Dr. Mackee’s outlook and personal philosophy changed. Making his interns or the doctors he was teaching become patients for 73 hours just so that their perspective could change a bit as well. He formed a more intimate relationship with his patient, while at the same time regaining the intimacy in his marriage as well which probably saved it in the end.

Terms: social need, power, psychological need, achievement, control, learned helplessness, relatedness, and intimacy.

The doctor provides an interesting look into many different psychological and social needs that we’ve discussed in class or read in our textbook. The interesting aspect to this movie with these needs is that Dr. MacKee has a certain set of needs at the beginning of the movie, but his needs change once he is diagnosed with cancer. Prior to his diagnosis, Dr. MacKee was very concerned about himself, but starts become more interactive and “kind-hearted” in time after his diagnosis. His experience with cancer causes a role reversal that shifts his needs.
Within the first couple of minutes of the movie, we get a good idea of Dr. MacKee. In the surgery room, you get a sense that Dr. MacKee is driven by the social need of power. He wants to be in control in the surgery room and maintain authority over the rest of his staff. This need for power continues when he comes in for his biopsy. He expects hospital staff to cater to his needs with delivering his forms and giving him an individual room. You see many other examples of his need for power with the clothes he wears and the car he drives. Money tends to translate to power and the clothes and car he owns indicate that power through money. This high need for power also works in a similar manner to a high need for achievement. As a doctor, you want to get through successful surgeries and we see that importance when he feels accomplished for getting through the surgery that begins the movie. This high need for achievement is also shown by the need for nice clothes, house, and car. Like power, achievement can be shown through money and his high amount of money helped purchase those clothes, house, and car.
Working parallel to his need for power, Dr. MacKee has a high need for competence. Like many doctors, Dr. MacKee prides himself on his surgery skills. He acts as if he has a “gift” and can just go in and out of surgery using his skills to complete surgery. He struggles when he does get diagnosed with cancer because he can’t utilize his capabilities as much to satisfy his need for competence.
Prior to his diagnosis, he doesn’t seem to have that high of need for affiliation or intimacy. He seems to have a decent relationship with his wife, but from the beginning parts of the movie, you don’t get the sense that they are as intimate as then can be. However, his relationship with June provides him a higher need for intimacy and affiliation and thus strives to better his relationship with his wife, but also his patients. This higher need for affiliation or intimacy could be thought of as a higher need for relatedness as well. During his cancer treatment, he deals with doctors that acted like he did with his patients: not interactive and focused on this work. However, he wants that interaction and compassion that failed to show to his previous patients. This lack of interaction and compassion from the doctor also caused Dr. MacKee to develop a sense of learned helplessness like many of his patients had developed. This sense of learned helplessness develops when you feel as if there is no chance of getting better; a feeling that is common amongst cancer patients. You first start to see this sense of learned helplessness when Dr. MacKee learns more about his cancer because as a doctor, he knows what is to be expected.

Terms: competence, power, affiliation, achievement, intimacy, relatedness, learned helplessness

The movie The Doctor is about, Jack, a head surgeon at a hospital in a large city. He comes off as a total ass of a doctor and by that I mean, and he even mentions this to his residence, that its best to not know too much about the patient because it makes it difficult to treat them. However, this lack of compassion shows in how he deals with patients and the disrespect he deals to them.. However, soon he is diagnosed with a tumor in his larynx and it is malignant. His arrogance seems to keep him from taking any of this too seriously and he keeps making jokes during every tense moment. Its not until they tell him the tumor is getting bigger than he starts to reexamine his life. He is treated like any other patient in the hospital during treatment despite the fact that hes an employee, a powerful one at that. He feels very pushed under the rug and this treatment by the other doctors shakes his foundations. While in treatment, he meets June, a girl who suffers from a brain tumor and they bond. Through her he learns a lot about what it means to enjoy life and she also teaches him, since it was a doctors fault that the tumor wasn't caught in time, that doctors need to be more considerate and compassionate to their patients because they hold their lives in their hands. After June dies, and they fix him all up, he takes these lessons and tries to show the other doctors what it is to know and be there for their patients.
When we first meet Jack he has a high need for power and he gets this need met by being a surgeon and holding people's lives (and organs) in his hands and knowing that they need him to live. He doesn't even entertain the idea of getting to know his patients because this is another way he has power over them; they all know him and count on him and he is there for his own personal gain. Like an arrogant king among his people. He has a high need for affiliation which he gets among his peers who all admire him and look up to him at this point in the movie as well but he has a low need for intimacy and you see this because he isn't home very often and hardly speaks to his son which you can gather from the scene where Nick comes downstairs to speak to Jack and he grabs the phone because he assumes his dad was calling instead of actually being present. The intimate relationships with his wife and son are not as important to him at this point. Also in the beginning, he has a low need for relatedness because he doesn't care about his patients. However, he has a high need for both competence and achievement because he does want to be seen as a great and successful doctor and he wants people to know hes competent and has achieved. At the beginning he appears to have a low need for autonomy but that is probably because it is not challenged as of yet.
THEN! Jack is diagnosed with a tumor and then cancer and all of these needs and the degree they are met changes. First off, he becomes a patient and must follow by their guidelines. Every other doctor and nurse he sees knows who he is and they still treat him without respect and dignity. They don't let him look at his own files, or schedule his own treatments and thus he eventually discovers his need for autonomy is becoming higher and higher everyday that they control some part of his treatment for him. He begins to question his competence and his abilities, especially as he realizes how fragile life is. For example when he goes to perform surgery and freezes and thus his friends have to take over for him. He is also being challenged by his friends who talk behind his back about how he needs to take time off because they are starting to show that they don't think he is competent enough anymore. His need for relatedness starts to rise as he gets to know the other patients who are sharing in his pain with him. He starts to take interest in other he is treating and those who are in treatment with him, especially June. His need for achievement is high because he feels like he needs to prove himself to his friends and family that he can still be the same person despite his affliction and also he needs to prove that he can beat this illness. His need for affiliation goes down and you see this towards the end when he starts to shed the opinions of his coworkers in exchange for more personal relationships with patients. He also begins to gain a higher need for intimacy because he starts showing a more active interest in his wife and son towards the end of the film. Lastly, his need for power lowers extremely. He know longer needs to feel above his patients and instead he becomes one with them and can feel their pain and takes the time to know them personally and he makes his residence be patients for 72 hours so that they can learn these lessons as well.
This movie tackles the whole array of social and psychological needs as you see one man's struggle against death and the things that change within him during the battle.

Psychological Needs, Social Needs, Autonomy, Competence, Affiliation, Intimacy, Relatedness, Achievement, Power.

Two aspects of Dr.MacKee’s behavior really stick out at me during the movie. In the beginning when he would talk on the phone to one of his friends he talked about how much he wanted to have a cigarette. The addiction he had worked to quit was still in the back of his mind. At one point he mentioned that he would do anything for a cigarette even though his throat was in pain and he had just seen a doctor about it. It seems that even though he had kicked the habit of smoking, he still craved for the release of dopamine that the got from it.

The second thing that stuck out to me was how he reacted to the news of being diagnosed with throat cancer. His reaction to his body being out of homeostasis ended up putting all of his former close relationships and lifestyle out of equilibrium also. He pushed a lot of people away who he no longer felt intimacy with them because they either couldn’t fix the problem or he felt that they didn’t have anything to make him feel better. He felt very isolated. I think one of the scenes in the elevator illustrated it very well. First he was surrounded by a lot of people (life before his diagnosis), then everyone else gets off the elevator except for him (after diagnosis). He even takes a moment to look around at the empty space. Then when he is walking down the hallway to radiation also shows how he is kind of alone at the beginning of his recovery journey.

After Dr.MacKee got over the shock of his diagnosis, he started to show more and more persistence when it came to his treatment. By discovering what patients go through and that being a doctor himself held no importance with other doctors who were treating him, Jack started becoming more persistent in his life. He became more attached to people he could relate to and he continued to fight to have a say in what was done to him. In the very end, he was able to come up with a creative idea to help new doctors learn what it was like to be in their patient’s shoes. This way the doctors had a better understanding of what is going on with their patient psychologically.

Another character that really stood out was June. She had learned helplessness when it came to her diagnosis. She would think of all of the things she wasn’t going to be able to do before she died and accepted it. Her outlook on her future was really sad because she couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do much to achieve her goals that she wanted to. Instead she just accepted the place she was in and the life she was living (in waiting rooms). She was not persistent as Dr.MacKee, she just accepted it. This hit me hard because I have a cousin who lost her mother to cancer, her mother fought for years before she passed away. I just kept hoping that she never went through the shock and helplessness that Dr.MacKee experienced.

Terms List: addiction, dopamine, homeostasis, persistence, attached, relate, creative, learn, understanding, psychologically, learned helplessness, and achieve.

The directions for this blog ask us to identify which chapters the movie relates the most to. After watching the movie, I can see that overall I think this movie has to deal with Chapter 5 the most. I say this because I believe throughout the movie Jack became intrinsically motivated. At the beginning he was extrinsically motivated. For example, having the money to live a comfortable life style. He was lacking the internal motivation of helping the patients and being a doctor because he loved the profession. However, after he beat the cancer and coped from June’s death, he became intrinsically motivated. One example of his intrinsic behavior is that he started to teach the interns and young doctors to really learn the stories and empathize with how the patients were feeling. One can see that when Jack was being extrinsically motivated, he wasn’t as happy as he was at the end of the movie where he became intrinsically motivated. At the beginning of the movie, he doesn’t have a good relationship with his wife and he isn’t spending hardly any time with his son. This supports what the textbook says in that those who have intrinsic motivation have increased persistence, creativity, conceptual understanding and an overall well-being.

The topics discussed in Chapter 6 can also be identified through much of this movie. Chapter 6 discusses psychological needs such as autonomy, competence and relatedness. Competence is the need to be effective in interactions with the environment, and reflects the skills one has in order to successfully complete the task at hand. It also includes seeking out challenges and mastering the skills needed for the challenge. One can see that Jack seeks to fulfill the need for competence through his job. He strives to be the best. One can see this through the long hours he puts in at the hospital. I would say autonomy comes into play after Jack is diagnosed. Autonomy is defined as the need to feel as if we have control over our choices. Even after he is diagnosed, he goes to work the next day. To me, that is Jack wanting to have control over something and that something is his job. His job is the one thing that he has always had control of and he feels as if his diagnosis is taking that control away from him. So, he decides he is going to go to work because the last thing he is going to do is let the cancer tell him that he has to take a break. Relatedness is the need to belong. The book describes relatedness as the desire for people to understand and accept us. I really see Jack seeking relatedness in June. I say this because Jack turns to June to help him get through his diagnosis because he feels as if she is in the same situation and will understand his feelings more than his own wife will.

Chapter 7 is also one of the main chapters that can be identified through much of the movie. Chapter 7 discusses social needs such as achievement, affiliation and intimacy. Achievement is the need to do well relative to a standard of excellence. It is also the need to keep raising the standard of excellence. I feel as if before Jack is diagnosed, he is putting all of his effort into raising the standard for excellence in his profession. He is trying to be the best. The book describes conditions that create the need for affiliation. These conditions include loneliness, rejections and the social need to be with others. I believe that throughout this movie, up until he formed his relationship with June, Jack was not getting his need for affiliation satisfied. He didn’t have any bonds as he and his wife were not doing well, he never spent enough quality time with his son and he didn’t give the attention that was needed to his ill parents. June satisfied this need for awhile but after she died, Jack was left in the same situation he was in before he met June. However, one can see Jack get affiliation from his wife in the scene where they have a discussion about how much he needs her and that she just needs to yell at him. They start to form their bond again and his need for affiliation is fulfilled. We also see the need for intimacy be fulfilled when their relationship starts to become healthy again. Affiliation is the desire for commitment, emotional connectedness and love. Even though Jack and his wife were clearly lacking this in the beginning of the movie, it was coming back towards the end.

Those three chapters are the ones that I believe relate the most to The Doctor.

Intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, persistence, creativity, conceptual understanding, overall well-being, psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, achievement, affiliation, intimacy,

This movie is another example of people’s needs and how they can vary from one individual to the next.

Dr. McKee’s most evident needs, at the beginning of the movie, are his psychological need for power and social need for achievement. He is very proud of the fact that he is a doctor. In the scenes where someone is being operated on he is always the one doing the majority of the work, which suggests to me that he is the top surgeon in his practice. He is used to most people looking up to him whether it is his associates or the students that he is teaching. He expects people to do what he says and not question him because he has achieved enough in his life that nobody should question him. In his everyday interactions it seems as if he always finds a way let the people around him know that he is a doctor, and if possible an attending surgeon. It is obvious that this need is more important than others. His psychological need for intimacy and affiliation is secondary. He is not home very much, and he is also not very involved in his child’s life. He forgets things like school functions regularly and rarely spends time with his family. When Anne tells their son to come talk to his father the son races to the phone because he is not accustomed to his father being home. Other needs that are important to him are autonomy and competence and I believe that these are very closely related to power and achievement.

However, when Dr. McKee finds out that he has cancer his needs slowly start to change. When Dr. Abbott tells Jack that she wants to start radiation right away he insists on continuing to work. He still wants to feel power and a high sense of achievement by helping his patients. As the movie progresses however, we see Jack outside of work more, going to Nevada with June and spending time with his wife and son. He is experiencing an increased need for affiliation and intimacy and an increased need for relatedness. He cannot satisfy this need with Anne because she cannot understand what he is going through, so he begins spending time with June. She can relate to what he is feeling and even help to coach him through his hard times. Before she dies, June writes Jack a letter that helps him let his wife in, because he had kept her away for so long he did not know how to relate with her. After he has beaten cancer he does not go back to the same person that he was before. He insists to his students that nobody should be called terminal because it is the doctor’s job to heal them. He also has his students, in the closing scene, all stay at the hospital not as doctors but instead as patients to increase the relatedness that they will feel in the future when dealing with patients.

After he finds out that he has cancer Jack experiences a tremendous increase in learned helplessness. He feels completely out of control, which is something that he is very unaccustomed to. In the opening scene when the surgery starts to get a little bit out of hand, he is very calm and collected. He is not worried at all and is supremely confident in his abilities, even telling others how to do their jobs. When he becomes a patient he is very frustrated that he is not in complete control, and very soon after starts to feel as if he has no control. June senses this and takes him to the roof where she urges him to fight the cancer with everything that he has. At this point he embraces what has happened to him and begins to feel better. We see Jack smiling again and no longer yelling at the nurses for what the doctors are putting him through. He takes his file from Dr. Abbott telling her that he will decide who his doctor is. He is slowly taking back control of his life from the bureaucracy of the hospital.

Another change Jack goes through is the way that he copes with is problems. For most of the movie he is showing an avoidance tendency to his problems. He won’t give Murray a straight answer about the upcoming hearing, he avoids spending time with his family because he feels detached, and he allows Dr. Abbott and her colleagues to dictate to him how he will be treated and when. For the last quarter of the movie he shifts to an approach orientated style. He confronts Dr. Abbott and tells her that she is no longer his doctor; he tells Murray that he will not testify because Murray made a mistake, and he confronts Anne when she starts yelling at the contractors and insists that she yell at him. He knows that she isn’t really angry about the kitchen, she is angry about how detached and absent he has been in the past.

Terms; avoidance vs approach, learned helplessness, social needs, psychological needs, affiliation and intimacy, relatedness, power, achievement, relatedness, autonomy, competence

By consistently choosing to avoid emotional situations, Dr. Jack McKee clearly had a very detrimental effect on his emotional development. He was adeptly able to hide this deficiency from both himself and others by masking it with a witty sense of humor. At the beginning of the movie he seems like he is extremely confident and competent, both at work and with his family at home. This is because McKee is the ‘king of his castle’ – he has a high need for power which is fulfilled because he has an impact at the hospital – he is good at his job and receives recognition for his performance from his peers and loved ones. He is also able to maintain and expand this power through control and influence. McKee exerts control over his situation through the use of routines such as pumping the same music at the beginning and end of every surgery and by skillfully socializing with his fellow coworkers. Toward the end of the movie, it is also shown that he and a friend are also able to exert control by vouching for one another when they are accused of malpractice. McKee manages to expand his influence by indoctrinating incoming crops of trainees. He teaches them to subscribe to his dispassionate methodology and mentors them, which means that many of the future doctors at his hospital will likely look to him for advice.

About 20 minutes into the movie we begin to see a few chinks in the good doctor’s armor. When a growth on his vocal cords has to be tested, he does not tell his wife the real reason that he did not have to stay to perform a scheduled surgery. It is natural for spouses not to want to cause each other unnecessary worry, but we soon realize that McKee withheld this information because he distances himself from his wife in the same way that he does with his patients! His son has also been trained to expect to only hear from his father by phone due to the long, irregular hours doctors tend to work. This problem becomes further exposed once the tumor is found to be malignant, because Jack has no one that he can relate to about his problem, because he has not allowed himself to develop a true rapport with most of his peers or any sort of intimacy with his family or even the people he treats every day! Eventually he finds an outlet for this relatedness need in June, a fellow patient who has been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

It is through June that McKee realizes how self-centered he has been all along. Up to this point in his life, he has largely been focused on his own psychological needs and never those of other people. Sure, he kept things professional and elicited a laugh or two fairly often, but he never allowed himself to truly open up to anyone because he thought it could affect the quality of his work. Being forced to look at things from the other side of the scalpel showed him that his impersonal way of doing things actually made things much harder for his patients. Despite being a very well known and powerful presence in the hospital, the harsh reality he had to face was that he was treated like just another patient once he became sick. This revelation showed him how much more he can do to help his patients fight their own emotional and psychological battles. Being put in their place helped McKee realize that, in addition to being at the mercy of a condition or disease, his patients also had to deal with a learned helplessness that resulted from the bureaucracy of the hospital system and jackass doctors like himself who refuse to learn the meaning of “bedside manner.” Dr. McKee utilizes what he has learned at the end of the film by repairing his relationship with his wife and son, allowing himself to become extremely intimate with his patients, and training future doctors to do the same.

Terms: competence, power, impact, control, influence, intimacy, relatedness, learned helplessness, psychological needs

I thought this movie was very interesting, and honestly I was surprised by how much I liked the movie. I thought it had a great message about not really knowing someone until you have “walked a mile in their shoes”. Dr. MacKee showed us a strong desire for power in his life. Power is a social need, and it makes us want to be able to effectively influence change in our environment or in others to our liking. Dr. MacKee is a very successful surgeon and fills his need for power through his authority and accomplishments at the hospital. We see this when he refuses to fill out forms because “he’s a doctor”. He tries to use his authority over the hospital staff and assert his power and fill his need for power. I thought Dr. MacKee also showed a high need for autonomy. Autonomy is the psychological need about having control over one’s life. Since Dr. MacKee has a high need for power it’s easy to think that he would also have a high need for autonomy. He has high achievement and power in his career and normally has a high level of autonomy in his life and this need is satisfied. However once Dr. MacKee is told that he has cancer his control over his life went down substantially, and his need for autonomy went up.

Another main theme I saw in this movie had to do with the ability to relate to others and satisfy ones need for relatedness. Through his whole experience with cancer I think that the Doctors need for relatedness is satisfied. He was somewhat unable to relate to his patients as a doctor before. But once he is actually put into the position as a patient and spends so much time with a fellow patient, June, his need for relatedness was able to be satisfied.


Terms: social needs, power, psychological need, autonomy, relatedness.

This movie is a very touching and inspiring story. Jack McKee is a well-known doctor who plays the role of doctor, dad, husband and patient. He is a busy man who tends to forget things or neglect things in other people’s life, and mainly focus on himself.
In his role as a doctor, you see him not get too close to his patients, but has a need for affiliation with his colleagues. He is the fun doctor who likes to make his operating room an entertaining atmosphere, and tends to have more fun with his student doctors on residency. He is very skilled at what he does, and you can see this in the successful scenes of surgery. McKee strives and works well in a power position; he feels he must have a good sense of control in his life through the whole movie. He also has a high need for success and achievement. His standard of excellence is scene not only in the O.R., but in his personal life as well.
As a husband and father, he puts his own life before his family. You see this when it comes time for his own conference and a conference for his son that he doesn’t attend. He has a fancy house, nice car, dresses well and has all the fixings; these are all traits related to his need for success, but also power. Due to the high-status role he is in, he is able to be the person with all the knowledge, skill and has a great sense of autonomy. His need for affiliation is quite the opposite of his career when it comes to his family. He is very distanced and doesn’t appear to be too close to his child, and especially his wife. He neglects to tell her important details and things about his wife, that ultimately, she should be hearing before anyone. You can see his procrastination in telling his wife important things, when he is initially is diagnosed with cancer.
At first, in the car, he coughs up blood and nulls it down to be a broken blood vessel. After he checks and the results are a growth, he hesitantly tells his wife. As he develops his role as a patient, he starts out as rude and hurried. He must also know what is going on, every detail, must always be first, as he “has a life he needs to get back to”. When doctors and nurses started treating him the way he’s treated his patients, he starts to develop real emotions. He begins to get to know the other cancer patients, and start affiliating himself with them on a level he would’ve never done before. His need for power dwindles as they show him his status will not get him results and treatment faster. He gets close with Jane, and is able to form a close attachment with her that he wasn’t able to with his wife. As he begins to notice his prognosis isn’t getting better, rather worse, he wants Jane to be present but not his wife. Jane dies and you see a sadness in Jack. Jack begins to open up to his patients as well as colleagues he hadn’t given a chance before. His “enemy” before, ends up performing his final and most crucial surgery.
After the final surgery, his relationship with his wife is on the breaking point. He finally realizes he must connect with her, before it completely fails. He wants her to treat him as he’s treated him. He places her in a power position, and it finally helps them connect. His life after healing suddenly has a greater, deeper meaning. You see him connect with patients on a much higher level, and becoming friends with them.
Overall, his life experiences completely alter his life (for the better). His beliefs and outlook on life, his career, his family and relationships are changed. In the final scenes, he takes his interns down to the unit he was a part of for so long, and makes them become the patients; a shock treatment to reverse the possible egos he’d already created in his previous “lessons”.
Terms: neglect, focus, affiliation, achievement, status, skill, success, strives, goal, power, control, need, autonomy, standard of excellence, emotion


The movie the Doctor was a fantastic movie! The main character Dr. Mackee, is a well known doctor that has been very successful in the work place. He has a family of his own so life seems pretty good at first. They then discover he has a tumor in his throat and that is when his entire life turns around. There are many social and psychological needs that are shown throughout the movie. This includes achievement, power, autonomy, intimacy, and relatedness. His high need for achievement comes from his work. Every day in the work force he is faced with the possibility of death. People live and they die and his job is to try and protect all these individuals. Dr. Mackee has to perform surgeries which require a lot of skill. In order to be a doctor you have to have a ton of schooling, you have to be a very intelligent person, and you have to have practice. These things require the need for achievement because they are very hard tasks that he has to complete. The life of someone is in his hands. He shows the need for power in many different ways throughout the movie. At first he has a high level of power; he is the doctor that is in control of everything. He makes the rules and he can influence people because he is a high status individual. Later in the movie when he is on the opposite end of the spectrum, he shows low power because he can’t control the situations anymore. His life totally changed. He thinks that he should be treated still as a doctor and get in before other people because he has always worked at a hospital. Now that he is a patient instead, he has to follow specific orders rather than giving them. Autonomy is another concept that we have talked a lot about. Once he is aware of his tumor he loses his sense of autonomy. After a while he tries to deal with his pain by making jokes about the situation. This can be a good way of dealing with things. There is no reason to constantly dwell on the fact that you are sick. He shows relatedness to the other patients. Wants he is diagnosed then he can feel that pain that others have went through when they had to go to him. He got to see firsthand how they felt and how they were living in fear constantly scared that they could die. The need of Intimacy is shown through his wife and children. Obviously there is love and connection between all these people but at the same time there is a lot of tension. When he was constantly working his wife would be upset and mad because he wasn’t showing enough concern for the family and focusing too much on his job.

June; another character from the film is connected to Dr. Mackee because she too has a tumor. They create a strong friendship that his wife does not understand. June is highly relevant to relatedness. He gets to talk and connect with her in ways that he can’t with his wife or kids because they aren’t going through the same thing. His relationship with June also affects his relationship with his wife because she believes there is more going on…

This movie shows that life can change at any given moment. Life is very unpredictable. One day Jack was a hard working doctor that had a pretty good life, and the next he was facing death in the face and seeing life in a totally different perspective.

Terms: social needs, psychological needs, autonomy, power, intimacy, autonomy, and relatedness.

The movie the Doctor was a fantastic movie! The main character Dr. Mackee, is a well known doctor that has been very successful in the work place. He has a family of his own so life seems pretty good at first. They then discover he has a tumor in his throat and that is when his entire life turns around. There are many social and psychological needs that are shown throughout the movie. This includes achievement, power, autonomy, intimacy, and relatedness. His high need for achievement comes from his work. Every day in the work force he is faced with the possibility of death. People live and they die and his job is to try and protect all these individuals. Dr. Mackee has to perform surgeries which require a lot of skill. In order to be a doctor you have to have a ton of schooling, you have to be a very intelligent person, and you have to have practice. These things require the need for achievement because they are very hard tasks that he has to complete. The life of someone is in his hands. He shows the need for power in many different ways throughout the movie. At first he has a high level of power; he is the doctor that is in control of everything. He makes the rules and he can influence people because he is a high status individual. Later in the movie when he is on the opposite end of the spectrum, he shows low power because he can’t control the situations anymore. His life totally changed. He thinks that he should be treated still as a doctor and get in before other people because he has always worked at a hospital. Now that he is a patient instead, he has to follow specific orders rather than giving them. Autonomy is another concept that we have talked a lot about. Once he is aware of his tumor he loses his sense of autonomy. After a while he tries to deal with his pain by making jokes about the situation. This can be a good way of dealing with things. There is no reason to constantly dwell on the fact that you are sick. He shows relatedness to the other patients. Wants he is diagnosed then he can feel that pain that others have went through when they had to go to him. He got to see firsthand how they felt and how they were living in fear constantly scared that they could die. The need of Intimacy is shown through his wife and children. Obviously there is love and connection between all these people but at the same time there is a lot of tension. When he was constantly working his wife would be upset and mad because he wasn’t showing enough concern for the family and focusing too much on his job.

June; another character from the film is connected to Dr. Mackee because she too has a tumor. They create a strong friendship that his wife does not understand. June is highly relevant to relatedness. He gets to talk and connect with her in ways that he can’t with his wife or kids because they aren’t going through the same thing. His relationship with June also affects his relationship with his wife because she believes there is more going on…

This movie shows that life can change at any given moment. Life is very unpredictable. One day Jack was a hard working doctor that had a pretty good life, and the next he was facing death in the face and seeing life in a totally different perspective.

Terms: social needs, psychological needs, autonomy, power, intimacy, autonomy, and relatedness.

Throughout this movie, I noticed Jack felt the need for power and achievement. He spent alot of time training to become a doctor and appeared as a self-centered, cocky, know it all. He displayed his authority or power when he was leading the medical students who are going through final phase before becoming a doctor. Jack states how its important to not feel or care about the patients and to see them as an object without feelings. In other words, focus on getting the job done rather than the other details that come along with it. This depicts how he felt the need for achievement, or to do the best he can as a doctor is more important than the patient's feelings or concerns. Therefore, it can be concluded that Jack felt a high need for competence at his job, and wanted to be admired as a leader, or role model for this medical students.

Jack discussed on the phone as he was heading home that he could kill for a cigarette. This displays he had an addiction which can be blamed for the development of his throat cancer. He wanted to have that dopamine release that he accumulated from cigarettes. However it can be seen that him smoking that cigarette he was craving isn't worth it, because he is in the end putting himself more at risk for death.

Throughout the movie, Jack and his wife have complications that display a lack of intimacy when they try to make plans and they always fall through. Jack lives an autonomous life, and does as he pleases, which in turn made him not take into consideration not only his wife's feelings, but his patients. However, after everything Jack goes through and his relationship with June, he realizes how selfish he was being within his marriage. At the end he writes on the erase board and states how he "needs her." Therefore, an increase in intimacy happened after Jack survived through his phase of throat cancer.

Jack forms an interesting relationship with June who opens his eye to appreciating life. They had a level of relatedness because they went through a traumatic experience together. They were able to chat and discuss things that he couldn't talk about with his wife because she couldn't fully comprehend what he was going through. Jack also develops a sense of relatedness with his patients, because he now has a better understanding of their perspective when they are visiting a doctor. Therefore, Jack got to talk a walk in their shoes, and it made him feel a sense of empathy. It can be suggested that social needs were displayed throughout this movie with Jack and June. These two had an affiliation together, because June had almost accepted Jack into part of the group of those "suffering." However, Jack transitioned into this group as he began to develop a better understanding and empathize with the patients.

Empathy was displayed at the very end when Jack makes the medical students dress in the patients gowns, and stay the night in hospital and take various tests. He wants these medical students to understand this from the beginning, which took him so long to realize until he was in their place. Competence combined with empathy will create the best doctor.

Terms used: empathy, learned helplessness, social needs, affiliation, autonomy, intimacy, power, achievement, addiction, dopamine release, competence

This movie demonstrated how changing environments can result in different ways to satisfy needs. At the beginning of the movie, Dr. Jack MacKee was doing a good job of meeting his social and psychological needs. He had a job that provided him with large levels of autonomy and competence. He was allowed to perform the surgeries that he wanted and he knew he was capable of completing them. He met his need for relatedness with other doctors on his surgical team. These relationships provided him with the perception of a social bond. He felt closest to those around him that he did business with. These are referred to as exchange relationships. These types of relationships leave little room for concern of the others’ needs. There’s no obligation to help or provide support to the individual. These relationships caused Jack to experience internalization of morals he would not normally support. Internalization is the process by which we take an externally endorsed value and internalize it as our own. Jack’s partner unethically performed a surgery on a patient that caused him permanent damage. His partner and friend then suggested that Jack lie on the stand for him to avoid a malpractice suit which would cause him to lose his job. Jack accepted this as acceptable behavior and agreed.

When Jack learns he has throat cancer, his psychological needs change. Suddenly, he lacks the autonomy, competence, and relatedness that he was experiencing as a doctor. When he becomes the patient, his ability to satisfy these needs change. He visited a specialist to discover what was wrong with his throat. He experienced discomfort at being the patient and having his power taken away. While he was laying on the table waiting for his MRI, the nurse refused to get him a lead vest to help his peace of mind. He felt he had little choice in the decision making process. The environment controlled him, whereas before he controlled his environment. This resulted in a low sense of perceived choice. Laying on the table was also against his volition. This is an unpressured willingness to engage in an activity. Because he had no choice but to go through the treatment, he didn’t feel that he was doing it of his own free will. These all added up to result in an external perceived locus of causality. This means he was attributing his current situation to those in his environment, and not to his own free will or decision making processes.

His new environment also made him feel suddenly incompetent. His medical expertise did not include diagnosing diseases of the throat. He was forced to go to an Ear Nose and Throat specialist to determine why he was experiencing so much discomfort. She did little to provide him with information on his condition, simply saying that he had a growth in this throat. This did not provide him with the information he needed to feel competent in his new environment. He also wasn’t provided opportunities for feedback. He was surprised at his next appointment that his tumor had actually gotten bigger. His doctor had assumed that someone else had told him. Because of this, he felt he knew little about his own condition. This lack of competence didn’t sit well with him. Jack wanted to get his power back. His character seemed to have a high need for power from the beginning, so it would make sense that as he started to lose it he would try to get it back. Individuals with a high need of power need to have opportunities for impact, control, and influence. Jack’s current situation left him none of those. In the waiting room, he looked to cause impact by causing a scene. Impact works to establish power. By demanding his medical records back, he was exerting his control. This helped him to maintain his current level of power. He then informed his ENT that he would be finding his own doctor. This resulted in influence, which works to expand his power.

Dr. Jack’s old environment provided him with the relatedness he needed to meet his psychological needs. His new state of being could not be fulfilled with the old contacts he used to feel related with. Relatedness is the psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people. The old relationships he maintained worked as exchange relationships. Now that he wasn’t working, these relationships dissolved. It also made him realize how unrelated he was to the patients he was working with. Previously, he maintained an exchange relationship (if any) with his patients. It was strictly business and nothing more. Another doctor in his practice that he didn’t look up to attempted to support communal relationships with his patients. This doctor spoke to and explained things to his patients even when they were unconcious. When Jack realized this, he began seeking out communal relationships. He found one in June, a fellow oncology patient. June an Jack were able to better meet each others needs because they were experiencing the same situation. They monitored and kept track of each others needs. He soon also found one in the same doctor he used to make fun of. When he left his current ENT who was serving as strictly an exchange relationship, he sought out the company of this doctor to satisfy his need for relatedness.

Terms: Psychological needs, autonomy, perceived locus of causality, volition, perceived choice, competence, feedback, relatedness, communal relationship, exchange relationship, internalization, need for power, impact, influence, control

The first thing I noticed in the movie was how confident Dr. McKee (Jack) was. In the first seen he is shown performing open heart surgery while listening to music and dictating everything that is going on. He definitely has a need for power. Power is the desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. Even in his social group among the other physicians he seems to be the ring leader. High-power individuals seek to become leaders and interact with others in a forceful, take-charge style. This was seen by how he interacted with his patients and his staff. He made it known that he had been at the hospital 11 years; he took charge in the operating room, and really did not have a good bedside manner.
Jack did have a need for achievement. He wanted to do well at what he did and he let other people know about his experience and success. You could observe this by the way he talked to his Residents and other members of his practice. I think at one point he said something about practice statistics or patient numbers.
It’s easy to see that Jack does not have a high need for affiliation or intimacy toward the beginning of the movie. He is too busy with his work and self-centered. He was not good at restoring or maintaining relationships with his patients or family. Even when one of his patients was concerned about the scar from her open heart surgery and her relationship with her husband, he made a joke about centerfolds. He ignored the patients concerns. He is rarely ever home and really does not have that close of a relationship with his wife or son. His wife Anne does have a need for affiliation, intimacy, and relatedness, but those needs are not met until the end of the movie. Anne gets information through Jacks secretary and when Jack is going through everything with his throat cancer he really does not involve or tell her much. Jacks way of coping with the cancer was solitary versus being social and it had a negative impact on him and his wife’s relationship. June really helps him be able to open up about his feelings and being in the patient position for once does too. He communicates after his throat surgery via white board to his wife “I need you”. He is restoring affiliation, relatedness, or intimacy with her.
Jack is used to having a lot of autonomy in what he does because he is the expert and is self-directed in the decisions that he makes. He decides how much time he will spend with each patient and the tests he will order or procedure he will perform. When he becomes a patient he is no longer the one writing the doctor’s orders or deciding how much time to spend with a patient. He gets really upset about how many forms he has to fill out, the wait time, and some of the steps in the radiation treatment.
Jack is very competent in what he does. He is a cardiac surgeon which is challenging work, but he has the skill set to do so. Even when he initially saw the ENT specialist he knew what terms she was talking about and it was probably easier for him to understand what she was talking about.
Jack and June share relatedness in each other because they are both battling cancer and gong through radiation. They have a close caring relationship with each other. At first, June is kind of annoyed by Jack because he throws fits about waiting too long or filling out more forms. One time he was even seen before other patients because of this. Again shows his power need, that he is more important because he is a doctor.
Towards the end of the movie Jack is able to see what the patients are going through by his experience of being a patient. His bedside manner and affiliation have improved. He then has his residents go through what it would be like to be a patient for 72 hours.

Terms: Power, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, relatedness, autonomy, competence, coping (solitary versus social).

The Doctor is a very good movie and it displays a lot of concepts from our book. Dr. McKee is a very successful surgeon who teaches others how to become successful surgeons as well. Dr. McKee shows competence, which is the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment, and it reflects the desire to exercise one’s capacities and skills and, in doing so, to seek out and master optimal challenges. Being a surgeon is not a simple job to endure. Surgeons operate on people who need help from them to improve their lives or even just to keep living. The need for competence generates the willingness to seek out optimal challenges, and when Dr. McKee engages in a task with a level of difficulty and complexity that is precisely right for his current skills and talents, it makes him feel a strong interest in his job.

This movie also displays Dr. McKee’s need for power. High-power-need individuals strive for leadership and recognition in small groups, experience frequent impulses of aggression, prefer influential occupations, and amass prestige possessions. These are qualities Dr. Makee possesses. He feels very powerful in his career. When Dr. McKee finds out he has throat cancer and must receive radiation therapy for it, he loses a lot of his power. Now he has to wait in line and fill out forms like all of the other patients in the hospital, and he finds this completely annoying. Since he is a doctor at the hospital he is receiving treatment for his cancer at, he feels as if he should receive VIP treatment and not have to conform to the rules other patients have to follow.

Dr. McKee also has the need for achievement. The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. Dr. McKee has a high need for achievement as he chose a difficult career to follow. When Dr. McKee cannot do his job because of his cancer, he struggles because he cannot perform to his level of excellence that he is used to performing at.

Dr. McKee does not have a high need for intimacy with his wife and child compared to his need for power and achievement. Intimacy is the social motive for engaging in warm, close, positive interpersonal relationships that produce positive emotions and hold little threat of rejection. Dr. McKee is never home and forgets important events in his family’s life. He does not spend much time with his wife and child throughout the movie.

Relatedness is the psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people, and it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved in warm relationships. Dr. McKee finds relatedness with another cancer patient whose name is June. He is able to connect with June better than his own wife and kids because they are going through the same thing in life. She makes him realize that patients are not treated the way they should be and that they should be given more close attention to their needs instead of pushing them to the side like her brain tumor diagnosis was pushed to the side. When June passes away, Dr. McKee gets very emotional and talks to her. When speaking to her, he says that he wishes that she could be there for him tomorrow after his surgery to help him get through it. This is something that he should be able to turn to his wife for but since him and June related more to each other’s lives it was easier for him to turn to June. Dr. McKee also related towards other patients better than the other doctors would because he has been in their shoes when having a bad day. In fact, Dr. McKee helped another patient get the keys unlocked out of his car as the other doctors just kept walking by.

At the end of the movie after his operation, Dr. McKee finds how to become intimate with his wife. I also enjoyed watching Dr. McKee show other doctors what it is like to be a patient for seventy-two hours. They even had to eat hospital food, sleep in hospital beds, and receive all of the tests for the diseases they were prescribed. He was teaching them how to relate with their future patients.


Terms: Competence, psychological need, power, achievement, intimacy, relatedness.


This movie contains a lot about psychological and social needs. In the beginning, Dr. MacKee is having all of his psychological needs met. He has his need for competence met because he is very good at his job, his need for autonomy is met because he is known as a good doctor, so he can do things the way he wants and knows people will go along with it, and his need for relatedness is being met because he gets a long well with his coworkers, which is shown when they joke and sing together. The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. He has a high need for this because he wants to do well at his job. He is almost always wearing a suit in the movie and it is important to him to look professional. He also has a high need for power. Conditions that involve and satisfy the need for power include leadership, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions, all of which he has. He has an influential occupation and a position of leadership with his job as a doctor. He also has prestige possessions, such as his car and nice house, and he shows aggressiveness with his doctor and the receptionist when he is the patient. He gets satisfaction out of influencing others.
When Dr. MacKee is diagnosed with throat cancer, much of his autonomy is lost. He has not control over the fact that he has cancer or that he has to go in daily for radiation treatments. How little control he has is shown when he is forced to fill out forms, can’t even get a private room, and is mistaken for another patient but can’t get the doctor to listen to him. He has a hard time not being in control and being the one getting surgery instead of performing it. At first, he tries to gain some control back by arguing with the receptionist and his doctor and being hostile towards them. Then, he starts to realize what it feels like to have a doctor cancel on him and how doctors mistakes affect people. He starts to see how patients get a feeling of learned helplessness and how the doctors contribute to it. Once Dr. MacKee realizes that the way he treats his patients actually has an effect on them, he starts to care about them. Realizing that the way he does his job matters to his patients gives him self efficacy and he knows he can make their time in the hospital a little bit better. He begins to take some control over his situation by changing to a doctor he trusts. Dr. MacKee also realizes he can do something about June missing out on things in life that she wanted to do and dances with her in the desert.
Dr. MacKee kept his wife at a distance, and therefore had a deprivation of his need for intimacy. He satisfies this need with June because they both have cancer and they are able to talk about deep things with one another. Once he became diagnosed with cancer, his fellow doctors and wife did not satisfy this need because he didn’t let them in like he let June in. He became a different person and they didn’t fit into his life intimately. His wife expresses a large deprivation of the need for intimacy when she says that she wakes up every morning and it feels like she’s missing something, then she just realizes she’s lonely. Dr. MacKee had kept her at such a distance that he had deprived her of intimacy. He didn’t know how to let her close, but then he tells her that he needs her and loves her. Once she lets herself believe this, she is happy. They both are, and their need for intimacy is satisfied.
Dr. MacKee becomes and even better doctor once he goes through the process of being a patient, because he actually cares about his patients. Once he beats the cancer and gains some autonomy back in his life, he uses it to influence the other doctors to become caring like him. This shows him using his need for power in a positive way.
Terms: Psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, social needs, achievement, power, intimacy, learned helplessness, self efficacy

I really enjoyed watching the movie The Doctor. Dr. Jack MacKee was an incredibly successful heart surgeon whose view of life and work changed drastically throughout the movie. At the beginning of the movie, the need for achievement was something that Dr. MacKee strived for. The majority of his time was spent at the hospital, as he often forgot his family’s events. During surgery it was his motto to get in, fix it, and get out without having any regards to the patients feelings or emotions. Any person would be able to tell that Dr. MacKee was in fact successful because of the clothes he wore, car he drove, and house he owned.
Although Dr. MacKee was indeed full of achievements and success, it did not make him inevitable from developing a tumor on his vocal cords. And soon after HIS doctor found this tumor, his need for achievement started to diminish as his need for relatedness and intimacy grew. Dr. MacKee spent his whole career not letting himself become attached to anyone so when his world was turned upside down, he didn’t know how to handle it. It wasn’t until he opened up to another patient who had a tumor, June, he realized how much he needed to feel connected to someone; he needed to feel like he had someone to talk to and depend on. June and Dr. MacKee spent a lot of time together waiting for radiation treatments and outside of the hospital, she really helped him to face his tumor and showed him that it was okay to express his emotions. June also helped Dr. MacKee’s relationship with his wife (Ann) grow. Ann and Dr. MacKee never had a truly intimate relationship as they rarely saw each other. Then when Dr. MacKee was diagnosed with a tumor on his vocal cords, he pushed Ann even further away; he felt it was his problem to deal with. But after June’s death and after Dr. MacKee received from her, he realized that he needed to rebuild his relationship with his wife and he did. Not only did Dr. MacKee develop the need for relatedness with his family and friends, but he learned to relate and actually care about his patients and co-worker’s feelings and emotions. He started learning his patients names and truly caring about the people around him.
The need for power and autonomy was consistent throughout the whole movie. Dr. MacKee was used to having complete control over everything that went on around him. So it drove him insane when he did not have control over his tumor. He had to start acting like a patient without any autonomy or power, instead of like a surgeon. He tried using his power to get out of filling out paperwork, standing in lines, and waiting for the physician. It was really frustrating for Dr. MacKee when he realized that his status and power as heart surgeon meant nothing in the radiation facility. He would yell at the doctors and nurses over the standard procedures that they made him do. Because of June, he soon realized that some things in life were just simply out of his control so he had to learn how to cope. Not having control over his tumor lead Dr. MacKee to develop learned helplessness. There was nothing that he, himself, could do in order to rid of this tumor. He just had to learn to deal. Learned helplessness often leads to depression and it did for Dr. MacKee, but he did eventually learn that if he couldn’t take control of his tumor that he had to take control of his emotions.
Terms Used: achievement, power, autonomy, intimacy, relatedness, learned helplessness

The movie "The Doctor" is a great example showing that people who seem to have it all on the outside may not actually have it all in the inside. This movie shows the life of Dr. Mackee and his triumphs along with his struggles. Dr. Mackee was a well known doctor for his great work and satisfacton of his customers. Dr. Mackee had several needs such as: power, need for achievement, competence, and autonomy that he met quite easily. Dr. Mackee was clearly a powerful man within his society. As in most societies, Dr. Mackee was well respected around the community simply because of his profession and even moreso because of the quality of his work. This respect turned into power, as patients and their family and friends often turned to Dr. Mackee for help or just friendly advice. His opinion really mattered and it was clear that this meant a lot to Dr. Mackee. His need for achievement is also prevelant throughout the movie. To even become a doctor, one must have a need for acheivement. Dr. Mackee worked hard to get to where he was at in the movie and he wasn't going to stop after earning his degrees. He kept working and discovering new things, only adding to his long list of achievements. Being a doctor can be a real scary thing because one little mistake can turn into an illness, disease, or even fatality. In the movie, we as viewers, see Dr. Mackee grow more competent as his prestige becomes more well known and as his patient number increases. In order for Dr. Mackee to be a good doctor, as he is in the movie, he needs to feel as if he can accurately fufill his role as a doctor. Keeping your competent level at the correct spot, as Dr. Mackee does, allows you to keep your work at a higher qauilty. In other words, Dr. Mackee's competence ensured him that he can do his job and that he can do it well. Lastly, autonomy is seen throughout the movie quite a bit. Dr. Mackee, with his power, has the ability to almost work when he wants to work; making his own schedule. But since Dr. Mackee is a good doctor, he always puts his patients first.
The interactions between Dr. Mackee and his patients is where we start to see the beginning of Dr. Mackee's internal struggles. He has a very hard problem relating to his patients and forming an emotional, intimate relationship with. Intimacy and relatedness are two needs that Dr. Mackee has difficulty meeting. While pursuing his other needs, it appears as thoug Dr. Mackee forgot about these two needs along his journey. He put his career and its success first before contemplating things such as intimacy and relatedness. Once he got to where he wanted to be, he realized that he was alone and had trouble relating to others, which may be a problem more common in professionals than us "laypeople" would think. If Dr. Mackee's emotional state wasn't already suffering, Dr. Mackee develops a tumor which threatens his needs that he seems to meet easily: power, achievement, competence, and autonomy. Dr. Mackee doesn't know to deal with his tumor and for one of the first times in his life he can't "fix" it. This shoves Dr. Mackee into a state of learned helplessness. Meaning he thinks there is nothing he can do and that is all there is to it. This throws Dr. Mackee into the dark world of depression but with the help of Jane, Dr. Mackee comes out stronger than he was before. Not only did we see him able to meet the needs he was already meeting in the beginning of the movie but we now saw him meeting the needs that he struggled with in the start. As we all do, Dr. Mackee learned a very important life lesson that helped him open up and truly live his life. Great movie!

Terms: power, need for achievement, competence, autonomy, learned helplessness, intimacy, and relatedness.

I was not able to watch this movie. But from the summary, I could tell that motivation was involved. His need for achievement caused him to go through all of the schooling to become a doctor. He must have had a goal of becoming a doctor and created a plan as well as implementation intentions in order to get through med school and into a doctor position. He had low intimacy needs as he was so cold with all of his patients at first but developed more empathy once he was in their shoes. His self-efficacy had to be high for him to achieve his goal of being a doctor and he must have had little to no sense of learned helplessness. As you can tell I did not see the film but at least I tried to write something about it.

Need for Achievement
Self Efficacy
Goals
Plans
Implementation Intentions
Learned helplessness

Because our environments and circumstances we live in are constantly changing, and the opportunities we have are coming and going. our demands can be quite unpredictable. This means the behaviors we are motivated to do must also be constantly changing with each experience we have. When Dr. McKay, a man who seems to be motivated by a high need for autonomy and power, loses control over many aspects of his life when he is diagnosed with cancer he seems to make the decision that there are things more important than power and control. One of the things that makes us unique as humans is our ability to change the way we perceive the experiences we encounter so that we are able to cope with them and still find well-being. He starts showing a very high need for relatedness that wasn’t nearly as apparent before he was diagnosed with cancer, and I think that might have to do with how he was forced from his previous lifestyle that enabled him to be in a rather powerful position.

Early in the film McKay demonstrates high decision making flexibility, and his psychological need for autonomy seems fulfilled. As a doctor he performs surgery on his patients, he works when he wants to, goes home when he wants to, and his behavior seems to be very much self-determined. Dr. MacKay also seems to be surrounded by a lifestyle that satisfies his need for competence. As a doctor, he is constantly exercising his skills and challenging his capacities in a very structured environment. Lastly, Mackay’s psychological need for relatedness early on in the film seems to take on a more avoidance-style motivation when he constantly uses humor rather than sincerity during his social interactions. This may be why although he is constantly socially interacting with others at work and at home, he seldom demonstrates that warm, affectionate relationship necessary for most to maintain well-being.

The psychological needs seem to shift as circumstances change and Dr. McKay is diagnosed with cancer. He experiences less autonomy as a patient than a doctor . For instance, he has little control over where he needs to be at what time, who he needs to take direction from, and even what he is physically capable of. His need for competence is also challenged when he is expected to take time off of work and shift his high motive-urgency status of performing surgery on patients, to a less urgent-attention-getting status in order for him to focus on the more motive-relevant course of action of resting to help his body heal. Because he needs to focus more on resting, he loses opportunity to get that sense of satisfaction from the achieving challenges of his work life. Also, to have a sense of well-being, humans need to feel as though they belong, and want to feel accepted and valued. Perhaps the reason Dr. McKay begins to see life more empathetically is because as a patient he doesn’t feel as valued or understood as he did as a doctor yet still needs to fulfill his need for relatedness. As a doctor he was able to have reciprocal relationships with his patients and other doctors, even though this may not have been on a deep emotional level, I suppose he probably felt as if he was contributing and therefore his interactions were more meaningful. Once he loses his ability to practice he seems to seek relationships with more warmth and mutual concern. He befriends another patient and seems to find that deep, social bond with her. They really seem to care about each other’s welfare and show one another their true self.

Autonomy, control, relatedness, power, competence, structure, avoidance, approach, well-being, reciprocal relationships, social bond, psychological needs.

Dr MacKee is a successful surgeon. All his needs are satisfied and he is very happy. This movie was pretty good. It showed very well that you cannot really know how someone really feels until you are in that same position. This movie shows some of the psychological needs, one of them is shown very well in this movie. Dr. MacKee is very competent at his job. Competence is the need to be very good or effective at something. The job is still challenging enough for him that he satisfies his needs very well. He also gets good feedback from his job by a patient surviving through surgery. Dr. MacKee also has a large need for power. His status and job make his need for power greater. Power is the need to be influential. Dr. MacKee also has a very high need for achievement, which is the desire to do very well. He works really hard at his job and wants to be good at it. As he gets better at his job his need for achievement increases.

When Dr. MacKee learns he has a tumor in his throat more terms that are in the text book come into play. Autonomy is one of those terms. Autonomy is control over your life. When he learns he has a tumor he loses a lot of his autonomy. Dr. MacKee doesn’t feel like he has any autonomy so he is no longer easily satisfying this need. Another term is learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is when you think you really have no say in anything that happens in your life. Dr. MacKee used to get everything and anything. He could do or say anything and control anything in his life. When he becomes a patient he learns how all the other patients feel. How they have learned helplessness and basically cannot control anything. He begins to understand with patients more. The other needs he was easily satisfying now are not being satisfied anymore as a patient. Dr. MacKee no longer has any power. Several times in the movie he tries to tell people he is a doctor thinking this will get him better treatment, but it does not. He gets treated like everyone else and his need for power is no longer being met. His need for relatedness is being met more when he meets another tumor patient. He starts to spend more time with her the more he is getting to know her and the more he feels they have stuff in common. At one time in the movie he takes her to a concert. He is also not satisfying his need for intimacy before or after he learns about his tumor. They did not have a very good relationship because he was always working and then when his tumor is found he doesn’t feel he can relate to her as well he kind of pushes her away until the end.

Terms: Psychological needs, competence, feedback, power, achievement, autonomy, learned helplessness, relatedness, intimacy.

The movie The Doctor shows a lot of good examples of motivation and emotion that are talked about in the textbook for class. Dr. MacKee is the main character in the movie. He is a successful surgeon, but doesn’t really seem to care about the patients he deals with. He ultimately gets a reality check when he gets throat cancer and sees what it’s like to be a patient and how careless some of the doctors can be. This movie shows that people don’t really know what they are acting like until they experience it through someone else’s shoes. This movie shows a lot of good examples of social and psychological needs.

Obviously Dr. MacKee has a high need for both competence and achievement. His whole life is spent performing very extreme and dangerous surgeries that can constitute if someone lives or dies. He likes to feel successful with his patients and cure them from whatever is wrong with their body. He also has a high need for power which a person can see through how he talks to his coworkers and interns. He tells them to get in fix the problem and get out. He also acts very much in control of all of them and acts like he’s on top.

Dr. MacKee doesn’t really have a need for relatedness or intimate relationships until the end of the movie when he meets another cancer patient that shows him what is important in life. At the beginning he seems to really only be worried about his career and not so much his family, friends, or anyone else for that matter. He seems to be very content on his own and doesn’t need anyone else to satisfy him.

Dr. MacKee eventually finds out that he has cancer and has to switch roles and become the patient. He sees that people’s needs are not being met. This is shown when he has to wait in line to see the doctor and fill out papers and he gets very upset. Also, when the nurse brought a wheelchair to take him to his room he absolutely refused. This is because he has a high need for autonomy. He likes to do things for himself and doesn’t like others helping him out. This is also seen when his wife wants to stay with him for his appointments and he tells her just to leave because he doesn’t need her there. He obviously is fine on his own and doesn’t need help or support from anyone else.

In the end of the movie Dr. MacKee realizes how selfish a lot of the doctors are and how much people are suffering out there. He makes it a point to change his ways and become more caring about the patients he deals with. He tries his best to make them more comfortable rather than just worrying completely about the procedure rather than the patient’s feelings. Dr. MacKee also gains a need for relationships because he starts to care a lot about the cancer patient he meets in the lobby at the hospital.

Key Terms: social needs, psychological needs, intimacy, relatedness, autonomy, competence, power, needs

There are many terms and aspects from our textbook that we can see in the movie "Doctor", especially Sscial and pschological needs.
Dr. Mackee is a doctor who knows his buisness and is very professional in what he does. He has a big desire of achievement and competence. The need of achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. A standard of excellence is any challenge to a persons's sense of competence that ends with an objective of success versus failure, win versus loose, or right versus wrong. In the movie, his profession, which is medical doctor who deal every day with either success (saving someone;s life or death), then making the right decisons and at the end of the day he gets the satisfaction of his achievement. Also, the movie shows need of competence. Interpersonal competition captures much of the risk-taking dilemma inherent in achievement setting. It promotes potive emotion, imrove performance in high need achievers which is very important in Dr. Mackee profession. Another social need- power is highly empasizes in this movie. It is to have an impact, control , or influence over another person which definately Dr. Mackee has.
Dr. Mackee is very dry and strict towards his patients, shows no empathy. While discussing whether this type of job should engage the emotions, he answered that carrying is all about time and that when you have got thirty seconds before someone might die then he would rather cut more and care less.
His family, wife and son who do not have a chance to spend much time with Dr Mackee, feel lack of love and emotional support. His wife, who definately wants to feel her husband's love suffers from his lack of needs of intimacy and relatedness.
Everything changed when Dr. Mackee discovered he has a cancer. He experiences how is to be a patient, how doctor do not care about his feelings, waiting hours in line and filling out tones of papers and documents. Finally, he meets a women who has a brain tumor that Dr. Mackee becomes close to it and that he finds the courage and inspiration from.

Terms:
Intimacy, relatedness, autonomy, achievement, powere, competence, empathy, control, social needs, psychological needs

Dr. Jack MacKee is a very intelligent, skilled heart surgeon. He has gone through a lot of schooling and has had 11 years of experience. He is very accomplished and competent at what he does—even a little arrogant, which makes him a cold doctor (“Get in, fix it, get out.”). He also has a high need for achievement and for power. His needs are all intertwined with his job duties. He is both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated in his job. In exercising his skills, seeking mastery, Jack is intrinsically motivated. This can be seen in the first scene when the patient’s heart is nicked and Jack has the music shut off and becomes immersed in what he is doing and successfully stops the tear. His natural need for competence supports this intrinsic motivation. The type of extrinsic motivation Jack is moved by is introjected regulation. The reason he does things, like saving lives, is “because he should”. By saving lives, it helps him to avoid guilt (if he were to loose a patient) and boost his self-esteem. Though there is usually little autonomy associated with this type of extrinsic motivation, in his case, I think Jack has had support from his peers, his family, and his continually mounting career success.

Through most of the movie, one can see Jack’s high need for relatedness. He likes being the “leader” of his doctor friend group and has a fun relationship with his wife, Ann. However, once he learns of the tumor in his throat instead of drawing close and leaning on the support of his wife, he pulls away. At this time, his intimacy need seems low…really, I think his need is high, but he is just avoiding the vulnerability one has when one let’s oneself lean on another person. He avoids recognizing his deep need for intimacy with Ann until June helps him realize that it’s okay to let others into his life. As Jack is about to have surgery, he realizes how much he needs his wife (high intimacy need is no longer being avoided/repressed). Then when he is recovering after surgery, he finally verbalizes (well, sort of…he writes it on his white erase board) it.

During his radiation treatment he meets and develops a friendship with June, another cancer patient. She is very strong-willed and a cancer fighter. She helps Jack to see the frustrations of medical patient care and how they should be dealt with. Jack and June’s friendship meets a little of Jack’s intimacy need at that very scary time in his life (especially because he is trying to deal with it himself and he is not letting Ann help him). They don’t end up knowing very much about each other, but their shared experience of being a cancer patient, and the struggles and triumphs that go along with it, are what allow them to be friends eventually.

Because of Jack’s medical background he has a high sense of self-efficacy in how he will beat his cancer. Though it is good that he has this optimistic “fighter” attitude, a large portion of him being able to beat the cancer is out of his control. It is good that he has both agentic thinking (he wants to believe “I can do this!”) and pathways thinking (he shows that through picking another, better, doctor—another route—he can get the cancer removed).

It is very touching at the end of the film when Dr. MacKee has transitioned into a transformational leader of his resident doctors. He makes them experience what it is like to be a patient in their hospital for 72 hours. He is hoping to change their bedside demeanor, which he negatively influenced at the beginning of the film. Since his patient experience, he has a much different view of how to engage with and treat patients. He is more caring and warm. He treats them as a person, and not as if he saw the disease they have (like a surgery-hungry doctor). He was once a selfish, power/achievement-hungry doctor who didn’t spare time for his family or for patient care. Through his role reversing experience his attitudes and beliefs of patient care were flipped and one could see how he was a more personable and intrinsically motivated (supported more by his need for relatedness and intimacy) doctor and human being.

Terms used from the chapters: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, mastery, competence, achievement, power, introjected regulation, autonomy, relatedness, intimacy, avoidance, self-efficacy, agentic thinking, pathways thinking

The doctor was a movie about Jack, a surgeon who is humorous and doesn’t take life seriously. He soon discovers what it feels like to be a patient himself, after discovering that he has a tumor on his voice box. Jack gets first hand experience on what it feels like to have to wait in a waiting room, fill out endless paperwork, and have ineffective treatment. Jack meets another cancer patient named June, who helps Jack realize the importance of appreciating life while it lasts. June ends up dying, but her wisdom helps guide Jack through the process of winning the fight with cancer.

The movie was a great example of the needs we have discussed in class. A need is any condition within the person that is essential and necessary for life, growth, and well being. Psychological needs promote a willingness to see out and engage in our environment. The three types of psychological needs are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is the desire to have flexibility in our choices and decision making. Autonomy was expressed in the movie when the ear, nose, and throat doctor informed Jack of the times that she was available to perform his surgery. She showed that she made her own schedule and had the final say in determining when and how she would treat patients. Autonomy was also displayed by Jack when he had flexibility to determine when and how he would perform surgeries. Competence is another psychological need. Competence is the desire to interact effectively with one’s environment. The conditions that involve our need for competence are optimal challenge, clear and helpful structure, high failure tolerance from others, and positive feedback. Jack displayed competence as a surgeon. Obviously surgery meets the condition of optimal challenge and the hospital is going to have failure tolerance, knowing that a surgeon can’t save every life. Jack also received positive feedback from his co-workers and patient after performing a successful surgery. Flow occurs whenever an individual uses his or her skills to overcome a challenge. As a surgeon, Jack displayed flow regularly by using his operating skills to save patients lives. The third psychological need is relatedness. Relatedness is the desire to belong and the desire for social interaction. Relatedness was displayed in the movie when Jack developed a close friendship with June. Anne displayed a lack of relatedness when she informed Jack that she felt lonely and wanted him to serve a friend role in her life. Jack and Ann’s son also displayed relatedness in the movie by constantly hanging out with his friend.

There are two categories of psychological needs: social needs and quasi needs. Social needs develop from preferences gained through experience and socialization. The four types of social needs are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. The need for achievement is the desire to do well based on a standard of excellence. An example of achievement was when the all of Jack’s interns all tried to provide the correct answers to the medical questions that Jack asked. In the medical setting there are standard procedures and correct ways of doing things, so another example of achievement is when Jack would perform a successful surgery. Jack always appeared to be confident, hopeful, and pride before starting a surgery, which is characteristic of an individual high in the need for achievement. Affiliation is the desire for intimacy and approval. Ann displayed a need for affiliation when she informed Jack that she felt lonely in their relationship. Ann expressed anxiety in her relationship with Jack by telling Jack that she doesn’t know what he wants from her. Intimacy is the desire for close interpersonal relationships. Ann also expressed her desire to have Jack not only as a husband, but also as a friend. Jack displayed a need for intimacy when he made efforts to try and develop a close relationship with June. The need for power is the desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s plan for it. Jack displayed a need for power when he refused to fill out paper work that had already been completed, stating that he was a doctor. Jack also displayed a need for power when he expressed that he shouldn’t have to wait so long for his appointment since he was a doctor. Jack felt that since he was a doctor, he should have special privileges and authority, even when he is going to a personal appointment.

The movie can also be tied into personal control beliefs. As chapter nine states, our expectancies of what will happen and how well we can cope with the outcome are important to motivation. An efficacy expectation is a judgement of one’s capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. An outcome expectation is a judegement that a given action will cause a particular outcome. An example of efficacy expectation was when Jack asked a co-worker to perform his surgery and the co-worker agreed to perform the surgery. Both Jack and his co-worker felt confident that the surgery could be performed effectively. An example of an outcome expectation was when Jack believed that after the surgery was performed that his cancer would be gone and he might lose his voice. Master modeling was also a concept present in the movie. Master modeling involves an expert showing a group of novices to show them how to cope with fearsome situations. An example of master modeling was when Jack served as the expert, who was showing interns how to deal with stressful medical situations and explained to them how to effectively deal with the situation.

The movie was a good example of the evolutionary basis of sexual motivation. An evolutionary perspective believe that men and women have evolved distinct psychological mechanisms, which influence sexual motivation and mating strategies. Chapter four states that men value youth and chastity in their mates. Women tend to value signs of resources. The concept of an evolutionary basis of sexual was displayed in t he movie when the female intern flirted with Jack. Since Jack was a surgeon, he had a nice car, nice house, and was financially well off. Jack also showed behavior consistent with the evolutionary perspective when he continually checked out young females in the hospital. Jack also displayed many desirable characteristics that were mentioned in chapter four such as intelligence, humor, liveliness, and an exciting personality.


The doctor was definitely an inspirational movie, I quite enjoyed it a lot. Not only did it show the perspective of a successful and powerful doctor, but also showed the journey a doctor had to under go as a patient as a patient at his own hospital. One of the topics I noticed while watching The Doctor was perceived control. At the beginning of the movie we see Dr. Mackee as powerful, successful surgeon confident. We saw him have control in his colleagues Operating room; we see him mock the other surgeon when he sits and talks to a patient whom is under and in surgery. He is the kind of doctor who believes that a doctor should never get affectionate with his patient. He said that being a doctor was all about getting the procedure done with minimal complications “ cut more feel less” we hear him say. He has total control and power. He’s definitely the kind of surgeon with a high need for power.

Things take a drastic change for the worse when Dr. Mackee is diagnosed with a tumor in the throat. He’s had a pestering cough for a while but he brushes it off a just a cough. Next we see a scene when hes in the car and he coughs up blood but brushes it off as a broken vessel due to a withheld laughter. He is no longer in control but doesn’t want to admit it. When he goes in for his biopsy He thinks that he should be treated still as a doctor as we saw when the male nurse instated him to sit in the wheel chair. He then told him he had walked the hospital numerous time and never has he fallen. Still not wanting to give up his control he walks to his room. Now that he is a patient instead, he learns that he has to follow specific orders rather than giving them, which he is not too fond of.

control, high need for power, autonomy, competence, achievement

In the movie, Dr. Mackee has a very high need for power. He is the head honcho at his job, and lets other people know it. He seems to thoroughly enjoy having power and prestige, and his interactions with his co-workers, subordinates, patients, friends, and family show this. He even sees social interactions as a chance to have show influence. He also has a high need for achievement, which is shown through how he dresses, the house he lives in, and how he likes to appear to others. He likes to show his accomplishments in many ways, and does not limit this to his accomplishments in medicine. He likes to show his high level of achievement so that his power is reinforced.
However, when he is diagnosed with cancer and goes through the medical system this time as a patient, he has lost his power. So he turns to other social needs instead to help satisfy him, and ends up befriending a patient named June. His experiences with June help him to understand what he has been missing by focusing on his need for power. He begins to focus on his need for relatedness and intimacy. He sees things from the point of view of his patients, and in turn learns how to be a better doctor. Even when June dies, he keeps the lessons he learned and evens out his social needs to include more than just his need for power and achievement. This movie shows that social needs ought to balanced, and without that balance people will find that they are missing an aspect of something in their life.

social needs, need for power, need for achievement, need for intimacy, relatedness.

One of the social needs is power. Power is the desire to have impact, control or influence over another person. Jack expressed a high need for power in many situations. One particular scene was when he first went to the radiology center. As a doctor, he felt he was prestige enough to not have to wait or fill out papers. When the papers were present to him, he was very upset and refused to fill them out. He also didn’t like to wait. When he was late, he expected everyone to exempt his tartness and immediately let him into the doctor’s office.
Jack exhibits two psychological needs throughout the movie. The first one is competence. Competence is the need to be effective in interactions with the environment and reflects the desire to exercise ones capacities and skills. Jack experiences a test of his competence after he is diagnosed with cancer. He refuses to stop working and stresses the importance of continuing doing surgeries. Everyone around him suggests that he isn’t able to fulfill his duties anymore; however, he strives to prove them wrong. Jack shows a vary levels of relatedness during the movie. At the beginning of the movie, he refuses to have empathy, or connect with his patience. He believed that it would interfere with his job, which was the most important thing. Slowly, he gains the need to have friends, and be valued by others. This occurs when he meets June during radiology therapy. June opens him up and teaches him how to be a patient. She shows him that there is another side to the patient-doctor relationship. His need for relatedness grows and evolves during this friendship as he gets closer with June. After his surgery, he uses his need to show the other doctors the importance of taking a patient’s perspective into their work.
Avoidance motivation overcomes Jack greatly during the movie. When he first finds out about his cancer, he avoids it. He goes home and pretends everything is fine. He tells his wife he is fine, plays pinball, and drinks away his emotions. He refuses to take time of his job and continues to do surgeries. He is avoiding the situation in fear of failing his wife, his prestigious life, and himself with cancer. On the other side of this though, he has empowerment within him. Jack creates ways of coping with this tragic diagnosis, and overcomes his avoidance-based fear by not giving up on himself. Through his empowerment, he displays mastery beliefs which are the perceived control one has over themselves to attain the desirable outcome. He believes that he can influence his outcome. For example, when his radiation doesn’t work, his mastery belief is he will find another way to heal himself. He exerts empowerment by refusing to give up and finds his friend to perform surgery to remove the tumor.
I think Jack experiences a change in his motivations as a doctor throughout the movie. At first, he was extrinsically motivated. He received positive reinforces, such as a pay check, that made living his life comfortable and desirable (building a new kitchen in their home). He also experience rewards from being a doctor. He was able to facilitate his need for competence and power by looking prominent in his career. For example, the doctors were never concerned about their patients. If they were sued, they were concerned with how they could get out of it or the consequences that would follow. They never looked at the impact their actions had on the patient. When he was diagnosed with cancer, he had to learn how to be a patient. Through June, he saw the power a doctor exerted over his patient. June’s doctor discredited her symptoms which could have saved her life if they would have been discovered earlier. He gained the concept of how important it was to be a good doctor. Intrinsic motivation started to occur. He wanted to be a good doctor because of internal reasons instead of external rewards like before. In doing that, he created a program to teach the doctors what it was like to be a patient so they could grasp the importance they played in a patient’s life.
Terms: social needs, power, competence, relatedness, psychological needs, avoidance-based fear, empowerment, mastery beliefs, extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, positive reinforces, rewards, intrinsic motivations

The doctor is a movie that starts of with a very successful and what appears happy family of Dr. Mackee. Dr Mackee has a very high need for achievement that his is able to satisfy through being a surgeon. As you watch him perform his surgeries, he is always the one in control. At work, his relationship with his patients is rocky. He doesn't know how to relate to them - but with peers and co-workers he is always trying to come across as the fun exciting doctor. He wants to appear as the confident doctor, and in doing so doesn't always take his patients concerns or feelings, he just wanted to show to his students that he knew best, this showing a need for competence at his job. Dr. Mackee shows the social need of power through out this movie. Power is the desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. He uses his position in a way to influence others and persuade people to think like him. Through out the movie we see how Dr. Mackee and his wife struggle for intimacy - Jack is constantly forgetting plans that have been made putting his career and patients ahead of his home life, which puts a strain on his life at home. Dr. Mackee also shows a lot of autonomy throughout the beginning of the movie. He is used to being able to dictate how much time each patient will receive for surgery, what tests will be run, and disregards the patients feelings because he is the expert at the decisions he is making.
As the movie continues, Dr. Mackee is diagnosed with cancer and his whole world is turned upside down. He no longer is in the role of doctor and isn't able to call all the shots. A nurse tries to escort him in a wheelchair, which offends him since he is so used to being in control and has never had to follow patient rules of the hospital. As he goes through this process he realizes that he and other doctors need to be more compassionate with their patients and treat them as individual people. While going through treatment, Dr. Mackee meets a woman named June who helps open his eyes to being on the other side. Dr. Mackee became friends with June through out his treatment because she was someone he was able to relate to. However, June did not have the attitude that Dr. Mackee had while being treated, she had learned helplessness and talked about all the things she wasn't going to get to do before she died, which she eventually did. Once she died, Jack was left in the same position of not having anyone to talk to. Eventually his relationship with his wife is restored and they are able to start bonding again. With this experience, Dr. Mackee opens up more to his patients and becomes much more intimate with them and as a result begins to train other doctors how to do so.

Terms: Achievement, Power, Autonomy, Control, Learned Helplessness, Intimacy, Relatedness

The Film, The Doctor is an interesting film that shows how situational events throughout life can really disorient individuals, turn them around, and make them see the world in a new light. The film stars Dr. Jack Mackee whom is a successful surgeon, but due to his career, has a strained family life (lost connection to his son and emotionally dead to his wife) as well as a lacking of “bedside manners” for his patients. However, Dr. Jack Mackee’s life is soon put into a new perspective when he develops a cancerous growth within his throat.

Throughout much of the movie Jack seems to suffer from a lack of relatedness, although this often times shows up in various different forms. At first, Jack has a problem in his interactions with others, usually seen in his lack of warmth and care for patients – always trying to stay objective with them. However, once Jack becomes diagnosed with cancer, it is hard for Jack to feel related to anybody except for his friend June, whom is suffering from an inoperable form of brain cancer. The problem with June though, is that as Jack becomes increasingly closer to her throughout the movie, he becomes increasingly more distant from his wife, leading to Jack having a deficit in his need for intimacy with his wife.

When looking at the role Jack plays as a doctor within the movie, it is clear that Jack has a high social need for power, in that, he likes to cause an impact in the lives of others. Obviously, being a doctor allows Jack to have such an impact in the lives of others. Jack also has a high psychological need of competence, in that he must feel competent in the tasks he is doing in order to perform his job correctly. There happens to be one scene, where Jack leaves the operation room because he simply is no longer in the right mindset to undergo surgery, and therefore, does not feel very competent in his abilities as a surgeon. It could also be said, that since Jack is a doctor, a very prestigious job title, which happens to take many years of schooling to achieve, that Jack must also have a high need for achievement, as it would have taken him over a decade of schooling just to achieve the career path that he has chosen.

Since much of the movie revolves around illness and cancer, it would be appropriate to mention chapter 9 within this post (chapter over personal control beliefs). Looking at many of the cancer patients Jack is surrounded by after becoming diagnosed with his own cancerous growth, it seems as though many of them have a sort of learned helplessness about them and their own condition, in that, many of them have given up hope on their conditions as well as their faith in many of their doctors. Many of the other cancerous patients seem to have developed a sort of uni-polar depression, expecting to themselves that, bad events will occur and there is nothing one can do to prevent their occurrence. Many of these individuals show a low amount of self-efficacy, and, because of this, a low amount of hope (the combination of high agency about their condition and the belief that one has multiple and controllable pathways to obtaining their optimal goal).

Terms

Relatedness
Social Need
Intimacy
Psychological Need
Power
Achievement
Competence
Personal Control Beliefs
Learned Helplessness
Self-efficacy
Hope

I found this movie to be quite interesting, and it portrays a lot of the needs both social and psychological ones that a person goes through every day. With being a doctor, it’s clear that Jack has a high need for achievement. This is pretty obvious because being a doctor means going to school for many many years and getting to be an expert in the field. Anyone who didn’t want to work hard would have low achievement and not have been able to be a doctor. He has a high sense of autonomy as well, because we see him take control in surgery, and his frustration when he learns he has no control over the hospital staff.
Another need Jack has in this movie is the need for relatedness & intimacy.

But unfortunately, this need is not met in the beginning of the movie. Due to Jack working long hours, he has become distant from his family, with no real emotional closeness. These change slowly thought, once Jack learns he has cancer and tries to turn his life around, as a doctor and as a husband/father. When he meets June, his views and feelings on patients begin to change. He finds out that June’s doctor had no correctly diagnosed her, which would have saved her life. He learns how to be a good doctor, and teaches his new interns (after he got over the cancer) the importance of relatedness and compassion towards the patients-with the program he set up at the end. He now empathizes more with them, because he knows what they are going through. Before cancer, Jack did not care too much about his patients and was quite cold to them. He only cared about the end product, whether that was getting out of a lawsuit, or successfully completing a surgery and getting a pay check.

Another need I saw in the movie that Jack had was the need for affiliation. He was a doctor, and expected people to treat him as a high and mighty person. This was true when he went to the radiology center, but was shocked to learn that he being a doctor did not work in his favor. He still had to fill out the paper work and wait in line. He wanted people to treat him better because he was a doctor but that wasn’t the case.

There is a lot of avoidance going on with Jack throughout the movie. He avoided accepting the fact that he has cancer, and avoided talking things out with his wife. He doesn’t want to stop working, because that would really show that he is incapable and not in control of his life or his job. This avoidance of ‘real life’ is dealt with Jack drinking everything away. Once Jack finally came to acceptance of his cancer, he began to change his life around, changed his behavior and changed his thinking.

The “I’m better than you, I’m a doctor”, cold shoulder attitude we see in Jack during the first part of the movie kind of made me think he was a jerk, because how could someone be so heartless and mean to the patients. As the movie went on though, I turned my thoughts around though while the movie was going on. Once Jack got into his patients shoes (of having cancer) he realizes the coldness of some doctors, and vows to change his ways after he was healed.

Terms: Social & psychological needs, achievement, autonomy, intimacy & relatedness, need for power, Affiliation, Compassion,

The movie The Doctor involved a lot of terms from chapters one through nine, but probably none more significant than needs. Working as a health care professional in a hospital setting you see need for achievement everywhere. Every doctor takes a Hippocratic oath which they vow to do their very best in helping patients. Doctors such as Jack MacKee set a standard of excellence while operating to ensure the best possible results. The experiences he undergoes come from a wide variety of social and environmental factors working in the field. Jack and his wife Anne appear to have a positive concept in their social needs towards one another. The way Jack is able to make her laugh and develop as a parent a relationship with his son Nicky show him as a family man. With a highly stressful job we notice his relationships with family taking a toll on him. The amygdala, a part of the brain, signals threatening events, mostly because of the conditions of his patients. We notice Jack become emotionally angered much more after the diagnosis of his cancerous malignant tumor. He starts to see the world in a whole new aspect and the realities of what It is like to become a patient in the hospital. Another aspect that alters jacks emotions and mood is found in the anterior cingulate cortex. This part of the brain is what alters jacks mood when he becomes on edge and dissatisfied with the way the healthcare system is working. Greater blood flow to this part of the brain caused Jack to make uncharacteristic choices by trying to walk his way through the facility and tell the staff how he thinks things should be handled. Jack appeared to always be externally motived throughout the movie. There are many environmental factors that push Jack towards this motivational style. Not only dealing with patients and their injury and diseases, but acting upon his own diagnosis. Cancer is the external factor that he was unable to control and because of this he his motivated to fix the problem, and fast. There is almost never an avoidance orientation with Jack, but an approach orientated one. He approaches the tumor head on to fight against it. Other patients in the same situation are faced with this difficult decision as well, most notably his new found friend June. June suffered from a brain tumor and had to continuously seek the attention of doctors to find the correct cause of her problems she was facing. She was determined to find the cause. After they discovered her tumor she approached the recommendations of the doctor and showed up for her appointments, instead of avoiding them. Between Jack and June, they build a relationship based on intimacy. Since both were diagnosed tumors and hospitalized they found a connection relating to one another. There was strong affiliation because of fear of their hospitalization. Neither of them wanted to be lonely, and even though Jack had a family, they were able to strongly make a connection relating to each other. They sought acceptance through one another with the situation they were put in. When one doctor was fearful of getting sewed by a patient, Jack was able to understand his patients anxiety and anger from the patients position. As the movie progressed Jacks affiliation and intimacy needs continuously grew with all patients from the hospital. Jack also had a need for power, most notably after his diagnosis. He sought to enforce his own views on the hospital. He threatened other doctors as well as took charge of his own cancer over other physician’s opinions. When he confronted Dr. Abbott and released her as the doctor who would perform on him showed Jack was in charge, and what he said was all that mattered. Jack was aggressive in his approaches. This is a component of satisfying his need for power. Jack was never timid or bashful with anything, but was aggressive to show dominance. `Jack also showed that he had high self-efficacy by believing in himself that he was capable of still performing his doctoral duties when others suggest he not work for weeks. Jack is a man who is strongly motivated to work and he believed he could effectively perform surgeries. Jack was overwhelmed with difficulties, but his self-efficacy made him believe in himself as a doctor able to perform at a high level and was willing to put the effort into continuing his duties. Jack was very persistent in his beliefs. It wasn’t until one operation when he became physically unable to perform, and realized he must let somebody else do his job for him. Another concept we noted in Jack was his mastery beliefs. His determination to beat his cancer showed his desirability to overcome and prevent further dissonance. His actions to put himself under the knife by a professional he trusted proved to be a beneficial outcome for him in the end, and did not lose his voice, except for a few days. When Jack was unable to speak he blew a whistle and wrote down messages on an erasable board. He was experiencing many emotions trying to keep his relationship with his wife, and she was falling away from him. During their fight, we most notably see the psychological needs both were unable to fulfill. They both needed each other and showed the importance of relatedness and competence during a difficult time in both their lives. Jack and his wife needed to interact in an efficient way from the surrounding factors that were driving them apart. They had a desire to social interact more than ever toward the end of the movie. Jack wrote down on his board “I need you”, which shows his strong need to relate with his wife. The interactions that had begun to fall apart were now stronger than ever. It took some tragic environmental disturbances to make them realize the importance of fulfilling their psychological needs for one another, but they were able to overcome the odds.
Terms: Needs, achievement, social needs, amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, external motivation, approach/avoidance orientation, intimacy, affiliation, power, aggressiveness, self-efficacy, mastery belief, relatedness, competence.

The Doctor is a movie about a surgeon who gets to see what its like on the other side of the spectrum. From the very beginning of the movie you can tell that Dr. MacKee’s job as a surgeon fills a lot of his psychological needs. He has a high level of competence from his environment. He does surgery and is successful therefore he receives feedback from his coworkers and his patients. His moto is that you should not get close to the patients or show much empathy because of the field they are in. It interferes with your job it you form a bond with your patients. Also from his job he has a high level of achievement. He is successful and people look up to him so his need for achievement is consistently being filled. Because of his competence and achievement he feels very powerful. He can make or break peoples careers and holds his patients lives in his hands.
When Dr. MacKee is diagnosed with throat cancer is world is turned upside down. Now he gets to see what its like as a patient in his hospital. He has to wait in line, fill out paperwork over and over again and not be a priority. Now his position isn’t giving him the power that he is used to and he becomes helpless. He meets June who has brain cancer. She teaches him what its like to be a patient along with helping him deal with the cancer and life. He fills his need for relatedness with June because of there similar situations. They form a strong bond and become good friends that can rely on one another. When he was diagnosed his coworkers started treating him differently so his need for affiliation that was being filled was no longer. He filled this again down in the cancer wing with the other patients. They were there for one another through their good and bad days. However with his wife, their psychological needs were not being met. He couldn’t relate to her with his cancer because he was going through so much. His wife, Anne needed to fill her need for relatedness and intimacy but they continuously were not being met. Many times cancer patients that are terminally diagnosed can have learned helplessness. This is a state where some one feels like they no longer have control of their lives and the outcomes that unfold. At the end of the movie the Dr. MacKee shows his coworkers what its like on the other side and what he has learned from it. The other doctors are patients for 72 hours so they can see what their patients really go through. They realize that they can show emotion and form bonds with their patients and that it is good for them.
Power, affiliation, achievement, relatedness, intimacy, competence, learned helplessness

This movie has the very distinct before-and-after character development as the result of a life-threatening illness. Before being diagnosed with cancer, Dr. Jack MacKee was arrogant at work, distant at home, insensitive to his patients, and indifferent to his family (as evidenced by the scene where he gets home from work early and calls out to his son, who picks up the phone to greet him since he’s not used to his father actually being home). In his words, there was a danger in caring too much about a patient, and what was important was to “cut straight and care less.” It seems his needs for autonomy and competence were foremost for him, and he had no trouble meeting them (in his career as a surgeon), but he seemed to ignore the innate need for relatedness. He certainly had a strong sense of self-efficacy and empowerment over his environments (work and home) and circumstances (including conflicts with co-workers that he seemed to enjoy), but his behaviors and emotions displayed that his needs for both affiliation and intimacy weren’t much of a concern to him. He didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of him, outside of the few people who thought he was hilariously funny and a talented surgeon. Once the tables were turned, however, and he became a patient, he began to see the error of his ways -- how his callous bedside manner and unwillingness to risk emotional intimacy didn’t make him cool, carefree, and fun-loving, but an insensitive, superficial prick (in my opinion). Getting a taste of his own medicine showed him first-hand what it feels like to be treated like a disease -- impersonally, and without genuine concern for the complex emotions a person with a life-threatening illness feels. It took this personal experience for him to learn empathy, as well as meeting June, which had an even greater impact on his outlook on life, work, and relationships. In one interaction, she told him, “I see [my tumor] giving me certain freedoms I never allowed myself...like being honest and expecting other people around me to do the same.” While they didn’t have a romantic relationship, they developed an intimacy that Jack either had never experienced before, or hadn’t in years. While his relationship with June put a strain on his marriage (as he was still withholding intimacy from his wife), in the long run it proved to prime him for rebuilding his family and opening up to allow the degree of vulnerability that is necessary to build trust and healthy dependence on others. He had kept his wife at arm’s length for so long that he couldn’t “reach out.” She explained to him that she “woke up every morning with this sensation -- tired, hungry, sad? Then I just realized I’m just sad.” Jack’s disinterest in intimacy meant that Anne’s needs weren’t being met either, since that’s how a marriage works. She was willing to be patient and start again, and finally the moment came when he admitted (or realized) that he needed her. His need for relatedness and intimacy had been awakened, and luckily for him, she had not given up on him yet. While June’s cancer destroyed her, Jack’s surgery was able to remove the entirety of his tumor. He emerged from ordeal both a better man and a better doctor -- you could say that by fulfilling his intimacy needs, he had become more whole.
Terms: autonomy, competence, relatedness, self-efficacy, empowerment, affiliation, intimacy

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