American Beauty

The plot of American Beauty is filled with examples of both psychological and social needs. It’s a pretty crazy story line. The movie has a great deal of immorality throughout the plot. A lot of the immoral actions of the characters stems from their psychological and social needs that aren’t being met. For many of the characters, after years of suppressing their psychological and social needs, they reach a breaking point.
The need for autonomy or freedom is a theme throughout the movie. The neighbor boy and the dad are the two characters that I think exemplify this need the most. The neighbor’s dad is highly controlling and he does not practice and autonomy-supportive style of parenting. That being said, he does not encourage his son to make his own decisions and does not allow him the freedom to make certain choices in his life. His dad lacks trust in his son and so he resorts to a controlling motivating style. He constantly keeps a watchful eye on his son, randomly checks up on him and tries to push his beliefs on his son (like when he was talking to his son about the homosexual neighbors). Although the neighbor boy does adhere to most of his father’s rules, he secretly defies his dad. He lives two different lives. One that appeases his dad but does not have any effect on his internal state and he lives one life that is internally motivating. While his dad might think he has control over his son, the boy’s “second life” is what drives him. In that life he is free to be himself. When considering the perceived choice (i.e. do we feel like we have freedom to make decisions), the boy has given himself the ability to make his own decisions in life while convincing his father that he is actually submitting to his authority.
In regards to the main character (the dad), he has lacked autonomy for a good many years. He did not feel like his actions were his choice (perceived choice) and he felt pressured to behave in certain ways (i.e. he lacked volition). For instance, he felt pressured to keep the mundane boring job that he was in. There are a ton of examples of this character submitting to the will of others UNTIL a certain point. “You don’t get to tell me what to do ever again.” This is what the main character says to his wife when he reaches a breaking point. When he finally realizes how much he has lacked autonomy in his life he completely flips his life around. When he starts considering only his own needs and desires to have control of his life, he jumps to the other end of the spectrum. This is when I think he tries to exert too much power over the people in his life. Power is a social need that involves a person’s need for influence and control. The dad quits his job, buys a car, sells a car, and tries to control his family in many ways. As the book says, leadership is one of the ways in which people high in the need for power satisfy that need. The dad attempts to be the leader his family and does not consider the needs and wants of his wife and his daughter.
Other major needs that I found to be lacking in many of the characters in this movie are: relatedness and affiliation/intimacy. Truly, most of these characters in the movie were searching for relatedness and intimacy yet they tried to fill this void through affiliation. The promiscuous friend sought her friend’s dad to make her feel wanted. She was afraid that she wouldn’t be loved in life and so she acted in provocative ways that caused men to react in ways that made her feel pseudo loved. At the end of the movie we learn that she has a deep desire to be loved. She has a deep desire for intimacy in a warm relationship, yet she doesn’t know what this means until the end of the movie. In an intimate relationship, neither side has a fear of rejection. This girl definitely feared rejection. Because of her fear of rejection and desired to be approved (mostly by the opposite sex), she sought affiliation in order to try and satisfy her need for intimacy. Her fear led her to affiliation. The other characters were searching for intimacy as well. The main family is a great example of this. They desired a close relationship with each other yet they did not try to accomplish this until the end of the movie when it was too late. The daughter’s relatedness need was not being met either. She desired to have someone truly care for her and like her. She really wanted her parents to come to watch her dance and hated that her dad like her friend more than her. She finally found someone that both liked and cared for her in the neighbor boy.
When these characters allowed their needs to go unmet for awhile, they were almost all reached a point that they could no longer take it. Their needs were too important and were not being met. Horrible things happened because they waited too long to address their needs.
Terms: autonomy, autonomy supportive style, controlling motivating style, perceived choice, volition

I watched American Beauty nearly three years ago. I thought that the characters were strange then, and watching the film for a second time did not change my opinion. The difference between then and now is that I now have a better understanding as to why the characters behave the way that they do. A number of different psychological and social needs are not being met, and the characters are doing their best to survive day to day while being deprived of them.

The social need that I witnessed the most was the need for power. Those with a high need for power have a strong desire to have an impact on others. They can be very aggressive, may have occupations where they make themselves visible to others, and they may also own what the book calls “prestige possessions”, which are a collection of power symbols, such as cars, houses, televisions, furniture, etc. The two characters who had the highest need for power were Carolyn Burnham and Colonel Frank Fitts. Carolyn’s need for power was evident in the way she treated her family. She was constantly ordering Lester to behave in certain ways in order to exhibit an aura of success, and she critiqued her daughter’s dance performance as good simply because she “didn’t mess up once.” Carolyn is a good example of someone with prestige possessions. Lester was unsuccessful in seducing her because she freaked out when he almost spilled beer on the sofa, and the resulting argument ended with him telling her that possessions cannot make a happy life. It was clear that she disagreed, when she slapped her daughter in the face for being ungrateful; Carolyn then went on to point out that Jane had possessions that Carolyn never had growing up, and because of that, Jane had no reason to be unhappy. We could tell that the character of Colonel Fitts was power hungry because of the way he was constantly controlling his son’s life. He was physically abusive to him whenever Ricky did something without permission, such as showing Jane the colonel’s Nazi plate. He even tried to control Ricky’s thoughts about the “faggots” in the neighborhood, without much success.

The two characters who were damaged the most by Carolyn’s and the colonel’s behavior were Lester and Ricky, who lacked the psychological need of autonomy. In regards to autonomy, the book says that “we want to be the one who determines our actions, rather than have some other person or some environmental constraint force us into a particular course of action” (pg. 145). Carolyn was always telling Lester what to do or how to behave, and his deprivation of autonomy eventually caused him to snap. He quit his job, applied at a fast food restaurant, and was happier than he had been in a long time, simply because he finally got to choose what he wanted to do. Ricky also suffered autonomy deprivation, because his father had such high and specific expectations of how Ricky should behave. Ricky’s need for autonomy finally made him snap at the end of the film, when he lies and tells the colonel that he’s a pimp so that he would be kicked out of the house. Most of us would be terrified if our parents kicked us out, but Ricky’s need was so great that he was actually relieved, simply to be away from his father and have the freedom to make his own decisions.

Affiliation was a social need that manifested itself in Angela Hayes. She had such a strong desire to gain others’ approval and avoid rejection that she made up stories about sexual encounters with numerous men, giving her the reputation of a slut. She even offers herself to Lester at the end of the film after Ricky tells her that she is ugly and ordinary; she had such a high need for affiliation at that point that she would do anything in order to gain anyone’s approval…even if it’s only Lester’s.

In addition to being power-hungry, Colonel Fitts also showed a need for relatedness. This need was hidden until one of the final scenes of the movie, where he kisses Lester in the garage. This action shows that he is homosexual, which is surprising since he gives the impression that he is anti-gay the entire movie. He had denied himself the privilege of relating to others in that regard his entire life, most likely because he was in the Marine Corps, where in the past homosexuality was not tolerated. His need to relate to someone became so strong that he knocked down his walls, making himself vulnerable when he kisses Lester. Unfortunately for Lester, the colonel put the walls back up and disposed of him after being rejected so that no one else would ever find out about his secret sexual identity.

Terms: power, prestige possessions, autonomy, affiliation, relatedness

I was not a huge fan of this movie. There wasn’t much of a plot to me, something I find essential in books and movies. Thank goodness Kevin Spacey was in this; he is one of my favorite actors. For those of you who’ve watched the Hunger Games, the gamemaker was the neighbor boy too, so that also helped keep my interest. Whether you liked the movie or not, it is clear that there are many examples of motivation and emotion in the film.
I found a basic example of a quasi need in the very first part of the film. A quasi need is wanting something you think you need, but you really don’t NEED it. A great example the book gives is “needing” money at the store. One of the first scenes we see Thora Birch in (the daughter – sorry, I’m terrible with movie names and I watched the movie on Sunday) is she is researching breast augmentations. She thinks she NEEDS larger breasts. This need stems from our psychological need for competency – we want to feel as if we are good enough. We all know that our society values curves, this is nothing new. So Thora Birch wants to feel competent enough in society to feel beautiful with larger breasts.
In another one of my psychology classes that I am taking this semester, Psychology and Aging ( a very good class that I would recommend to anyone!), we just finished talking a little bit about “midlife crises”. I believe that Kevin Spacey is having a midlife crisis in this movie. Where as Thora’s need wasn’t really a need, I believe this upheaval of his life really does stem from a lack of psychological needs. Kevin Spacey doesn’t feel like his need for autonomy is being met, especially at his job. The psychological need of autonomy deals with wanting to make our own decisions and feeling like we have some control over our lives. He feels helpless at work and in his marriage, so he decides to take control. Unfortunately, since he can only control himself, he makes poor decisions in order to feel his autonomy need. He quits his job and starts to work at a fast food restaurant. He also just gives up caring about his wife, stating at some point in the movie he really doesn’t care who she is sleeping with. There is one thing good that comes from his crisis. He becomes motivated to get healthier and exercise to get into shape. Even if the extrinsic motivation of sleeping with a minor is anything but healthy, it is driving him to emit healthy behaviors.
There are two main types of achievement goals: mastery goals and performance goals. Mastery goals are more attainable; you set a goal for yourself to better yourself and worry about only your standards. Performance goals are more difficult to reach because you are comparing yourself to the best of the best and what society thinks you should be. Kevin Spacey has turned his life into a mastery goal. The goal is to be successful by making himself happy. Society often sees being successful as having a high-standard career. People living to these standards would be performing a performance goal. Kevin Spacey quits a decent job to work at a fast food restaurant. Many people would see this as a low-level job and a major downgrade from where he was before. But since he is judging his success on his own happiness, he is emitting a mastery goal.
Terms:
achievement goals, mastery goals, performance goals, extrinsic motivation, autonomy, psychological needs, qausi needs, competence,

The movie, American Beauty was mainly about how people perceive beauty differently in the world, and what it truly means to be happy versus portraying the image of being happy. Many concepts can be seen throughout this movie. Especially social needs which are an acquired psychological process that grows out of one's socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive. There are three basic components to social needs. They are achievement,affiliation and intimacy, and power. Many social needs are targeted in the movie, especially for the character, Lester. We can clearly see that Lester isn't happy at all. In the opening scene, Lester quotes, “In less than a year, I’ll be dead...in a way, I’m dead already.” This could explain Lester's low need for achievement. You can also tell he's very unhappy in his marriage which leads him to do the things he does (smoking pot). We can tell this by the fact that he does not desire to do well and doesn't seem to want any responsibility at all (when he quits his job). But, when he becomes attracted to Angela, he creates a mastery goal by working out to get into shape and become her dream man. His need for affiliation and intimacy grows after this. In the book, affiliation is characterized by a high need to be liked by those around you. A person with a high need for intimacy will also interact with others in a way that will prevent them from encountering rejection, disapproval or loneliness, in which Lester was feeling.

Another one of the main social needs that could clearly be seen throughout the movie was the need for power and need for achievment. Achievement needs are the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. I saw the need for power in the charachter, Carolyn. The book explains that people who have a high need for power often put a lot of importance on reputation, status and position. Carolyn possessed a lot of social status. Her job as a real estate agent required that she be confident in her abilities to sell houses. She also always wanted everything to be perfect on the outside. She seems very materialistic and made it seem like money and expensive items were very important to her. One can see this through the nice house they had, the nice neighborhood they lived in,and expensive decorations inside their house. Having nice and expensive things gave Carolyn a sense of power. However, even though she felt a sense of power, she was clearly not happy. This can be linked to external and internal motivators. Carolyn was focusing all of her attention on the external things such as nice furniture and a nice house that she was forgetting to focus on the internal things that would make her happy in her life.

Many of these characters also deal with discrepency which is the difference or mismatch between the present state and the ideal state that a person pursues. This can be seen with Lester. Obviously as stated before, he wasn't happy in the beginning of the movie. His marriage was falling apart, he hated his job, and all of these present state thoughts lead him to believe he should be living in his ideal state in which he tried to pursue another woman, quit his job, buy a new car, and act a different age.

Terms: social needs, neef for power, need for achievement. mastery goals, external and internal motivators, need for affiliation and intimacy. discrepency

The movie “American Beauty” had many concepts from chapters six and seven. The plot of this story is derived from characters who seek out different social needs. It seems as if the characters in this movie are trying live up to certain expectations, but that is not what they ultimately want. The characters have reached a certain point in their lives where they are fed up and want to live up to their own expectations.

The first thing that came to my attention is the need for autonomy displayed by certain characters. There is not one particular scene where the need for autonomy is shown, but throughout the entire movie. Lester is fed up with his dead-end job, has to come home to a wife who has apparently changed throughout their marriage, and has to deal with a daughter who thinks he is weird. Lester feels like he is not in control of his life. His life revolves around his job and his wife. I think his need for autonomy is best shown when he quits his job. Lester blackmails his employer so that he receives money over the next year. At the end of his conversation he told his colleague that “I’m an ordinary man with nothing to lose.” I think this tells us that he feels like he hasn’t been able to become, or achieve, what he wants to do in life, and won’t regret quitting his job. Lester’s need for autonomy is also displayed when they are at the family dinner table, and he ends up throwing a plate at the wall. In this scene, he expresses that he isn’t getting what he wants out of their marriage, and for no on he will do what he wants. Lester’s need for autonomy is satisfied when get begins to work at the fast food restaurant and buys his dream car. From that point on, Lester did what he wanted and he felt like he was more self-driven?

I want to focus on the relationship between Ricky and his father. Ricky seems to be trapped, and his competence is also not satisfied. His whole life seems like he has been living up to how his dad wants him to behave and live. Ricky’s dad, Frank, has a need to have power. Frank displays his power through aggression. For example, when Ricky showed Jane the Nazi plate in his dad’s office, Frank found out later that night and beat Ricky. Frank, angered by Ricky’s action to break into his case shelf, has removed his societal inhibitions to release his aggression. After Ricky suffers a beating, he responds to his father like his father is the most powerful man in the world, using words like “yes sir” and telling Frank that he needs discipline.

One of the things clear to me in this film is the lack of affiliation and intimacy. This is displayed by almost every character in the movie. It seems every character lacks a close-knit relationship in their family and has to find someone else to satisfy their need. Ricky and his father lack affiliation. Ricky has a need for affiliation because he sometimes fears his father. His father doesn’t meet his needs for someone close to him. Ricky takes an interest in Jane, who seems to give Ricky the acceptance and security he needs within a relationship. The same thing applies for Jane, who dislikes both her parents, and seeks out Ricky. This is best seen when Ricky comes into Jane’s room while Angela is sleeping over, and they decide to go to New York together. Lester lacks affiliation and intimacy with his wife and daughter. There was one scene from the movie when Lester had been drinking, and was whispering to his wife the things he loved about her that she used to do. You would think that this was an intimacy moment, thinking they would set aside their problems and work on them. But Carolyn ruined the moment because she was too pre-occupied about the fact that Lester may spill his beer on the couch. The couch is an example of one of Carolyn’s prestige possessions. He begins to see beauty in Angela, who is Jane’s age. He takes an interest in her. I think his obsession for Angela is a quasi-need because it affected how he behaved and his thought processes. For example, when Angela comes over to Jane’s house to sleep over, Lester froze at the fridge and didn’t speak to Angela, just stared at her. Also, Lester would spy and listen on Jane and Angela’s conversations. He learned that Angela would take more of an interest in him if he worked out and got in shape. This acted as a motivator for Lester to get his body in shape. He started running and lifting to achieve his goal of getting in shape, so Angela would take an interest in him.

Terms: autonomy, aggression, power societal inhibitions, quasi-need, affiliation, intimacy, prestige possessions, achievement,

This movie was so interesting to watch from a motivational standpoint. Each character expressed so many psychological as well as social needs. Every individual in the movie had their own problems or dilemmas they wanted to resolve, however this did not necessarily occur for all of them. American Beauty involved a couple different stories that all related or were connected together in some way, they were connected through their social relationships. Social needs function as personality characteristics for example; achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. All of these aspects were expressed in the movie American Beauty. For example the mom and dad had a need for intimacy because it was not occurring in their marriage; both of them resolved this issue in different ways. Also the dad felt a sense of achievement when he told his boss he would leave his job if he got benefits and a full year salary. He felt very happy that he was able to do what he had always wanted to. During the movie we saw the mom constantly trying to fit into society and the difficult expectations that went along with her job. She felt that in order for her to be successful she had to dress the part, have a nice house with nice furniture, and a perfect family. The mom’s need for these was due to her quasi needs, which are situationally induced wants and desires.

Social needs are dormant within us until we encounter an event that draws our attention in terms of thinking, feeling, and behaving. An example is when the dad was at the party with his wife and he decided to hang out with the neighbor boy smoking in an alley. The dad enjoyed smoking thus causing him to want to continue on a regular basis. Smoking satisfied his social need partly because it impacted his thinking, feeling, and behaving in a positive way. He felt as though nothing bad could happen to him, he had high self-esteem. The dad beginning to work out and eat healthy is another example.

Every individual wanted to achieve their goal whether it was positive or negative. The daughter always seemed to feel normal and not special until she met the neighbor boy. He helped her realize that she was fine the way she was. Her goal was originally to become like her friend, however once she realized who she was she felt a sense of achievement because she was more comfortable with who she was. Thus this achievement produced an emotionally meaningful evaluation of her personal competence. The way in which we are socialized strongly impact who we become as adults. Our parents are strongly involved in the socialization process, they teach us important things. Children develop strong achievement strivings when their parents provide independence training, realistic standards of excellence, positive valuing and several others. A specific scene from the movie that relates to this concept is when the mom makes fun of what the daughter is wearing to school. The mom makes her daughter feel bad about herself thus making it difficult for her to have self-confidence.

The neighbor boy seemed to live a very hard life with his father who was abusive. We saw the boy begin to outsmart his father so he did not get in trouble. For example the boy kept urine for drug tests that his father would make him do. Social isolation and fear arousing conditions are two situations that increase an individual’s desire to affiliate with others. Because the boy feared what would happen to him if his father found out he was doing drugs he found ways of hiding what he was doing. The boy would video tape people and examine how they interacted with others, I think he wanted to see if others were in the same type of situation as him. He also looked for the neighbor girl for social support and guidance.

The need for power was strongly shown in the way the mom kept her overall appearance that her life was perfect. She felt that if others thought she was perfect, then she must be a strong or powerful individual. The need for power is a desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. The mom wanted others to think she had a high status because she had a nice house and a “perfect” family.

Overall this movie was extremely interesting to watch from a motivational viewpoint because there were so many different things occurring. Each individual had their own problem that connected to larger problems that the overall family struggled with. This movie also expressed concepts in relation to social and quasi needs.

Terms: Social Needs, Quasi-Needs, Achievement, Socialization Influences, Fear and Anxiety, Power, Competence.

American Beauty was a very interesting movie to say the least. There are so many things to talk about I don’t even know where to begin! The movie begins with an unhappy couple and their teenage daughter. The daughter just wants to belong, she is confused at that age and the parents don’t give her the time of day because they are focused on their own problems. I feel like the family has no motivation because they go through the same repetitive routines day after day. An example of this is during dinner, they listen to the exact same music at each meal. At the beginning of the movie Lester states that “In less than a year, I’ll be dead… in a way, I am already dead”. I didn’t quite understand what he meant at first but as I watched the movie you could tell there was no motivation present and low achievement.

As the movie goes on, the need for freedom is present throughout. The dad who is the main character went on living a life he hated where he felt he had no choices of his own, he was always taking orders from others until one day he finally had enough. He reflected on his own wants and needs. He was unhappy and looking for a change. He quit his job, sold his car and bought a sports car he’d always wanted. When Lester quit his job he applied for a job at a hamburger fast food restaurant because he can remember working at a fast food restaurant one summer when was younger and that is when he was the happiest. To me this sounds like an extreme case of a mid-life crisis. This could also be because his social needs weren’t being met. Another need for freedom is expressed in the neighbor boy Ricky towards his father. His father is a former colonel in the United States Marine Corps. The colonel is very unsupportive of his son. He makes him belief what he does and doesn’t trust his son at all. He is always spying on him to see what he is up to.

Power and achievement was strong with the character of Carolyn, the mother. She expressed the need for power and achievement. As a real estate agent she wanted a good reputation and a quote normal family. She was all about social class. She cared more about her reputation than she did about the rest of her family. She had a nice house in a good neighborhood with a perfect landscaped yard that she maintained. Carolyn’s need for power was present when she ordered Lester around. She told him how to act at the party in the beginning of the movie. Another time was when Lester was trying to seduce Carolyn but instead got yelled at by her because he almost spilled beer on the four thousand dollar couch. Lester told her that money and material items weren’t everything and she disagreed. Even with all this power she was still unhappy. That just goes to show money and cannot buy happiness.

Most of the characters were searching for relatedness and intimacy. Relatedness is very important throughout this movie. When the dad Lester’s needs aren’t being met with his wife, he comes attracted to his daughter’s friend. He becomes motivated to work out and have a nice body. Relatedness can be seen through the daughter Jane. She hated that her dad liked her friend better than her. I found it ironic that Jane’s friend was always talking about sex and hooking up with guys. She made Jane feel like she was a loner because she wasn’t able to contribute to the conversations. Then one night when Jane and her got into a fight, she went looking for Jane’s dad. They started messing around and she told Lester she’d never done it before. It can also be seen with Jane’s relationship with the neighbor boy Ricky. There both kind of outsiders. They both are seeking affiliation and intimacy. They were both helping each other meet these needs. This is also present in one of the last senses when the colonel thought he saw his son being sexual with Lester. A little bit after that sense he went over to Lester in his garage and kissed him. This shows that he is a homosexual. This was surprising to me because he was always talking about being anti-gay with his son and making derogatory comments towards gays. The colonel was most likely taught to have these feelings in the marines. Carolyn is also in need of intimacy and has an affair with Buddy. Buddy is a well off real estate agent like Carolyn. I thought it was ironic when they were sneaking off together and ran into Lester at the fast food restaurant. Lester didn’t even seem to care. When buddy told Carolyn they needed to slow it down a little bit and he left her, she was miserable.

Terms used: motivation, freedom, achievement, power, relatedness, intimacy

The movie “American Beauty” displays many different characters all showing some form of psychological or social need. A psychological need is some activity or object that brings a person pleasure and enjoyment. It could be a game of baseball or something like a cat or dog. These things can fulfill psychological needs. Social needs on the other hand are acquire by experience, development and socialization. These can be behavioral or emotional that is activated by certain situations in a person’s life. I loved that each character in this movie had their own story and their own set of problems that related to what the situation was in their life. It kept the story very interesting and I could not predict what was going to happen next. These are the kind of movies I love to watch because they keep me involved and guessing throughout the entire movie.

The main character Lester, played by Kevin Spacey, played a big role in how all the other characters in the movie were feeling and how they handled their lives. It all started when Lester saw Angela for the first time at the school during the halftime show. He said that he felt alive for the first time in 20 years. He began to change from that time on. He really wanted Angela so badly that he started working out and quit his job. Angela became one of his quasi needs. A quasi need is a want or desire that is not technically a full-blown need. It is something that affects how a person thinks, feels, and acts, but it is not something that is needed in their life. Angela helped Lester change how he thought about life and he realized he missed how things were back when he was younger. When it came time for him to actually have Angela all to himself she made him realize how foolish he had been. He did not really want her after all, he just wanted someone to be interested in him again and make him feel young.

Another example of needs in this movie was of Carolyn, Lester’s wife, wanting to be the best at her job. She wanted to be the best realtor in her neighborhood. She knew that she needed to beat out the “King” Buddy Kane to be able to be successful. She was looking to satisfy the social need of achievement. Achievement is the desire to do well related to a standard of excellence. She wanted to achieve this goal for her own pleasure of knowing that she can be successful without anyone’s help. She later realized that was not the only thing she desired. She also wanted to feel loved and admired by someone who took her seriously. Her husband was not fulfilling this psychological need for her so she had an affair with Buddy Kane. He made her feel competent. Competence is the need to be effective in interactions with the environment. Carolyn only started feeling competent when Buddy was in her life and when she learned to fire a gun. She was on top of the world.

One last example from the movie that goes along with our class is the daughter Jane feeling like an outcast. Even though Jane considers Angela to be her friend she stills does not feel like she belongs. She even thinks that she needs to get a boob job to be able to feel normal. When she first meets Ricky her new next door neighbor, she thinks he is a freak because he is always taping her. She later realizes that he thinks she is interesting and she starts to feel like she can relate to him. This fulfills her psychological need of relatedness. Relatedness is the need to belong and have close, warm, and affectionate relationships with other people. Jane never really had a relationship with either of her parents her whole life, so she really did not know what it felt like to relate to someone. Once Ricky came along she slowly warmed up to him and found that they had a lot in common. Ricky also needed Jane. His dad was never a loving dad and his mom was having problems of her own. Ricky was looking for someone to relate to also. Jane and Ricky also achieved a social need of Intimacy later on in the movie. They started to consider each other boyfriend and girlfriend. Intimacy is the experience of having a warm, close, communicative relationship with another person. Jane never had a close relationship with Angela throughout the movie because Angela was the type who had a high need for affiliation. High need affiliation is when a person interacts with others to avoid negative emotions. These types of people come across as being needy. Angela was only friends with Jane to make her feel better about herself. She even threw herself at Jane’s dad just so she could be reminded of how sexy she was. She was always just looking for attention. Overall, Jane and Ricky found the positive side of their social needs while Angela was stuck in the negative part.

American Beauty still has many more examples of psychological and social needs throughout the movie that I have not covered. There are just way too many examples for me to have time to type up all of them. I highly recommend that more people see this movie if they are struggling with their own needs in life. It really does make me feel better about how good my life is right now and I am lucky to not have such as big problems as these families do.

Terms: psychological needs, social needs, quasi needs, achievement, competence, relatedness, intimacy, high-need affiliation

This is the first time I have watched the film, “American Beauty.” I thought it was a very interesting movie and that it provided a lot of thought – I even thought about it a few days after I watched it. I felt uncomfortable in a few scenes, but that is to be personally expected. Nevertheless, the film “American Beauty” contains numerous psychological needs and social needs.

I would first like to respond to this film from concepts from chapter 6, psychological needs. As stated above, this film provided numerous examples of psychological needs that I will discuss in further detail below. Psychological needs promote a willingness to seek out and to engage in an environment that we expect will be able to nurture out psychological needs. One psychological need that is present in “American Beauty” is the need of autonomy. Autonomy is the want to make our own decisions for ourselves. Lester (main dad) provides a great example of autonomy in the film. At the beginning of the film, Lester does not have autonomy. He goes about his daily schedule and fits himself into everyone’s day without showing a want to make his own decisions. As soon as he realizes that he can be happier with his life, understanding his need for autonomy, he begins to make changes in his life that reflect his need for autonomy. Such changes include quitting the job he hates, working out for personal gain (as well as an extrinsic motivation), and begins to voice his opinions about his place in the family. Lester wants a better life in which he is happier and more intrinsically motivated, thus he engages his need for autonomy. Another psychological need that is present in this film is that of competence. Competence 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. Competence is present through the character Carolyn (Lester’s wife). Carolyn strives, throughout the movie, to show competence in her job. She constantly wants to be effective in interactions with her environment by being successful with her job of real-estate. Carolyn discovers that she is unable to achieve the high level of competence she needs, but nevertheless continues to strive to be successful and to portray her desire to exercise her capacities and skills. The final psychological need that is present in “American Beauty” is the need of relatedness. Relatedness is defined as 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. Jane, Lester and Carolyn’s daughter, displays relatedness in the film. She is a “lost and confused” teenager whose parents are having difficult times and she is looking for relatedness. She desires to feel connected (such as to her friend Angela) but does not feel her need is fulfilled with the empty friendship. When Jane meets and gets to know Ricky, she feels that her need for relatedness is becoming fulfilled. She feels that she is establishing a close emotional bond and becomes attached to Ricky (he asks her if she would leave with him at a moment’s notice if he asked her and she said that she would leave with him) the more time she spends with him and the more she gets to know him.

Concepts from chapter 7 also relate to the film “American Beauty.” Acquired psychological needs are present and are defined as social need and quasi-needs. Quasi-needs are defined as situationally induced wants that create tense energy to engage in behavior capable of reducing the built-up tension. This need is present in the film in the scene with Carolyn and Buddy (“King of real-estate”). Their built-up tension is that of sexual pleasure and they engage in sex together as a way to reduce the built-up tension they are both experiencing. Also, Lester being attracted to Angela is an example of a quasi-need. He tries to gather information from Jane about Angela in hopes of seeing her or fulfilling his fantasies about/with her. His situationally induced want of Angela creates a tense energy for Lester and he then pries information about Angela to reduce the built-up tension he experiences. Social needs are acquired psychological processes that grow out of one’s socialization history that activate emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive. Social needs are: achievement needs, affiliation needs, intimacy needs, and power needs. The need for achievement is defined as the desire to do well relative to standards of excellence. The need of achievement is present with Carolyn wanting to be successful at something in her life. She strives to be successful at her job as well as be successful in the home, as relative to standards of excellence (provided by society – need to be successful in the home – and Buddy – her need to be successful at her job). Another example of the need for achievement is Lester’s goal of getting fit for Angela. He wants to meet the standards of excellence, as set by Angela, and to receive a reward from his actions of working out (fulfill his fantasies with Angela). The need for affiliation is defined as establishing, maintaining, or restoring a positive, effective relationship with another person or persons. This need is present in the scenes containing Ricky and his father, Frank. Ricky attempts to establish and maintain a positive relationship with his father, but his relationship is rooted in fear of interpersonal rejection of Frank. (A particular scene is when his Frank first hits Ricky – that we as an audience see – and Ricky agrees and attempts to maintain his relationship with his father). The need for intimacy is defined as the willingness to experience a warm, close, and communicative exchange with another person. Jane fulfills her need for intimacy in the film when she meets and becomes close to Ricky. Because of Ricky’s interest in Jane, Jane is willing to experience a relationship with him in order to fulfill her need for intimacy. They begin to spend time together and build their relationship together. The need for power is also present in “American Beauty” and is defined as the desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. This is evident in the scenes regarding Frank. Frank has a high need for power as he has a strong relation to a background in the military. The military had given Frank a high need for power and control over most situations. Frank’s high need for power is evident with his relationship with his son and how he controls much of Ricky’s life. He becomes abusive to Ricky when he senses his amount of power over Ricky slipping. Frank’s final act of power is seen in the final scene when he shoots and kills Lester. He is proving to himself that he is in control and that he can take care of any situation if it does not conform to his personal image or plan for it.

Terms: psychological needs, autonomy, (extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation), competence, relatedness, acquired needs, quasi-needs, social needs, achievement, affiliation, (fear), intimacy, and power

American Beauty was a fascinating example of various needs, and what people are driven to do when those needs are threatened or not met. One of the most prominent issues between Lester and Carolyn Burnham was the fact that their needs of intimacy and affiliation were not being met from their spouse. The intimacy motive, or the desire to "experience a warm, close, and communicative exchange with another person" as our book describes it, was not being met within their marriage. These intimacy motives go hand in hand with an individuals affiliation, or the ability to establish and cultivate positive relationships with another person or persons. When the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Burnham were introduced, they were never affectionate, communicative, or compassionate with one another. Within their marriage, or anywhere in their lives, both Carolyn and Lester were unable to meet their needs for affiliation and intimacy. Since these needs were not met, they began to seek out other ways to satisfy those needs, such as finding a lover or lusting after an 18 year old. Social isolation is a huge contributor when discussing a lack of affiliation within an individuals life. This social isolation is especially apparent in Lester's life at the beginning of this movie as he explains that the shower is the highlight of his day and his wife and daughter think he is a total idiot. When we first meet Lester he seems to have no real friends or individuals that he is remotely close to, he is very distant, even with his own family.
Another major concept found both in American Beauty and the textbook is autonomy. Autonomy is the physiological desire to be independent and make their own decisions for themselves. Throughout American Beauty it becomes apparent that many of the characters, Lester especially, felt that they needed to do things for themselves. Lester hated his job, and constantly felt unappreciated there, so he quit so that he was allowed to not only make the decision to leave before they fired him, but also because if he was not as his job, he did not have a boss telling him what to do all the time. It becomes apparent that Lester is so dragged down by his inability to be autonomous at the beginning of the movie, until he gradually begins to make his own decisions. During the disastrous family dinner scene and when he discovers his wife with Buddy Kane in the drive through he mentions that he is tired of her telling him what to do and that he will never let her tell him what to do again. It is obvious how desperate Lester became for autonomy that he was willing to go against social constructs and 'destroy' his life when he begins working at the fast food restaurant and smoking pot.

Terms: Intimacy, Affiliation, Social Isolation, Autonomy, Phychological Needs

American Beauty
I first want to start by saying that I had never seen this movie and I thought it was very interesting/ weird. I liked it though. I think this movie portrayed a lot of things that we have covered in the book. I think in the film all the family member, Lester, Jane, and the mother, all had poor expression on how they communicated with each other. I think each of the family members was missing a lot of what people need to be happy, not only internally but externally as well.
I would first like to start with the father Lester. Lester was a man who was living a life that was not fulfilling. He was not meeting his biological need of sex. Sure he masturbated every morning, but Lester was missing the physical and emotion intimacy from another person which caused him to fantasize about his daughter’s friend. Lester was having sexual scripts about his daughter’s friend Angela. This physical intimacy that Lester was longing for became so deficient that Lester began to have an intense psychological drive. His drive gave him very strong motivation that forced him to work out and run to get a better body. Lester had strong intrinsic motivation in the fact that he sought out a challenge to look good and try and get Angela to sleep with him. Lester was also extrinsically motivated because he heard Angela tell his daughter, Jane, that she thinks Lester would be sexy if he just lifted weights and worked out a little. Lester was also missing Autonomy in his life. His wife and his job constantly told him what to do. His wife wanted everyone to believe that their family had the perfect life. Lester snapped in the movie after the game and became volition. He began doing weed, he quit his job, he listened to the music he liked, and he masturbated in the bed next to his wife. Lester’s wife was having a set of issues herself that were causing her to be unhappy in her life.
Along with Lester, Carolyn was very unhappy sexually. Her sexual drive was very low due to the fact that she was so concerned with materialistic things. The one time in the movie that Carolyn and her husband were somewhat physical and showed some emotional intimacy, she let it get pushed aside due to her worrying about Lester spilling his beer on the couch. Carolyn was constantly using Introjected regulation. She would tell herself before she did an open house that she “would sell this house” and when she would cry about a failed sale she would yell at herself to stop. Carolyn also used this in the movie when she was on her way home and kept telling herself to not be the victim. Carolyn also used integrated regulation. You could see this in the movie by how perfect everything had to be with her material things. Her family was the one thing she could not have reflect and be expressed as perfect in her life even though she tried when she went to her realtor dinner and told her husband to act happy. Carolyn was intrinsically motivated and you could tell this by her job. Selling houses is a very tough challenge especially with the completion with realtors. Carolyn even went to lunch with one of the best realtors in the area to learn new techniques to selling homes. Buddy Kane had very similar values as Carolyn which sparked sexual arousal for Carolyn. This shows the difference in Lester’s and Carolyn’s sexual responses. Lester liked looks and whenever he was aroused he would deal with his sexual issue, whereas, Carolyn was aroused by someone who shared similar beliefs and values, even though her husband was working out and getting a better body, that didn’t matter to her. This shows the traditional sex response cycle for Lester and the alternative sex response cycle for Carolyn. Carolyn had many quasi-needs. She needed everything to look perfect, her yard, her house, and her job. If these things were not perfect, Carolyn showed great urgency and attention towards the problem, when all her daughter and husband wanted was for her to show some of the motivation and attention towards then. Carolyn needed affiliation from others and needed their approval. Carolyn had high expectations for success even if it was just having a neighbor tell her that her roses are amazing, that is all the reward and positive feedback Carolyn needed to fill her need to motivate her behavior.
In the movie I think the daughter, Jane, is lucky to have turned out the way she is with both of her parents showing completely different needs in their life. I think this movie was very good for what we have learned and how we can apply it to this movie. I liked how it had a twisted story line and was not boring to watch.
Terms: Expression, biological needs, sex, sex scripts, deficient, psychological drive, motivation, extrinsic motivation, autonomy, volition, introjected regulation, integrated regulation, intrinsic motivation, sexual response, traditional sex response cycle, alternative sex response cycle, quasi-needs, and affiliation

American Beauty, is quite the movie. I’m not sure what all I was expecting, but I have to admit it had some definite turns and twists I didn’t expect to happen. However because of all the twists and turns as an viewer of this movie, I was able to catch some of the psychological needs and social needs of some of the characters. Each character in this movie dealt with some sort of a social need that helped influence them to act a certain way.

The relationship between Jane and Ricky would be considered relatedness towards one another. Both of these two characters seem to be loners, who have parents that aren’t really there for them. Jane’s Dad wants to be, but he’s awkward at trying to get information out of her, while her Mom is out selling homes and pretending to put up this big show for everyone to see that her life and family is sane. While Ricky’s Mom is kind of a strange one who tends to just stare for long periods of time at nothing in particular, and his Dad is a very controlling man who proclaims he’s against gays straight away. But surprisingly at the end of the movie we see him slip a kiss to Lester (Jane’s Father). Here is another example of relatedness, seeing Colonel Fitts coming out of his shell and admitting to Lester by that kiss he’s homosexual. But when Lester backs away and tells him he’s got the wrong idea, that’s when things go sour and by the end of the movie, because Colonel Fitts was so vulnerable in that moment, he let his guard down, but when he got rejected his guard shot way up, and he took matters into his own hands by ending Lester’s life.

I’d like to mention too that both the families all lacked in autonomy, completeness, and relatedness when concerning being together as a whole. Lester’s family especially lacked all three because they were repetitive with the same routine everyday asking the same questions. Never expanding or wanting more information from one another. However, Lester was able to fulfill is autonomy and competence by the end of the movie, because he was able to choose to exercise on his own time and work where he wanted to. He became a happier man in just a few months, because his wife no longer tried to control him. Carolynn, on the other hand showed the social need of power. She always wanted to be in control of her husband, daughter, and daily schedule. She’s a good example of what the book refers to as having “prestige possessions.” These are basically a collection of power symbols, such as her couch. When Lester was trying his hardest to seduce her, she almost fell for it, until she saw his drink that he had been holding, close to spilling on her sofa. And he flat out told her that possessions wouldn’t make her happy.

Another example of the social need of being power hungry with a character would be Colonel Fitss, because he was so demanding and controlling, especially where his son was concerned. He was aggressive with Ricky whenever he disobeyed or got out of line and he tried to persuade him to agree with his own beliefs about gays. His son lacked all three physiological needs because his Father was always on him like a loose cannon. So by the end of the movie, he made up the story that he was a “pimp” and was interested in men, so that his Father would kick him out of the house. Quite frankly, Ricky was 100% okay with that, because is autonomy and competence were able to be fulfilled. He was a free man to do and go wherever he wanted to without his Father trying to downgrade him or hurt him in anyway.

Overall, this movie had many examples of chapter six and seven from our book in it dealing with our needs. I would recommend it to my friends, just because it’s a little out there, yet still captivated me to see what would happen in the end. We knew from the start he was going to die, but the end still came as a little shock to me, with who shot him. You can’t go wrong with Kevin Spacy. He’s a great actor, along with the rest of the crew, it was a movie I enjoyed watching till the credits came on.

American Beauty is a movie I have never seen before, when watching it, I felt like this was a crazy movie. These were not ordinary characters; these characters had a number of problems. At one point I did feel like I was seeing several different stories take place rather than one movie. Carolyn, the main mother, was a real-estate agent, she was high maintenance, and was very focused on her career. After reading chapter seven I would categorize the mother as showing mastery achievement goals. According to the book mastery achievement goals are the person facing the standard of excellence seeks to develop greater competence, makes progress, improve the self and overcome challenges through intense and persistent effort. When the mother is going to the home, that she is selling, and tries so hard to fix it up so it can be purchased, mumbling “I am going to sell this house today,” I think perceives mastery goals. The mother insists she will sell the house today, setting herself a standard, when she does not reach that goal, she loses it. She begins to cry and doubts her ability to do her job. The mother is miserable and therefore is persistent at becoming happy and I think she feels that the only way she will gain the happiness is if she sells a house. Lester, the dad, on the other hand hates his life. He is just unhappy, with his marriage, and job. I feel like the father lacks the psychological needs and throughout the movie he gains them. For example autonomy is having a true choice to make your own decisions, the father seem like he does not have a choice at all in the beginning of the movie. We see the wife making more of the decisions for the home, like what music to listen to at the dinner table, what time to leave in the morning for work, and she is also the primary diver of the vehicle. At his job he was told to write a paragraph stating what he does at his job in order to keep it. The father does not have a feel will to make his own decisions and within the movie, he finally starts to stick up for himself and that is when we see the dramatic change from depressed to happy. It is when the father meets Angela, the friend that sparked his autonomy need. I think Angela has more of an affiliation personality. Affiliation is a need for approval, acceptance and security. Although she has never had sex before she talks like if she has because she wants to fit in. It was said in the movie that the only reason she hung around Jane, the main character, was because she wanted to feel good about herself. The friend spoke like she had no problem, she believed liked when guys drooled over her because she knew that meant she was pretty. When Jane’s dad called her beautiful she was so upset, that she was looking for acceptance, approval and security so she was ready to have sex with him. Ricky, Jane’s boyfriend, and Frank, his father, did not have a supportive motivating style; they had more of a controlling relationship. Frank used a controlling motivating style over his son. A controlling motivating style is one person, Frank, pressures the other, Ricky, toward a prescribed outcome and uses social influence techniques to achieve that targeted socialization outcome. In the scene where Frank goes up to Ricky’s room to beat him for opening his cabinet was surprising. Controlling motivating style people do not explain the importance of engaging of certain activities, so I feel because Frank just beat his son without giving him a proper explanation as to why he could not do that other than he is trying to show him discipline and structure showed some aspects of the controlling motivating style person. Here we have Jane and Ricky coming from two dysfunctional life styles and family. Here I see the relativeness need being filled. These two established close emotional bonds and attachments’ to one other. These two understood what it was like to be unordinary and that is what brought them together. They had a supporting relatedness bond; they cared about each other’s welfare and liked each other. I think my favorite part of the movie is when Ricky went into Jane’s room and said if he were to live to New York would she go with him and she said yes, I think at that moment of the movie is when the audience realized they had a communal relationship, which satisfied their relatedness need.

Terms: Relatedness Need, Communal Relationship, Supporting Relatedness, Controlling Motivation Style, Supporting Motivating Style, Autonomy, Psychological Needs, Affiliation, Achievement, Mastery Goal.

American Beauty is a movie I will not soon forget, not because it was good, but because it was disturbing, the whole way through. It does, however, provide excellent examples of psychological and social needs, and I suppose that’s why it was chosen. It provides a lot of sub-plots, interesting twists, and many other things that make it interesting, like a grotesque study on a very small group of individuals.
There is a definite need for autonomy in the main character Lester. He desires to make his own choices, and no longer be in the roles he has been in for so long. He feels trapped, and wants to escape. His need is evident when he quits his job, trades in the Camry for a Firebird, and tells his wife that he wants to listen to different music during dinner. Lester and his wife, Caroline, are very much on the autonomy-motivated side of parenting, while Ricky’s dad is very much in the controlling motivating style. Ricky’s father takes this almost to an extreme, putting him in military school for smoking weed, as well as the pee tests every six months to make sure he’s clean.
Ricky and Jane’s relationship shows the psychological need for relatedness, as honestly, they are both a little bit strange and considered not ordinary, so they seek each other out. This relationship also works on the social needs of affiliation and intimacy, because they bond to each other, and seem to have a warm, caring relationship, although off-kilter, given their personalities. Talking more about intimacy and affiliation, Lester definitely has none to speak of, and instead is misplacing this social need onto a teenage girl his daughter is friends with, Angela. Caroline seeks out her need for these social needs with Kane, the realtor. Lester, Jane, and Caroline all seem to have pretty low levels of intimacy between them. There seems to be a level of intimacy between Ricky and his mother, but none for his dad, Frank.
The social need of power is also portrayed in this movie. Lester feels like he has no power over his life, and therefore begins to take drastic actions to gain some power back, using the same examples I used above for autonomy, plus beginning to work out and smoke weed (which I feel like isn’t something people who smoke weed do… Don’t they just sit around, or is that just That 70’s Show?), all in an act to gain some power over his life. He also begins to rebel against his wife and her wishes. Caroline begins going to the shooting range, to try and get some sense of power in her life, as things begin to crash about around her. And finally, Frank is the biggest example of the need for power in this movie, as he attempts to control everything his son does, as well as prevent him from turning gay, as he believes that’s something that is biological, and can’t be helped, and he obviously struggles with his own homosexuality all throughout the movie. He resorts to verbal and physical violence against Ricky when things don’t go his way. His character is almost totally consistent in his aggressiveness the whole time.
The social need for affiliation kind of goes out the window in this movie, but Caroline wishes to please her clients, as well as put on a good persona. Angela tries to achieve this social need as well, by portraying her role as a slut, when in reality, she’s never had sex. But because people perceive her as slutty by the way she looks, and because she has found a niche in that way, with her fear of being ‘ordinary,’ she keeps up the persona in a delusional way of pleasing others, because they choose to view her as such.
The need for achievement is noted all throughout this movie. Caroline wishes to become a great realtor, and makes her house look beautiful and listens to Kane, and tries to be a high-achiever. This also shows the desire for competence. However, when that fails, she experiences anxiety and goes through a breakdown. Angela wishes to become a model, and so she strives to be different and unique, although she does look like a typical blonde bombshell. Lester wishes to have sexual relations with Angela, and when he overhears her talking about how he would be sexy if he built up his chest and arms, begins working out and running to lose weight and impress her.
Terms: Psychological needs, social needs, intimacy, power, achievement, affiliation, high-achiever, relatedness, autonomy, aggressiveness, competence

Psychological needs and social needs are both prevalent in the movie American Beauty. From the husbands needs to be heard and recognized in his family, to the power hungry wife, all the characters showed the lack of or abundance of psychological and social needs.

There were two main characters and their social needs in this movie that really stood out to me and that I would life to focus on in this discussion. The first was the husband/ father in movie, Lester. Social needs are acquired through many different facets, whether it be through experience, socialization or development, these needs activate emotions and behaviors that are activated by particular situational incentives. From the beginning of the movie, Lester seems to be dealing with the need for affiliation and intimacy. Affiliation and intimacy needs is when a person establishes, maintains, or restores a positive and affective relationship with other people. Because he is no longer connecting with his wife, and after a failed attempt to reconnect with his daughter, he is left with the feeling that he is seen as a nothing to his family, and is seeking a source to fulfill his need for affiliation and intimacy. When he meets his daughters friend Angela, he feels the need to connect with her in order to meet his needs of affiliation and intimacy. Along with his high need for intimacy, Lester also seems to be experiencing a need for power. Need for power is the desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it (Reeve 195). At the beginning of the movie he is submissive not only to his power hungry wife, but also in his place of work. It isn’t until he quits his job, that he gets a sense of power from his place of employment by blackmailing his boss for a years salary upon leaving the position and the scene at dinner when he gains a sense of power by throwing a tantrum in front of his wife and daughter creating a demanding presence amongst them.

The second character that displayed a high social need of power and achievement was the wife/ mother, Carolyn. As mentioned earlier, the social need for power is the desire to the world around you conform to your personal image or plan for it. Individuals with high needs of power establish power, control, allows individuals to maintain power, and influence which allows individuals to expand and restore power. This need for power often is centered around the need to be in control of situations, status, or position. Carolyn displays these needs for power throughout the movie. Being a local real estate agent, she has the need for power to be the best. In the scene where she is trying to sell a home, she sits there and tells herself “I am going to sell this house today” over and over again. She is constantly admiring the so called “King” of real estate in her area for his success and power when it comes to selling homes. She also displays a need for achievement in her work to be the best. Need for achievement is defined as the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. She wants to be the best there is when it comes to real estate which also leads to her envy to the other real estate agents in here area and to beat the standard in house selling that has been set by them. Her need for power also extends to her home life where she is in control of nearly every aspect from her husband and daughters lives, the music they listen to at dinner time, and having a control of her and her husbands sex life, she holds the power in all of these areas. It is even possible that after her husband Lester finds out about the marital affair she is having with another powerful real estate agent and the threat of loosing all her power in a divorce is what leads her to the thought that she would rather kill her husband that risk loosing the power and control that she already has. I also feel that she has a high need for intimacy in the fact that she and her husband are no longer what they used to be, thus she begins to have an affair with another real estate agent to fulfill her needs.

Terms: Intamacy and affiliation, power, Social Needs.

Every time I watch this movie, I forget how stunning the first thirty seconds are. From Jane's statement to the shower scene it's one hammer blow after another showing exactly how wrong the home is. They just keep on coming too.

One of the most striking scenes of the movie, and one of the most defining for Carolyn. She's polishing up the house and chanting again and again that she will sell the house. When she fails, she closes the curtain, weeps and starts screaming, insulting and hitting herself. The exact words are “Shut up! Stop it you weak you baby Shut up!” And once she's done with her meltdown she arranges herself and calmly walks away.

Carolyn among her many other rules defines herself by her job. She ties her Self-Worth to her success in her job as a realtor. It isn't uncommon to have self-esteem influenced by one's job, but this scene shows the danger in pulling self-worth from just outside sources. It's reasonable to expect that the self-worth varies from day to day, situation to situation but Carolyn has low bar for self-esteem to start. The way she reacts to tears as a form of weakness and so negatively. For whatever reason, she feels she has to succeed even though there's no indication of her house being at stake or for any real need of the income selling the house would generate. It seems to be partially a matter of wanting to achieve, let alone to have the income boost the commission would provide. Something is making the woman feel worthless without some sort of achievement to laud as her own. It’s to the degree that she’s easily manipulated by Buddy Kane, the man who has and is everything she wants.

As persuasive as Carolyn might be, as hard as she works, it isn't within her power to sell the house. Someone else has to take interest and choose to buy it. It's a step that no one takes lightly and she has a very difficult job in convincing people to buy. It's a job where one might not successfully sell for months leaving a home that is costing them money to sit on the market. It also struck me how odd the reactions of the people walking through the house were. Everybody looked skeptical and put off, but the house itself was gorgeous. The kitchen alone would make me want to buy the house but it’s not enough to have even passing interest on any of the faces of the people brought through the house.

Carolyn’s reaction to guns is likewise interesting. She becomes a gun fanatic after the rush of power of firing and experimenting with her first gun. The rush of power from it is incredibly attractive to her. Something at some point made her feel powerless and when she touches the gun it’s like she found that power that she lost. She clings to it, it becomes her safety and she begins to keep it with her, relying on it as a source of comfort.

I don’t think it was her husband that made her feel worthless and powerless. Carolyn doesn’t react in an appeasing way to Lester Burnham. She takes him for granted and treats him incredibly poorly in the beginning of the movie. It isn’t until he begins to stand up for himself that he begins to contribute to her problem of failing to achieve the American dream.

Angela. There's nothing worse in life than being ordinary. I love Angela as a character. She plays herself like she's willing to do anything and everything, that she has sex all the time. Angela perceives the role of an object of desire to be one of power and she places herself in the role despite how far it is from the truth. She overcompensates sharply from what many would consider the normal promiscuity of a girl her age and is often accused of being a prostitute or whorish. Ultimately this falsehood does affect her relatedness with other people, even Jane.

Her lies are lies we tell ourselves and others, especially at that age. They're more common of males, since men are more likely to claim more sexual partners and laud it as conquests. Women tend toward purity and that's true even of Angela, she speaks very highly of being worshiped from afar. The one time she actually acts to try and lose her virginity it's because Jane took that power as a sex object away by telling her that she was ordinary. The loss of perceived power shakes Angela to her very being.

Angela has no real intimacy. Jane as her closest friend is unaware that Angela is lying about her promiscuity. Without the understanding of her best friend, with no actual sexual partners there aren’t a lot of people she can confide in. We never once see Angela’s parents in the movie and even if we did, one of the themes of this movie is how parents and children don’t understand or really trust each other to understand. All of these things combine to make Angela incredibly fragile emotionally. She had one person that she sort of kind of relied on, Jane but as soon as they fight Angela is a wreck to the point where she lashes out to try and find her power again.

Angela does this by pursuing Lester, a man she knows has fantasized about her, and who in her mind is the epitome of ordinary, an easy mark. Even shaken in her beliefs as she is, it should have been easy. Lester does make her feel powerful. He tells her she’s not only beautiful but the most beautiful and he utterly intends to have sex with her. It’s only at the point where Angela admits she’s a virgin that he changes his mind. It’s not because he doesn’t think she’s beautiful any more. It’s not because he’s not attracted to her any more, it’s because he realizes that it isn’t sex that she needs.

It’s driven home by Angela’s apologies and her tears when she starts crying. Lester responds appropriately. He hugs her and holds her and comforts her. What happens is as intimate, if not more intimate than sex and in many ways more romantic.

Terms

Self-Worth-How high or low one regards themselves.
Relatedness-One’s need to be understood
Power- The social need to have the capability to exert influence.
Achievement- The social need to succeed at behaviors one cares about.
Affiliation- The social need to be approved of by others.
Intimacy- The social need to have fulfilling close relationships with other individuals.

Lust, longing, power, relationships, and morals/values are all ideas that are very prevalent in the movie American Beauty. The movie has many examples or social needs. It showed an American family and their odd and over the top thoughts and feels. I feel that many families do go through some hard times but these people were like the worst of the worst kind of problems and every problem put into one family. The movie starts with an American family, a husband, wife, and a teenage daughter. It is obvious that they are not happy. The husband and wife do not get along and the teen age daughter Jane is suffering because no one really gives her attention. As the movie goes on, crazy events happen and it leads the death of Lester the husband. The question is how did we get there? The social needs are what bring us to that point. The social needs are achievement, affection, intimacy, and power. Most of the characters showed all four.

The need for achievement is very much displayed in Lester. He is a man who is going through a midlife crisis. He feels stuff at work, in a dead end job. His wife and hum are no longer in love or intimate. His wife is also very over powering and he feels weak. He has no feeling of autonomy which is doing what he wants when he wants and how he wants. In the movie to solve the achievement he ends up quitting his desk job and getting a job at a fast food restaurant where there is very little responsibility. Lester has a very low achievement standard. He even says at the beginning of the movie he already feels dead. He quits his job and starts to smoke pot. What starts to drive him the most is when he because infatuated with his daughters high school cheerleader friend Angela. He starts to work out and do everything he can to impress her. This becomes his goal.

I believe for me the most interesting character is Angela. The movie does not give her a background story and yet she is the main driver of the movie. The one the Lester lusts after. She is very attractive and knows it. Yet she is willing to just let an old man take her virginity. She has a need for affection. She is not getting what she needs if she is so willing to be with Lester. Affection is wanting to be around other people. I kept wondering the whole movie if she did not have a father figure in her life and maybe that is why she turned to Lester. All through the movie the audience is lead to think she is a “slut” but at the end she tells Lester that she is a virgin and Lester realizes she’s still just a little girl and even though he had been working the whole movie for this moment he could not go through with it.

The concept of intimacy is lacking so much from the one character to another. The Burnham family just does not talk to each other or get along. They are all looking for intimacy. Lester never really finds it; he has lust but no close personal relationships. His wife finds it in her lover ‘the King’ the man she is having an affair with. Jane finds it in the neighbor boy, Ricky. A relationship is biased on trust, communication, honestly, closeness, and love. These people were lacking this so much, it was depressing. The daughter Jane is the one I kept watching. Ricky is weird, but he loves her and pays attention to her. So she finds a relationship with him. It is a relationship not just biased on sex or lust like her mom and dad are striving for. Also her friend Angela is not a great friend at the intimacy. Angela was all about herself and what was best for her not Jane. A family must support each other and talk to each other and love each other for the feeling of intimacy and belonging. The Burnham family and especially Jane was missing this need so much. Jane is really unhappy and even asks Ricky to kill her father.

Power is the last need that was very apparent all through the movie. The wife Carolyn was very dominating at the beginning and controlled everything. She was a power person at work and at home. Yet at work her home sales company is going down, and she cannot control it. She starts to be even more controlling to Lester who finally snaps and starts telling her what to do. He takes back his autonomy but takes Carol’s in the process. Now Carol is sitting there a control freak in control of nothing with her husband threatening her and even throwing stuff at her. She finally meets a man, King. He is the rival sales man. She is drawn to him and starts an affair with him. He also teaches her about guns and the power they have.

So here we are an angry wife who feels like she has no power, and has a gun. A daughter who is really unhappy, and wants to get out of this mad house. The boyfriend Ricky who has been asked to kill Lester. So who did kill Lester? There is still one every interesting character in the movie, Ricky’s dad, Frank. He is a military man who takes it to the extreme. He has to be in control of everything. He dominated his wife and his son. He hates people who are different and people who are homosexual. Ricky likes to video tape stuff and his father happens to see one where Lester in undressed. He comes to the conclusion that his son Ricky and his neighbor Lester are sleeping together. He storms over next door. Then surprised me, Frank walks up to Lester and kisses him. The entire movie he was so homophobic and really was one himself. Lester turns him down. Frank then kills him so his secret will not get out. Frank is an odd character. His needed power, but had not affection or intimacy for anyone, except for maybe Lester at the end.

Each character was so different and yet so alike in many way. American Beauty showed that people need the social needs. They must have power, achievement, and affection & intimacy. Did I find this movie realistic at all? Not really families can have problems but this was just craziness. It did have good examples about how people need to have people they trust and can be in a relationship with. The four social needs combined is what lead Lester to his death.

Terms; Social needs, drive, power, achievement, affection. Intimacy, autonomy, relationships,

The film American Beauty has a strong correlation with chapters 6 and 7. Many of the characters in this film are lacking some kind of psychological or social need, which eventually leads to a breaking point. The main characters within the film are Lester Burnham (who is seemingly dealing with a midlife crisis), Carolyn Burnham (Lester’s wife who is totally consumed by her career), Jane Burnham (Lester and Carolyn’s only child who plays the role of an angry, insecure, confused teenager), Angela (Jane’s superficial friend who wants to be loved), and Ricky (the troubled neighbor boy who takes interest in Jane).

The first psychological need that was presented in this film that stuck out to me was autonomy, especially in Lester’s case. Lester became extremely fed up with years of leading the same, boring day to day routine. He had no control over what he wanted to do and felt trapped. This caused him to finally reach his breaking point. His need for autonomy fueled him to quit his high paying job and blackmail his boss into giving him a full year’s salary with benefits. He then gets a job at a fast food restaurant because he wanted to have a job with minimal responsibilities. He also traded in his vehicle to get the car he’d always wanted. He did all of these things without consulting anyone, he did them because he wanted to. These are all examples of how the lack of autonomy in his life finally caught up with him, causing him to totally change his lifestyle and start living by his own standards. This seemed to make him happy for the first time in a long time. However, his actions proved to be less beneficial to those around him.

The lack of relatedness and intimacy within the Burnham household was also something that stuck out to me. It was clear that Lester and Carolyn were unhappy with their marriage and had been for quite some time, but either of them was willing to put in any effort to make it better. They both had gotten so caught up in the same boring routine that neglected each other’s needs for relatedness and intimacy. As individuals, we want to be have people in our lives that we can depend on to make ourselves feel good and to make us feel wanted, in this case, Lester and Carolyn were no such thing for each other. An example of this is when Lester sees his daughter’s friend Angela for the first time. He becomes infatuated with her and even has sexual fantasies about her. This is clear indicator that he is lacking any sort of relatedness or intimacy in his life. If these needs were being fulfilled he wouldn’t need to have these fantasies or change his lifestyle (i.e. start working out) for a teenage girl. Another example is when Carolyn seeks affection from her rival in the real estate industry. Her need for relatedness and intimacy is so relevant that she starts having an affair with him because her marriage isn’t satisfying those needs. Jane is also lacking these needs. She can’t relate to her parents and the only friend she has, Angela, isn’t really the best for her and she knows it. She fulfills her needs for relatedness and intimacy by building a relationship with the neighbor boy, Jeff. The two seem to have a lot in common and are both using each other to satisfy their need for relatedness and intimacy because neither of them is receiving it from their home or their peers.

Another social need presented in this film is Carolyn’s need for achievement in regards to her career. Although she able to provide for her family she neglects them by being so wrapped up with her career. The need for achievement was becoming more important than saving her marriage or her relationship with her daughter. She wanted the outside world to believe she was leading the perfect life, but in reality it was far from it. When she wasn’t fulfilling the challenges of her job and her need for achievement wasn’t met, she then became dependent on affiliation. For example, she wanted to be known by the leading real estate salesmen so much that she ended up having an affair with him. By being affiliated with him she thought it would somehow help her achieve, not realizing the problems she was creating for her family.

All in all, this film shows the importance of our psychological and social needs. It also shows what can happen when those needs aren’t being met. The lack of these needs can result in failed marriages, broken homes, and overall lack of happiness and well-being. Therefore, it is important to make sure our needs being met and that we’re fulfilling them in the right ways.

Terms: psychological needs, social needs, autonomy, intimacy, relatedness, achievement, well-being, acquired needs

Personally I feel that “American Beauty” related to the concepts of affiliation and intimacy. This movie shows very clear examples of these social needs with our protagonist, Lester, and the cheerleader, Angela. The movie also shows examples of this with the mother, Carolyn, and the daughter, Jane, but I feel that Lester and Angela provide the best examples of this. Lester is our prime example of someone that has a social need that requires filling. Lester and Carolyn have a broken marriage and a very distant daughter. Lester works for a company that could care less about him, and there is no relief from this even when he goes home to his family. His affiliation needs have not been met for a while. Even Angela makes the comment that Lester “looks like he hasn’t gotten laid in a long time.” This is obviously true; he has no intimacy in his life. The only intimacy he gets is from his daily masturbation at work and in the shower. Lester falls for Jane’s cheerleader friend, Angela, at a basketball game, and his attraction only intensifies as she spends more time with the family.
As for Angela, she comes off as this girl that is so confident and treats sex as no big deal, but towards the end we learn that Angela is actually a virgin and is looking for intimacy and compassion as much as Lester is. Angela shows that she is at a high need for affiliation because she lies to make herself seem more confident. She lies and says she had sex with a photographer to get into a magazine, but she is actually a virgin. Angela quickly eats up Lester’s attention because she is at a high need for intimacy. She says that men always stare at her like they want to have sex with her, but personally I think that Lester was the first man that was actually going to do it. He had a failing marriage and was desperate for attention.
Carolyn shows the need for intimacy when she has an affair with an idol of hers. This idol who calls himself the “King” is someone that Jane has always admired. She does not hesitate to start an intimate relationship. Carolyn is at a high need because she is a struggling real estate agent. She cannot sell houses very well and going home does not help her depression. She finds comfort in the King.
Jane finds affiliation with her new neighbor Ricky who videotapes her, which comes off as creepy at first, but Jane is flattered by it. Lester also finds affiliation with Ricky when the boy wants to sell him pot, but Jane’s relationship is more relevant. Ricky shows Jane the beauty in everything including death. Jane and Ricky feel this affiliation so intensely that Ricky even kills Lester for Jane

Terms: affiliation, intimacy, social needs

American Beauty had many good examples of both psychological needs and social needs. The psychological needs that I found in the movie were autonomy, competence, and a bit of relatedness. The social needs in the movie I noticed were intimacy, power, and a bit of affiliation. I thought that Lester had a strong need for autonomy while Col. Fitts had a strong need for power.
A good example of relatedness is when Lester tries to connect with Jane by discussing his day, but then she pushes him because he had been so distant recently.
There were a few good examples of competence. The first was when Carolyn says "I will sell this house today" over and over. She was motivated by the success of "The King". So she fixes and cleans the house up to make it look presentable. By selling the house, she will fill her need for competence. But in the end she cries because she did not sell the house and did not fill her need for competence. Another goo example of competence is Angela. She likes it when guys she doesn't know stare and drool over her. This makes her think that she has a shot at being a model, therefore she feels that she is competent enough to be a model. Another good example of competence is when Lester overhears Jane and Angela speaking and that Angela said she would have sex with Lester if he worked out. So Lester finds his weights and dumbbells and starts working out. He also jogs with the two neighbors in the mornings. He wants to feel competent enough.
Lester and Carolyn have a need for intimacy. They have not been close to each other for quite some time and it shows. Lester first fantasizes about Angela at the basketball game, when he is sleeping, when he uses the bathroom and even when he is getting food. Carolyn's need for intimacy is when she decides to get close to Buddy ("The King"). She then has sex with him.
There is a bit of affiliation when Carolyn is worried how Lester looks and acts at the dinner party. She keeps telling him what to do and how to act because she is worried how the other people will see them.
Then Lester's autonomy comes out. He smokes pot with Ricky, which opens up his world. He starts being more autonomous and doing what he wants. Such as quitting his job, and even getting a severance package out of after threatening with information he knows that would get the company in trouble. This brings up the need for power which I will discuss next. Then at dinner Lester and Carolyn were arguing at dinner and he discuss what he wants to do at dinner, such as choosing what music to play at dinner.
Then comes power. Throughout the movie, Lester gradually exerts his power. Like at dinner when he throws the plate to regain control of the situation. Then when he uses control of the information at work to get a severance package. Then Col. Fitts has strong need for power. Col. Fitts felt like he needed control at breakfast because when someone rang the doorbell, he didn't know who was coming or if anyone was expecting someone, and felt concerned and out of control. Then when talking to Ricky, he wasn't getting the response that he wanted out of Ricky so he kept going on about it until Ricky agreed with him. Then with the urine samples from Ricky. He has control over Ricky's life by checking on everything of Ricky's. EVen down to his urine. Another bit of power was when Buddy said that shooting a gun makes you feel powerful.
terms: psychological needs, social needs, affiliation, intimacy, power, autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

“American Beauty” is one of my favorite movies. Each character seemed to have some need that they were trying to fulfill throughout the movie. Physiological needs, psychological needs, and social needs were all present in this film.

The physiological need for sex was very visible throughout this movie. Lester was definitely trying to fulfill this need. His need to fulfill this was present at the beginning of the film when he is shown masturbating in the shower. He explains that he and his wife, Carolyn, have not had sex in a very long time and their relationship no longer intimate. Lester started fantasizing about his daughter Jane’s best friend, Angela, when he saw her dance at the high school’s basketball game. He started lifting weights and running to be more physically attractive to Angela. After being turned down for sex by his wife, Lester starts getting intimate with his Angela.

Lester was not the only person who was trying to fulfill the physiological need for sex. His wife Carolyn was also frustrated with her sex life that she started cheating on Lester with another realtor in a motel room. Also, Frank (neighbor and Ricky’s father) was very confused about his sexual orientation. Frank always insulted homosexuals and acted very “manly”. Frank thinks his son, Ricky, is performing sexual acts on Lester and kicks his son out of his house. Once Ricky is out of the house, Frank walks over to Lester’s garage in the cold rain and kisses Lester when he lets him inside his garage. Lester tells Frank that he has the wrong idea about him and Frank walks away very emotional.

The psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness were also visible during this movie. Autonomy is the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one’s behavior. Lester experienced autonomy during this movie. He started doing things that made him happy and was starting to stand up to his wife. Lester quit his job that he hated and got a job at a fast food restaurant. He also started smoking pot with Ricky. He was making all these drastic decisions because those were the things that made him the happiest.

Competence is the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment, and it reflects the desire to exercise one’s capacities and skill and, in doing so, to seek out and master optimal challenges. Carolyn had a high need for competence. She put her job first and was always trying to beat other realtors in the area. Carolyn’s daughter, Jane showed a high level of relatedness with her boyfriend Ricky. Relatedness is the psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people. Jane developed a close relationship with Ricky. They both shared their secrets with each other and became really close. At the end of the film Ricky and Jane were running away together to New York.

Social needs that were seen throughout the movie were the needs for achievement, intimacy and affiliation, and power. The need for achievement was definitely visible in Carolyn. She wanted to be the best at her job and her job basically took over her life. She would get really upset when she didn’t sell a house and she would listen to motivational recorded tapes to try to motivate her to be the best she can be.

Jane showed the need for affiliation and intimacy during the movie. According to the book, people who have a high-need for affiliation interact with others to avoid negative emotions such as fear or disapproval and loneliness. Jane’s best friend Angela was really popular, pretty, and confident. Jane was the complete opposite of her and hated that her dad and Angela were flirting. Jane put up with Angela though because she wanted a friend. It was only when Ricky and her started hanging out that Jane stood up to Angela and told her that she didn’t like her.

The need for power was very high in Frank. Frank was the man of the house and he had complete control over his wife and son. His family was scared of him and he enjoyed that. He showed off his power by always bragging about his military history and getting psychical with his son. After he kissed Lester he felt like he lost some of his power so to gain all that power back he shot and killed Lester.

Terms: Physiological needs, psychological needs, social needs, intimacy, sexual orientation, autonomy, relatedness, competence, power, achievement, affiliation and intimacy.

I had never even heard of this movie before, and it was quite interesting! Such a strange movie but yet was very intriguing to me in a psychological sense. There were many concepts from chapter six and seven throughout this movie as well and many had to do with psychological needs.

The first aspect of this movie that was pointed out to me was the lack of autonomy for Lester. He seems to be trapped in his work and home life with no escape. This seems to be the driving force as to what makes him go crazy and do the things he does. When he snaps, he yells at his wife and becomes very bitter and antagonizing. He later yells at his daughter and throws a plate against the wall when he is trying to talk and gets interrupted by his wife. The things he does have control over (masturbating, lifting weights, daydreams) all become important to him and he does these things often. It looks like he has a sense of happiness or control when he does these things. When this psychological need overcomes him he just snaps and decides to take complete control over EVERYTHING in his life. He goes into his job and quits, but he doesn’t do it in a normal professional way. Instead, he seems to go a little bit crazy and he blackmails his boss for 60,000 dollars. He doesn’t talk to his wife about his lack of control but instead he yells at her and Janie and loses his patience. He finds this psychological need of autonomy by taking over his life completely. Among these things it appears that competency is also at jeopardy. Lester doesn’t feel competent in his work and in his family life because of this lack of autonomy. I believe this is a driving force behind his strange gestures as well. He lifts weights so he feels more competent and more satisfied in his looks for others. I didn’t really understand the whole working at the fast food restaurant thing, but that probably satisfied his need for competence as well. He chose the easiest job and was most likely good at it, so he felt competent in what he was doing.

The second thing I noticed was that there was no intimacy or attachment in Lester’s life. His daughter doesn’t like him so it seems and his wife doesn’t pay him any attention at all anymore either. This leads to a lack of the psychological need for relatedness. This lack of relatedness and affiliation caused him not to be able to function properly because his needs are not met. It leads to the mental breakdown he has throughout the entire film. For example, he becomes angry at work because of his lack of relatedness. He becomes attracted to Janie’s friend Angela which may not have occurred had he had some intimacy in his own personal life. The need for intimacy and relatedness is the driving force behind his weightlifting and working out. His need for intimacy believes that he has a chance with Angela even though he is married.

These concepts take place in other characters as well. For example, Angela finds competence when guys drool over her because she wants to be a model and this helps her feel that she is not just an ordinary person. In a sense the boys in her life provide competency for her. Ricky’s family is also experiencing the lack of intimacy and relatedness or affiliation as well. Especially Ricky’s mom. She barely ever said a word and it appeared as though the dad did not pay any attention to her at all. She had a huge lack of relatedness in her life as did Ricky and the dad. The family was not a close-knit family and that can affect a person greatly.

Terms: autonomy, psychological need, competency, relatedness, intimacy, affiliation, drive

American beauty was a ...good movie. Just a little difficult for me to watch at times. I may go ahead and take use the specific examples of the situations from the film that did in fact make me uncomfortable and I will apply those to terms from the chapters. The situation between the Frank and Ricky is one that really disturbs me. it was especially difficult to watch Ricky get beaten in the scene when his father finds his video tapes. One of the psychological needs we can see that exists in this scene is the need for competence. Ricky's father wants him to be just like him so that he can fit in and be someone that he can be proud of. You get the sense that Ricky almost wants that to, but even more than that he wants to find a way out and escape his father, and so he does. With Lester, we can see psychological needs in many forms. For one, his psychological need of intimacy is very important to him. Just in the beginning of the movie we see him masturbating in the shower, and begin to have a clue as to what might be missing in his life. He often fantasizes about his daughter's young friend and tries to get to know her and impress her more by working out. Although a successful way to achieve intimacy is to put yourself in a situation where you do not have a high chance of rejection, in this case, being shut down by a high school-er is pretty likely for Lester. Lester's daughter, played by Thora Birch, seems to have incredibly low self-esteem, and for awhile it seems to go unnoticed or recognized by her family. She seems to not lack the want for social needs but doesn't necessarily have them. She has a beautiful best friend but is in her "shadow" and it is hard to come into your own when you are constantly comparing yourself to other people. Social needs arise when need-satisfying incentives appear, in this case, that would be when Ricky ask her to run away with him, shortly before her family and life turns into complete chaos.
Rick's father seems to also be stuggling with the needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. He is so angry and abusive when he thinks that his son might be gay, and we don't even realize till the end of the movie when Frank tries to kiss Lester where so many of his issues must have come from. He spent much of his life in the military, where he formed a certain lifestyle and related to people in that way. Now that he is out he doesn't really have anyone to relate to in these ways. He knows that he is gay and he rejects his wife, someone that would be a great way to help him fulfill a lot of these needs. And because he is holding a secret that he feels could damage him personally, he beats his son for believing that he is gay. Perhaps to save him from what he is going through, perhaps because he is jealous. We don't really know. He wants to be competent as a colonel and for him that means you cannot be gay.

terms: relatedness, autonomy, competence, intimacy, self-esteem, social needs