This movie has concepts from Chapters 14. Though as usual, you can also remark on other concepts from other chapters.
Your
comment does not need to provide an overview of the movie (we have all seen
it). Your comment should be an in-depth analysis of one or
more principles from your text. You should use scenes and characters to provide
examples of textbook concepts. Your comment should reflect that you are in an
upper division, university level Motivation and Emotion course and clearly link
elements from the movie to the textbook. This is a comprehensive
assignment (linking course lectures, textbook, and the movie) and you cannot do
that in just a few short paragraphs.
BE
SPECIFIC. At the bottom of your comment, please put a list of the ME terms you
used.
500 words
The movie was based on several reporters all who are looking into a case against the church having to do with sexual assault. There are many people who don’t believe they should be doing and try to convince them to stop. The main reporter doesn’t want to give up though and believes that there is a story to be found. Based on this we could infer he has an unconscious motivation to crack this case and inform the public.
For years, the globe had failed to report on all the sexual assaults committed by priests even though they had all the information necessary to do so. You figure out later on in the movie that Robby failed to follow up on a report when given the information about twenty priests. Until the article had been brought to Robby’s attention it was as if he completely suppressed the memory. This could have been because he had failed to follow up which resulted in many other sexual acts taking place. This could help to explain why Robby had such a desire to keep digging even when they had enough information to publish an article. He had this unfulfilled wish to right the mistake he had made many years ago.
Adaptive unconscious had to do with performing routine activities well but it also has to do with judgments one makes and how they turn out to be right. Every time they go to meet the lawyer they feel as though he is hiding something and not being honest about every thing he knows. Eventually he comes out saying he knows of at least twenty priests and possibly more that have committed sexual acts.
I also want to talk about how the ego comes into play with the victims and even with one of the priests. The ego is meant to defend us against our anxieties. There are several different defense mechanisms that help us to do this. First I want to talk about the priest who seemed to be able to rationalize to himself how the molestation was acceptable because he never received pleasure from it an intercourse was never performed. While being interviewed he just kept talking about how it was okay and he gained nothing from it. This was how is ego was able to defend him against the emotions he may have felt about what he did otherwise. Phil was also an example of a defense mechanism helping him to deal with what happened to him. He was able to use reaction formation to help him reach out to the Globe. He turned his embarrassment into a fuel that made him want to help all of the others who had gone through what he had. Instead of being a victim he wanted to become an advocate and voice for all of those who had been victimized by priests in the past. Denial also comes into play with the Catholic Church as a whole. They seemed to know that it was an issue but instead of addressing it simply found ways to avoid having to deal with it. By making deals under the table and moving the priests around and putting in things such as “sick leave” to say why they left a parish they were able to deny that anything was happening to the kids.
Terms:
Unconscious motivation
Desire
Unfulfilled wish
Adaptive unconscious
Suppression
Ego
Defense mechanisms
Rationalization
Reaction formation
Denial
The film Spotlight covered a team of reporters from the Boston Globe who decide to break open a case of systematic burying of sexual misconduct by the Catholic Church and its priests. They are forced to talk to many victims and priests themselves, and spend countless hours going through documents containing horrible information. They eventually gather enough information to publish the story and bring knowledge to everyone about what was happening. The cardinal was promoted, and though nothing major happened, it was a major disgrace to the church.
One thing I noticed that related to the chapter was the relation of unconscious motivation and the Spotlight group. They did not have to be investigating, they could be reporting like everyone else but they decided to wait for the big fish because their motivations were to make a difference. Their unconscious motivation was to succeed at their jobs, and put the effort in, not just show up. Several times in the movie people asked them if their family enjoyed them working so much, and each time they said their family thought they worked too hard.
Another part of the chapter that related to the movie was adaptive unconscious. This is our sense of autopilot, or how we act in our natural environment. Most of the time when they were talking about what they were needing for procedural steps in their journalist environment made no sense to me. I could get the idea, but they were all on the same page because their unconscious had adapted to work there. An example in my life would be surviving day to day in college, which was different from high school. This was different from middle school and so on. We adapt to our environment, and we can operate without having to think about it.
Another big part of the film was the ego and how they managed their own at the paper. They must have strong defense mechanisms to take criticisms of their articles or from trying to gather information. They were going into unfamiliar situations, and sometimes getting yelled at. Strong ego development means they are able to take this all in stride, and continue through their day without having a meltdown. Another part of ego development is how much horrifying info they must have gone through when looking through records. They knew these people were getting away with it, and the people who were supposed to be the most virtuous were the ones sweeping it under the rug. A person with a weak ego development would have been hard to contain their emotions, and see the big picture. Without proper development it would have been easy to go to the police, or take matters into their own hands.
This movie had lots of unconscious motivations, from both the reporters, the people, and the church. The reporters had the motivations to do their best work when they found out, the people had the motivation to justify the actions and say it was ‘just a few bad apples,’ and the church had the motivation to cover it up because it would look bad on them. There are so many things that go into unconscious motivations, it is hard to see what all goes into them, but clearly it is at least how the person was raised, how they are feeling, what their desires are, and how well they can control them.
Terms:
Unconscious motivation
Adaptive unconscious
Ego
Ego development
Defense mechanisms
Desires
Spotlight is a movie about a group or reporters who are trying to cover a series of sexual assault that has been occuring in a Catholic Church. People in the community were trying to get these reporters to stop investigating the church. These reporters continued anyways and proceeded to talk to different victims and priests within the church. They were finally able to gather enough information about the misconduct to post the story. There was nothing significant that came out of the story, but there was large amount of embarrassment that came along with the story being published. The reporters ultimately won a pulitzer prize on what they found on the church.
An interesting thing to me in regards to the movie and the chapter was the idea of adaptive unconscious. The reporters had adapted to always looking for a story no matter what the circumstances. It has also allowed them to be able to suspect lies as well. An example of this could be when the reporters were talking to the lawyer. They had a hunch that the lawyer was lying or withholding information from them and after doing some digging and pushing, they found out that their intuitions were right. These intuitions come from past experiences. The more they had assumed someone was lying and been found to be right, the more their adaptive unconscious created motivation to try to support their theory. Sometimes adaptive unconscious is known as our own version of autopilot. The goal of reporting I believe is to find the truth and report interesting but factual findings. The reporters were interested in the church and what was happening inside of its walls, and they were going to find the truth. I would argue that this was going to happen regardless of what the community wanted them to search for or not. The reporters were on autopilot and were going to do their job regardless.
Another thing that I noticed was when the priest tried to reason with himself and those talking to him that what he had done was not molestation. His reasoning that it was not molestation was because there was not intercourse, nor did he receive any “pleasure” from these acts. As awful as this is to think about, I believe there is an unconscious motivation as to why he may have stated this. The priest’s ego played the role of a defense mechanism. I believe the ego caused him to repress what he really did wrong as he was afraid to face the consequences of what he had really done, as he knew that not only would it be disgraceful to him or the church, but it could also lead to legal consequences as well.
I think that you could make an argument that every movie has a significant amount of unconscious motivation, but this one did a good job of providing clear examples for us to relate to class, while also being a very entertaining movie, especially as a catholic who had heard about this in the past.
Adaptive Unconscious
Ego
Defense Mechanism
Unconscious Motivation
Repression
The movie Spotlight features a group of employees from the Boston Globe (a newspaper company in Boston). With the emergence of the internet and the continuing competition from other news sources, the group needed a big story. Within the larger group of employees was a small, exclusive group called the Spotlight. This group worked on specific projects that would take more time and effort than the day-to-day news. The group has different reasons for trying to finish the story that they start. Spotlight discovers a lead that involves the Catholic Church and the priests. There were many people who were trying to suppress the bad memories of the priests that molested children. What motivated the Spotlight group can be subjective, but the producers of the film seemed to be alluding one way or another.
Implicit motivations are linked to emotions and include all the motivations that take place outside of the conscious mind. An example would come from when one of the characters, Matt, was trying to convince the Spotlight group to go ahead and write the article based on the fourteen cases. The group didn’t think they had enough evidence, but Matt was very passionate. Matt used to love going to church with his family. After he stopped, he hadn’t been back. He was seen at the church later in the film. I would guess that he has implicit motivation to make the church a safe environment for everyone so that he can go back with a clean conscious. During times when he feels this way, he feels the adrenaline and gets sweaty. He shows this by being verbally belligerent towards the group. He seems very passionate about helping the kids, or maybe he is passionate about his work. The implicit motivation (in his unconscious) that deals with achievement in this situation could be due to his desire to get back to church (selfishly). There could be many reasons for his passion, but the filmmakers hint towards this idea. If we wanted to be more sure, an indirect method would need to be used.
Explicit motivations are motivations that are connected to values and are located in the conscious. These motivations are easy to locate because they are involved in our everyday thought process. Values are beliefs are a part of explicit motivations and therefore, can be seen many times in the film. Every time a priest molesting a child is mentioned, all of the members get visually upset; this action is obviously against their beliefs (whether the person doing the action is wrong or the action itself is seen as vulgar is up for interpretation). Some members were more upset about the priests getting away with it (Eric Macleish- the attorney for the survivors of sexual abuse when he is talking to the members of the group about the documents that he had sent them before) and some members were more upset with the act itself (Eileen- the female columnist for the Boston Globe gets visibly upset when she meets with one of the many survivors at the park).
The third type of motivation that is discussed is subliminal motivation. This kind of motivation occurs when a stimulus occurs for a very short amount of time. Most often, these messages do not make their way into the conscious mind because they are so quick or weak, but they still have the ability to impact behaviors. Although research has shown subliminal messages to be less effective than originally depicted in early studies, it can still have an effect. In the film, the Boston Globe prints newspapers. They want people to buy and read their papers (online or otherwise). To do so, outside of the movie itself, they would want to include advertisements that would draw in the readers. Examples would include quick billboards that flash “The Boston Globe” or “Read all about it.” Some subliminal messages that have been discovered in the film itself include Harpoon IPA beer (in the background of the bar scenes), Papermate pens and notepads (when the reporters are taking notes), and Dell computers (used in the homes of some of the reporters). Like discussed in the chapter, it is very difficult to find motivations that are outside of the conscious mind. The best we can do, and undergraduate psychology students, make our best speculation and provide evidence.
Terms: Supression, Implicit motivations, Explicit motivations, and subliminal motivations
Spotlight is the gripping true story of a “spotlight” newspaper team employed by The Boston Globe. This team, which the film takes its namesake from, is a small group of investigative journalists that research and write articles over a period of several months. On the team is the editor Walter Robinson (“Robby”), a new editor, Marty Baron, and journalist Michael Rezendes. This team catches wind of and pursues a story regarding a pedophilia case involving Father John Geoghan in Boston and the involvement of Cardinal Bernard Law in the ensuing coverup. The team interviews with lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, the only man still claiming Law was involved in the coverup, and eventually uncover a more and more complex system of coverups. Not only did Law help in covering up Geoghan’s crimes, he also was covering up all sexual abuse crimes within the entirety of Massachusetts. Following a brief de-prioritization of the story due to the horrible attack of September 11, 2001, the team gets back onboard with the story, eventually finishing and publishing it. This included the names of most of the reported abusive priests, Law’s involvement, and contact information for those who still have not reported their abuse. The film ends with a little blurb about Law’s retirement from the Boston Archdiocese, and eventual promotion elsewhere in Rome.
For this film, we have been presented with a difficult circumstance for psychological evaluation. We must evaluate this film and its characters based on their unconscious motivations, which is a difficult thing to physically observe from what was presented onscreen, much as it is difficult in real life to read another person’s unconscious motivations. However, I believe I have a very strong argument regarding a character within this film.
The character of focus will be the “Spotlight” editor Walter Robinson (referred to as “Robby” from here on out). The principle that is demonstrated through this character is the theory of psychodynamics (for every will, there is an equal or greater counter-will; “dynamics” between ego and id). Robby is the perfect example of Freud’s “antagonistic battle arena” mind theorem. The reasoning behind this is that, near the end of the film, Robby confesses that he had received a list of twenty confirmed pedophilic priests in 1993 by another lawyer, but never followed up on the story. And it is with this occurrence that Robby’s psychological battle begins.
He is presented with a morally “good” opportunity, to reveal the obviously evil coverup by the Catholic church attempting to save their pure reputation. Obviously, his id (impulsive) will feel a natural drive to immediately research and write this story right away. However, this goes against everything his ego (socially developed; logical) is currently processing. He couldn’t possibly write a story about the Catholic church. They are socially accepted by everyone, and they could simply deny everything he said, and his career would be in shambles. Who is everyone going to trust: Their local priest, or some random Globe journalist? But now that the ego is barring the id, the id fights back. You cannot simply abandon the victims of this heinous sexual crime, it’s perverted and wrong! You are no better than a pedophilic priest if you let this story lay. This conflict causes the most dreaded outcome of Freudian psychology: Anxiety.
Robby would obviously have been feeling this anxiety upon first receiving the opportunity in 1993. The constant back and forth of the ego and id would be keeping him up at night with a continuous inner struggle. However, the ego has a leg up on the id in the form of defense mechanisms. The one that really would apply here is the defense mechanism of suppression. Suppression is the way of removing a thought that is conscious, intentional, and deliberate, and considered a very immature defense mechanism, as it attempts to deny reality. While it never really works in the long-term (always failing/backfiring), it provides temporary relief and is often a quick go-to. So, Robby would be attempting to suppress thinking of the list of priests he was given to avoid that anxious feeling for as long as he possibly could. However, the other side of the suppression coin is that it often causes that suppressed thought to gain strength. As we consciously avoid thinking about the thought (the will) the unconscious (the counter-will) finds and uses this thought to attempt to gain more power over the conscious. This battle, using the film’s timeline, lasted until 2001 and Marty Baron’s reopening of the Geoghan case.
This makes matters worse for poor Robby’s psyche, as he is now presented with an opportunity of redemption. All those unconscious, suppressed thoughts now have backup: Marty Baron. Marty is everything Robby is not, an editor with enough conviction to pursue this story, regardless of the consequences to himself. His id is gaining more and more ammunition as his tired and exhausted ego wanes. His anxiety begins to mount once more, as those unconscious thoughts begin to bubble to the surface. And, according to Freud, anxiety is the main motivator of most conscious action, as we really hate anxiety.
This battle finally ends near the end of the film, when Robby caves in and confesses that he has had the list of priests since 1993. This confession represents the eight-year struggle of Robby’s inner psychodynamics. His ego had held valiantly against the id for such a long time, but as with most immature reality-denying defense mechanisms, the id overcame. With this confession, Robby feels a wave of catharsis, as the anxiety that he kept inside for so long was let out with that confession. Now he has finally undone the wrongs he committed eight years ago. The anxiety, we can assume, dissipates as the story finally gets published in 2002 (unless Robby feels extreme guilt, then the anxiety may continue). But, for now, Robby’s war is done.
Terms Used:
The Unconscious – Pg. 396
Psychodynamics – Pg. 401
Id – Pg. 401
Ego – Pg. 401
Suppression – Pg. 402
Ego Defense Mechanisms – Pg. 406
The movie Spotlight follows a team of reporters on a case regarding sexual misconduct of the priests at a Catholic church. The reporters work for the Boston Globe and spent a great deal of time investigating the documents, the victims, and even the priests. Their time and effort eventually paid off as they gathered enough information to publish the story they had been working on and shine a light on the sexual misconduct happening within the church.
One aspect of the movie that related to the concepts within chapter 14 was the repression of Robby’s memory of not following up years ago on the report of sexual misconduct at the church. In chapter 14, repression is defined as the process of forgetting information or experiences by ways that are unintentional, automatic, and unconscious. Robby’s failure to follow up with the report lead to the continuing sexual misconduct within the church, which can be a distressing experience. This distressing memory within the id of the mind was the suppressed unconsciously as an act of counterforce by the ego of the mind. Robby does not recall this memory until the article brings it to his conscious, which suggests that it was a repressed memory.
Defense mechanisms were another large component of the movie that is also represented in chapter 14. The ego is in control of the defense mechanisms that are used in an attempt to protect the individual and the mind from anxiety and distress. These defense mechanisms can be seen in practice within the movie by the priests and the victims. For example, Phil expresses the defense mechanisms of reaction formation by the way that Phil takes his embarrassment and fear, but turns it into the opposite actions or what he feels. Reaction formation is defined as when an individual adopts or expresses the strong opposite of what they are truly feeling. He is ashamed of what happened to him, but acts in a way opposite of those feelings as he reaches out to the Boston Globe to help bring justice. Another defense mechanism that presents itself in the movie is through the character of the priest who had molested a child. The priest uses rationalization as he defends his actions. Rationalization is defined in the chapter as justifying a disturbing or unacceptable thought or feeling by creating a logical reason to be thinking or feeling that way. He claims that he never had intercourse with the child and never received pleasure, therefore the molestation was acceptable. The final defense mechanism that I will discuss from the movie is denial. Denial is a defense mechanism that is defined as the unpleasant external realities that are ignored or acknowledgment is refused. Everyone within the Catholic church seemed to know about the issue of sexual misconduct among the priests, but no one did anything about it or acknowledged that it was an issue. They found ways to avoid dealing with it such as making secret deals, moving priests from place to place, using “sick leave” as a cover up, and denying that anything happened to the children.
Repression
Unconscious
Conscious
Ego
Id
Reaction formation
Defense mechanisms
Reaction formation
Rationalization
Denial
The movie focused on a group of reporters who wanted to get to the bottom of a sexual scandal involving the church. At the end of the film, the paper ends up running the story that found that the church helped cover up and protect more than 70 priests who were accused of molesting and raping children. Adaptive unconscious was shown in the film. The adaptive unconscious makes judgments and initiates action, all while consciously thinking of other things. This is shown when one victim is explaining how his abuse started. It started with him being chosen to help take out trash, then moved to being told dirty jokes and then being shown porn magazines. A young child knows that it is odd behavior but do not think it is wrong, but they continue to let it happen because they feel special for getting attention.
Defense mechanisms are a big part of the film. The ego acts as the minds defense system; it buffers consciousness against potentially overwhelming levels of anxiety. Repression was not shown in the film but it easily could have. Repression is the process of forgetting information or an experience by ways that are unconscious, unintentional, and automatic. What this would look like is a child being molested a few times as a small child, and then their mind pushes it way back to protect the child from what happened to them. Suppression in the film was pretty much the plot of the movie. Suppression is the process of suppressing the thought after it has already occurred, but in this case, the action. The Boston Globe dug deeper into a story and found that the church had been pushing these cases under the rug. The church intentionally, consciously, and deliberately just covered up any allegations. They even had public records flagged as a way to make it difficult for the public to find. When a priest was accused, the church would just transfer them or mark them as under “sick leave” or a number of other vague excuses.
Denial and rationalization were two defense mechanisms that were portrayed by the accused priests. When Sacha Pfeiffer was going door to door looking to interview individuals in the neighborhood surrounding a local church she had a man slam the door in her face. Whether or not he was a priest is unknown, but the man was angry that she was looking into it. At one of the houses she stopped at, she ended up meeting one of the accused priests and asked him questions, and he admitted to molesting the children. The man made it clear that he did not rape the children; he only molested them and received no gratification from it. He was rationalizing his behavior to make it seem okay and normal.
The church shows the consciousness in this film. The conscious includes all thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, and experiences a person is aware of at any given time. The story that the Spotlight group wrote uncovered the fact that the church did in fact know that there were priests abusing their power, and the church covered for them and even protected them.
Terms: adaptive unconscious, defense mechanisms, ego, repression, suppression, denial, rationalization, conscious
Spotlight is a movie about a news crew the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe. This is a movie based on the true story of how the Boston Globe went about uncovering the case of child molestation and cover up within the local Catholic churches and priests. Chapter Fourteen from Understanding Motivation and Emotion is a chapter all about the Unconscious mind and the motivation behind why we unconsciously think or do things. A lot of of these terms from this chapter are applicable to Spotlight.
The first term from the textbook that I would apply would be psychodynamic perspective. This approach presents a particular image towards our ability to nurture as humans. It also shows that the ultimate cause of motivation and behavior derives from this biological and socially acquired impulse that determines our desires, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. A lot of these motivational impulses of an adult can be traced to events that took place in childhood. An example of this is when the Peiffer the reporter goes to an old catholic priest's house and he admits that he messed around with children but doesn’t see it as rape because he was raped as a child. Since he had this preconceived notion of what rape was since he experienced it as a child, he doesn’t think what he is doing is considered rape because it’s different than what he experienced.
The second term from the textbook that I would apply would be under the Contemporary Psychodynamic Theory. This theory says that there are four key components when defining this psychodynamic theory. These key components are the unconscious, psychodynamic, ego development and object relations theory. The component I will focus on will be psychodynamics. Psychodynamics is this motivational and emotional processes that frequently operate in parallel with one another. People commonly want and fear the same thing at the same time. I would say that this whole movie is an example of Psychodynamics simply because the Spotlight news team is trying to crack this story of the Catholic Priests to make the Boston Globe more well known and have a winning story. But, they are also afraid at finding out the truths in this case and what if they spend all this work and are not the first people to report it. There is this equal passion of fear and of wanting this when it comes to journalism.
The third and final term I want to apply from the text to this movie is Object Relations Theory. This is when stable personality patterns begin to form in our childhood. These patterns get constructed as people construct mental representations of the self and others. Once formed shape enduring patterns of motivation guide the quality of adults interpersonal relationship. A big example for this would be religion. Most religions have guidelines that are very instilled at a young age so that way come judgement day you can be rewarded. This is a pattern of behavior that is conditioned and is a motivation for a lot of people who are religious to act certain ways in relationships and in life in general.
Key Terms
Unconscious Motivation
Psychodynamic Perspective
Contemporary Psychodynamic Theory
Unconsciousness
Objects Relations Theory
Spotlight is a captivatingly true story about a “Spotlight” journalism crew working out of the Boston Globe. With advancements in technology, in particular the internet, it has become harder for journalism to prosper. For this reason the Boston Globe was in search of a big time story in order to make their newspaper relevant again to the public. Once the spotlight crew got hold of a lead on some child abuse scandals within the Catholic Church they had found their break and proceeded to pursue it. Not only did this story provide incentive in the form of recognition, it also had a strong moral purpose to it that drove the journalists to publish this story. This crew pays homage to long-form journalism by publishing an extensive story on the Catholic Church’s systematic abuse of children.
I’d like to start this post off by touching on Freud’s concepts of the id and the ego and their seemingly constant conflict with one another. Id is known as being the instinctual portion of our unconscious mind and the ego is based more on reality and rationalization. I’ll apply these two concepts to the main character Robby. Robby’s id is telling him to go ahead and write up the crazy story on the Catholic Church’s child abuse scandal. It’ll be a huge story for the Boston Globe and many lives will be saved along the way. Robby’s ego chimes in and makes him think about all of the backlash this story will receive and how difficult it will be to fight the Church in the press and in court. Robby is also trying to uphold his reputation as a journalist by not opposing the thoughts and recommendations of his peers. These two unconscious categories battle it out over the entirety of the film, with the id ultimately coming out as the victor in the end as the story is published.
I’d like to relate Robby’s dilemma to the wish model provided in Chapter 14 of our textbook. The wish model claims that the awareness an individual has of their present self, during various situations, allows for them to think of an ideal self that better fits the situation that they find themselves in. I felt that Robby was in a sort of “wish state” for the majority of the film. He was aware of the large levels of discomfort he was experiencing due to him knowing about his past action of hiding the list of priests back in 1983. Acknowledgment of his currently undesirable state led to Robby creating a more ideal version of himself in his own mind. This vision of a more ideal version of himself provided motivational incentive, likely in the form of large amounts of anxiety, that pushed Robby to telling his co-workers that he had been responsible for why this abuse story hadn’t been published years ago. Robby’s present self was hiding his secret and his ideal self had confessed.
Robby suppressing the knowledge of his wrong doing for a very long period of time brought with it some side effects. Suppression is the process by which someone removes a thought by ways that are conscious, intentional, and deliberate. This is exactly what Robby was doing over the course of the film. There is an interesting paradox when it comes to suppression of thoughts. When an individual suppresses a perceptively meaningful thought for an extended period of time, the result is not banishment of the thought, rather a rebounding obsession of the thought that preoccupies the conscious mind. This preoccupation is apparent in Spotlight whenever Robby is faced with making decisions regarding the developing story. When he could have made a swift action and published the story right after Mike Rezendes got his hands on the sealed documents he hesitated and said no. Robby was preoccupied with the thought of having to break his silence and tell his coworkers that he had been responsible for this stories cover up years ago. If that thought had not been at the forefront of his mind then he would have without a doubt gave the go ahead to publish the story and let the public know of this sick crime done at the hands of the Catholic Church. Suppression can lead to obsession.
...
Terms Used:
Wish Model
Ideal Self
Present Self
Suppression
The Rebound Effect
Id
Ego
The film focuses on a team of reporters from The Boston Globe who are investigating a sexual assault case against the priests of the Catholic Church. Through this investigation, they interview and interrogate many victims and the priests as well as reading through documents in order to find enough information to publish an article.
The children that were sexually assaulted by the priests will probably use suppression to try and forget what they went through. Every time their conscious begins to think about what the priest did to them, they will probably try even harder not to think about it. The children will rely on suppression to gain self-control over the pain and fear caused by the assault. However, these thoughts can also turn into obsessions if they try not to think about it too much because by trying not to think about it, they are thinking about it more.
The Freudian view of the unconscious would say that the children that were sexually assaulted by the priest will have issues later in life that is held in their unconscious. Repression was a central concept according to Freud. The investigation would be difficult if they were to involve the children because if they have already repressed the situation, they may not remember every detail that the police need in order to convict the priest. Some defense mechanisms that children may use include denial, displacement, regression, reaction formation, or humor.
As far as the researchers go, I think they show implicit motivation. They are all emotionally involved in this case and are motivated to release the most accurate and in depth story about the sexual assault crimes committed by the priests. Even though their motives and emotions about releasing the most accurate story is clear in the film, these concepts stem from their unconscious self-report motives and emotions. The whole team is working to fulfill their needs for achievement, affiliation, and power. The need for achievement is shown because they need to have the best, most accurate story on the topic. The team will be proud to affiliate with the article that comes out about this case because they know they did the most research that they possibly could and met their goal of having the first, most in depth story about the sexual abuse from the priests. Once the story is released, I think the team felt powerful and proud of their efforts and goals during this project. They probably also felt they had power over the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, as they knew that he was aware of the sexual abuse happening among the Catholic Priests and did nothing to stop it. People could easily connect to this story through implicit motivation because of the emotional associations. These events were local and happening in their environment.
According to the psychoanalysis approach, the priests’ behavior or sexually assaulting children is determined biological and social impulses. Maybe sexually abusing children is a social norm among priests, which can be socially acquired by watching the behavior of other priests. These impulses determine the desires and behaviors of the priests.
Terms:
Unconscious, suppression, repression, conscious, defense mechanisms, denial, displacement, regression, reaction formation, humor, implicit motivation, achievement, affiliation, power, psychoanalysis
Spotlight follows the Boston Globe’s special investigative team, Spotlight, as they uncover the massive coverup of sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic church. One member of the team, Mike, becomes very emotionally invested in the investigation. He begins to operate under implicit motivation. In one scene, he explains to Sacha that the church was a comforting place for him as a child and something he believed he would always come back to. For him, the church holds positive emotional experiences. As he digs further into the investigation, the evidence conflicts with his emotional representation of the church and he becomes conflict as a result, causing him to lash out at his boss and coworkers. Throughout the investigation, various people tell the Spotlight team that they have previously sent the information to the Globe years prior. Robby, the reporter at the time, has no knowledge of the tips. As more and more distressing details come to light, Robby does not remember any of it from before. He repressed any knowledge of the tips because of the anxiety he suffered as a result of not following up on them which could have potentially saved lives. The ego repressed the memories, so Robby would not have to suffer with the knowledge that little children were suffering, and he did nothing to help them.
Many people in the movie use defense mechanisms to deal with the stress of the abuse and the knowledge of the abuse. One clear picture of the defense mechanism rationalization is when Sacha visits the retired priest. Although he openly admits to abusing the children, he rationalizes by stating that even though he did it, he never got pleasure from what he was doing. He also rationalized by saying that he never raped them which therefore diminishes his actions. He justified his actions with this twisted logic and that allowed him to reduce his anxiety over the matter instead of facing reality that what he had done was horrible. One of the lawyers who helped the church settle cases also engaged in rationalization. He justified keeping the cases quiet by saying it was his job. The church itself engaged in a large amount of denial. Rather than face the reality that they had created an environment in which predators could thrive in, they just denied any of it took place in the first place and would quietly settle victims’ complaints in private rather than in court. Many others involved also just denied the existence of the acts and choose to cover them up to reduce their anxiety. Many of the victims coped with reaction formation. Phil and Joe both acted as if everything was fine and they had not suffered from abuse. They used the outward appearance of being strong to hide the emotional trauma the priests had burdened them with at such an early age.
Terms: Implicit motivation, rationalization, defense mechanism, denial, reaction formation, repression
Spotlight is a good movie to use to help tie together “real-life” examples with concepts about the unconscious motivation from chapter 14. Chapter 14 talked about how most thoughts and motivations come to us in our subconscious. We make up these ideas of how we should view everything in the world in our childhood and this gets kept in our subconscious and we use it as a comparing tool as adults. Some of the feelings, thoughts and motivations that we have come from previous experiences. When we are experiencing something we subconsciously look back to previous memories for how we should react to this current situation. Even with this, we still have feelings that conflict with one another;
The first situation that I will talk about ties into thoughts and motivation happening on a subconscious level. A perfect example of this would be when the team members from The Boston Globe were on the phone with _______. _______told them that throughout his research he has found that a lot of these priests are psychosexually stunted to the age of a 12 or 13-year-old. This makes a little more sense as to why the priests go after the age group that they do. I do not believe that they sat around and consciously make the decision to be attracted to and wanting to abuse little boys. I believe that it just happened. This is a good Segway into the next topic from chapter 14 which is that children observe things around them growing up and this puts ideas into their heads of how they view themselves, others, relationships, etc. An example of this is also the priests being psychosexually stunted to the age of a 12 or 13-year-old. These priests are men that have grown up through the Catholic church. I would put money on most if not all of the priests that abuse little boys were abused when they were the same age. Because of this abuse, it stunted their sexuality. Another example of this could be when one of the team members at The Boston Globe went and interviewed a priest by the name of ______. This was one of the priests that was listed as a potential abuser. When she was asking him about it he admitted to molesting these little boys while he was an active priest, but he said that he did not get any pleasure from it. He himself was raped when he was just a little boy in the church. This caused him to have this idea in his head that priests molesting little boys is just something that happens. As if it was part of the requirements in order to be a priest. Another thing that chapter 14 talked about was that humans have feelings that conflict with one another. A perfect example of this is when The Boston Globe team member realized that one of the treatment centers where they send priests that have been caught molesting little boys was just down the block from his house. He went to his boss and told him that he was having some conflicting feelings because he knows that the work that they do for The Globe was confidential, but his neighbors have children of their own and he feels like he needs to warn his neighbors about the men that are living inside of the treatment center. The last thing that I will discuss is adaptive thoughts and motivation. This is where we subconsciously search through past memories and emotions to try and match up what the appropriate emotion is for each specific situation. An example of this from the movie would be when The Boston Globe realized that there could be as many as 87 priests in Boston that have been abusing little boys. The team members had no idea how to react when they realized this. You could see the look on their faces of shock. They had never been in a situation like this before so no matter how hard their brain tried to match up emotions to a situation like this they could not. They were left speechless more or less.
Key Terms:
Unconscious motivation, subconscious, adaptive thoughts and motivation, emotions
Spotlight is a movie that is based off of a group of journalist who are working for a newspaper for the Boston Globe. This group of journalist are working together to write a piece about allegations on the Catholic church. The Catholic church has covered up for the priest performing sexual activities with young boys of the church. This has been covered up by many people, and the film takes the viewer through the process to get this crime exposed to the world. Chapter 14 focuses a lot on the Id, Ego, and Superego and I believe these areas can relate to the Spotlight. The Id initiates drives, including pleasure, aggression, and does not respond to morality. This can be used to describe the priest who were taking advantage of young boys in the church. The priest initiated drive by fulfilling their pleasure with young boys and this was not responding to their morality. One big idea that I think proves this is that the men are priest at a church, so this is completely immoral for them to do, yet they are still doing it. Next is the Ego, and this is the one who will negotiate between the Id, Superego, and social norms, I think that the Ego is what the victims used because they deal with reality by environmental demands. It is not common for someone to speak out about something like this, and the environment tells the victim to use defense mechanisms. Superego is the internal moral and belief system and I believe this is being shown by the journalist in Spotlight. Through the film it is clear that these individuals feel strongly on what they’re writing about because they morally know what is happening is wrong.
I think that multiple defense mechanisms were used in this movie. Denial can be found in the priest as well as the victim’s parents. This is when one convinces oneself that a traumatic event did not occur, was not their fault, or is not so bad. This is denial because they are minimizing the severity of this problem. Reaction formation was shown by one of the priest in the film when they were likely giving sermons on purity, while they are performing sexual desires on young boys. This is reaction formation because they’re acting in exact opposite behavior than what they claim to believe. Lastly, I saw rationalization when one of the priest being interview was explaining why it was okay for him to do what he did to these young boys.
Unconscious motivation is shown many times through this film as well. I think that one reason why many of these journalist are invested in this article was because they grew up in a Catholic church, and it is unconsciously important to them because of this. I think that the priest discussed earlier, who tried to rationalize why what he did was okay, is also because of unconscious motivation. He talks about how he was raped as a child and this is why he touches the boys differently. This can show an unconscious motivation behind what he was doing. Overall this was a very good film, and had many aspects from our chapter found within it.
TERMS:
Id
Ego
Superego
Drive
Pleasure
Aggression
Morality
Defense mechanisms
Denial
Reaction formation
Rationalization
Unconscious motivations
The movie Spotlight is based on true events that happened in Boston, Massachusetts in 2001. The movie follows the “Spotlight” team, a small group of four journalists, investigating a scandal against 87 Roman Catholic priests in the Boston area who sexually abused children during their active years. Many people knew about the scandal but remained silent, especially the victims of the sexual abuse. Cardinal Bernard Law remained silent about Reverend John Geoghan sexually abusing more than 100 boys over his 30 year career. Walter Robinson, an investigative reporter and editor for the Boston Globe, received names of 20 priests from a lawyer in 1993, but buried the story instead of following up on it and further investigating the scandal. After the Spotlight team published their story in 2002, hundreds to thousands of victims came forward, in the Boston area and around the world, to tell their stories and remove pedophile priests from churches.
With the entire city remaining silent over this scandal for so many years, one may ask the following questions: Why did the victims and survivors of the sexual abuse remain silent? Why did Cardinal Law not speak out against Reverend John Geoghan’s history of sexually abusing so many young boys? Why did Walter Robinson bury the scandal and not follow up on it with further investigation? The movie Spotlight has many concepts from Chapter 14, Unconscious Motivation, that can help answer these questions.
The reason the victims and survivors of sexual abuse may have remained silent can be explained with the Dual-Instinct Theory (pg. 393). Thanatos, which is the death instinct, pushes an individual toward rest, inactivity, and energy conservation. “Aggression manifests itself in self-criticism, sadism, depression, suicide, masochism, alcoholism, drug addiction, and unnecessary risk taking” (pg. 394). Many of the victims of sexual abuse took their own lives due to the trauma the priests put them through, others were psychologically damaged from their experience when they were younger, and others turned to alcohol or drug use to mask the pain. They could also be using the defense mechanism suppression, which is “the process of removing a thought by ways that are conscious, intentional, and deliberate” (pg. 402). They can tell themselves to not think about what happened and to keep it a secret, but the unwanted memory of it is always there, creating a mental struggle.
Cardinal Law may have chosen to hide Reverend Geoghan’s history of sexual abuse because of the defense mechanism denial. The definition of denial is “unpleasant external realities are ignored or their acknowledgment is refused” (pg. 408). Having 6% of all Catholic priests be pedophiles makes the church look bad, so Cardinal Law may have been in denial about the fact that sexual abuse was occurring within the church, in order to reduce the anxiety, he was experiencing over the matter. The church also used the defense mechanism denial when saying the priests were on “sick leave” when in reality, they were sexually abusing children.
Walter Robinson may have buried the story because he felt a lot of anxiety after receiving twenty names of priests who have been involved in the scandal. The church holds a lot of power, and going after the church could discredit a young reporter/editor. I believe Walter used the defense mechanisms suppression and reaction formation. He used suppression to remove anxiety by pushing away the thought about the article he wrote about Porter. He kept suppressing these feelings because he was afraid of the backlash he may have received because the information he had at the time was not a “big enough” story to go after the church. I believe he also used the defense mechanism reaction formation, which is “adopting or expressing the strong opposite of one’s true feelings or motives” (pg. 408). It took eight years for Walter to follow up on the story and to further investigate the scandal. It took 67 more names to come forward before the scandal to become a big deal. Perhaps he kept telling himself that everything would work out just fine and the scandal was not anything to worry about.
Terms used:
Unconscious motivation
Dual-Instinct Theory
Thanatos
Defense mechanism
Suppression
Denial
Reaction formation
The film “Spotlight” is centered on a group of reporters discussing a sexual assault case that involved several priest from catholic churches. Throughout the film we can see various concepts from chapter 14 being used.
The main concept that is seen throughout the film is the concept of defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are defined as a mental process or behavior that is used in order to avoid a situation that may cause anxiety or other negative emotions. One of the defense mechanisms used in the film is suppression. An example when suppression was used in the film is when one of the abused victims is being interviewed. While the reporters are interviewing him, the victim does not seem to want to discuss his previous history as a means to keep the painful memory suppressed in his mind. Denial is another defense mechanism that is used by some of the alleged victims. One of the victims denies ever being sexually assaulted when he is questioned which may have been due to a form of ego. The individual denying being a victim may have done so as a means to prevent himself from looking weak and as a result refuses to believe that he was assaulted. It is interesting to note that when one of the alleged priest was being interviewed about the sexual assaults, he proceeded to use rationalization as a defense mechanism. The priest accepted the fact that he had sexual encounters with the children, however he made sure the reporter knew that he did not enjoy any part of the experience. It is interesting to note that the priest truly believed that he did not do anything wrong because he did not enjoy the experience.
The psychodynamic perspective also plays a role in the film. The psychodynamic perspective explains how an individual’s childhood experience may influence or shape their thought process as they reach adulthood. An example of this is when a priest is denying ever raping children because of the fact that he was raped as a child. The priest truly believes that he is not raping the children because his idea of rape is different from what he was doing to the children. Although the film discusses the sexual assault from various priests, the Catholic Church was also seen as a big part of the issue. While there was various evidence against the priest, the Catholic Church seemed to use the denial defense mechanism. An example of this is in the beginning of the film when one priest is arrested for sexual assault. Although the priest was arrested, the case was brushed under the rug in order to protect the image of the Catholic Church. Throughout the film more evidence comes up including the names of various priest who resigned and were transferred to other churches. It was apparent that the church was trying to hide the sexual assault cases by removing the priest from the institution in order to prevent similar mishaps from occurring without reporting them to the authorities. In the end of the film the story regarding the sexual assaults was printed, which prompted several other victims to come forward about their assaults. It is interesting to note that many of the victims came forward after potentially several years of staying quiet. This may be due to their own defense mechanism such as denial and repression.
The final concept that was seen in the film involved ego or ego psychology. The text describes ego psychology as the manner in which individuals choose to handle different situations. Some of the victims interviewed uses ego defense mechanisms such as sublimation such as angry outburst or denial. An example of this is when one of the victims being interviewed refused to believe that he was sexually assaulted and became upset when the interviewers kept pushing on the subject. Another example used is when Sacha is interviewing father Pat and his sister begins to respond in angry outburst to both him and to Sacha. Father Pat’s sister is using the defense mechanism of sublimation to express her anger regarding the situation.
Terms:
-Defense Mechanisms
-Suppression
-Denial
-Psychodynamic Perspective
-Ego Psychology
-Sublimation
The movie Spotlight covers a group of individuals who investigate for their paper, The Globe. The spotlight group is covering a case of multiple molestation cover-ups and reaching out to victims of the alleged abuse in order to write their story and uncover the truth. They eventually gather all of the information that they need and write their story. They uncover and reveal the truth of several different priests committing these crimes and make it known to the public.
One thing that was very evident in this movie that related to the readying was the number of people who were in denial about the allegations of the several priest’s actions. Denial is a specific defense mechanism where you convince yourself that a certain event did not really occur. Defense mechanisms are used to reduce anxiety or they may be used to protect from memories of childhood abuse, which in this case is what a lot of these characters are dealing with. Another relation to the chapter was about adaptive unconsciousness. This is our sense of autopilot or how we act in our natural environment. Each character has worked in their environment for so long that they have adapted to a certain way of thinking. They did not have to tell themselves to get in a procedural mode, they just simply did it because they have done it for long.
Another thing that I found interesting about this chapter in relation to the movie was about the priest that tried to reason with his acts of molestation. He told himself that it was not molestation because there was, in fact, no intercourse therefor it was not rape or molestation. He then continues to say that he did not get any pleasure from his acts so, again, it did not really mean he molested that children. The priest’s ego played a role in this situation because the ego is the “pleasure principal” of the brain. This played a role as a defense mechanism; it also seemed that due to the priests old age could have played a role in his thinking as well.
This movie was very good and I really enjoyed it. I think that it related very well to the chapter in the fact of demonstrating defense mechanisms and how the unconscious mind can play a role in motivation.
Terms: Ego, Adaptive Unconscious, Motivation, Unconscious
Defense mechanisms were prominent in the movie, Spotlight. Many of these mechanisms were also intertwined with each other. The first defense mechanism that I noticed was suppression. Suppression has to do with removing thoughts consciously. For example, Robby had a suppressed memory of the clipping that the lawyer, Eric Macleish, had sent about the 20 named priests. At the time Robby had gotten the clipping, he had no use for it or maybe thought it didn’t have much importance, so he tucked it away not to be remembered. He probably also had a little bit of rationalization going on about why he didn’t find it important at the time. When Sacha and Robby were in a meeting with Macleish, Macleish mentioned that he had sent the names of the priests many years earlier, but no one had done anything about. Robby said he never knew or had heard of that clipping before. Only until Sacha found the clipping and brought it to Robby did he remember that Macleish had given it to him.
Even though many weren’t shown or spoken to, I would assume that a lot of the victims would have suppressed memories as well. In cases of molestation like in this movie, a lot of people try to forget about the situation and pretend that it didn’t happen. With the victims that they talked to, they had to bring up all of those memories again. Patrick McSorely was one of the victims who seemed to want to suppress these memories because he has a young son who he doesn’t want to know about what happened. For many of the victims who were not actually shown in the video, I think these memories were suppressed until the article came out and then they were reaching out to the Boston Globe about their experience at the end of the movie.
Another defense mechanism I noticed was rationalization. One brief example of this was shown when Sacha was going around looking for the priests whose names were on the list. During this time, she stumbled upon Father Ronald Paquin. She began asking him questions about whether he molested children, which he did not deny. However, he was rationalizing that it was okay that he was molesting them because he did not rape them. When she asked him how he knew he wasn’t raping them, he said because he had been raped. He also rationalized that it was okay because he received no pleasure from the acts. He was rationalizing his unacceptable behavior and giving it acceptable and logical reasons.
Another defense mechanism that I noticed in this movie was that of reaction formation. Reaction formation is when one tries to stile an unacceptable impulse, they exhibit the complete opposite behaviors or desire. Those who were showing reaction formation were the priests who had been molesting children. Catholic priests are supposed to remain celibate and unmarried because their bride is the church. With this thought in mind, some of them went on to become un-celibate by molesting young children and having them perform sexual acts for them. They were then doing not only the opposite of what they said they would do but also doing something that was illegal.
Terms: defense mechanisms, suppression, rationalization, reaction formation
Spotlight is a film about how the Boston globe released a huge scandal about child molestation, and how the catholic church tried to cover it up. This shows how a group of reporters spend time learning about terrible things that happened to children. First they start out with little information, and when more gets told, they are able to bring this horrific event to light. This was difficult because the community did not want this story out nor did they want to hear about it, but these journalists felt it was necessary to shed a light on the truth.
The movie, Spotlight, had a lot of unconscious motivations that can be related to our textbook. From the beginning of the movie, the main character has a motivation to write what could be a good story. Although the community and people did not seem to want to hear anything about this disgusting story of the priest molesting children, he feels the need to do it. This is his Id acting against his ego. There is a resolution of conflict, which creates anxiety in him. He does not know what to do. This struggle basically goes on for the duration of this entire film.
Another thing that the film shows is defense mechanisms. Suppression is one that can be seen a lot. The community does not want to think about this story. Nobody wants to talk about it and everyone wants to seem to ignore this topic. These journalists are the only ones who do not want to repress this stuff; they want it out in the open. Along with the community, the catholic church also suppresses everything. No major actions were taken, nothing was really done, and nobody had anything to say about it. This is not only wrong, but they just suppress the whole issue in whole. Along with this defense mechanism, there was denial. The priest that was accused denied anything happening. In addition, the church basically denied anything happened when they just covered up and somewhat justified (rationalized) what happened. The priest was trying to justify why what he did was okay because he got no pleasure from it. This is sickening, and an unfortunate attempt at a sickening justification.
Finally, the last part that I saw in both the film and the book is the object relations theory. The object relations theory states that what happens as a kid, helps to form our personalities as adults. When we begin to see ourselves and others, they tend to stay in our heads. So, when the children see that the priests are of power and they have the ability to do nasty things like this, this creates a personality in the child. The child views the priest as powerful, and views themselves as weak. This is something that could be carried with the child for the rest of their life.
Terms: Id, ego, conflict, object relations theory, Freud, unconscious motivation, suppression, pleasure, defense mechanism, denial, power, motivation, rationalization, justification,
The movie Spotlight was over a team of reporters from the Boston Globe who decided to take it upon themselves and open up a case that was dealing with a sexual misconduct that was done by priests from a catholic church. The spend so many hours trying to figure out what all went down and happened they talked to not only a lot of kids but also many of the priests themselves try and figure everything out and look into details that may were never found before. The information that the spend their time looking into is horrible and the details are awful more then any person would want to ever hear. After visiting with many of the victims as well as the persist they were able to dig up enough information and details so that they could publish the information they received to the public and make everyone more aware. One of the biggest things that I found was related to the chapter was dealing with ego. After the paper was published the spotlight group had a lot of people that were more so against them and all of the things that were being said. They did seem to mind the had enough defense mechanisms within their heads that allowed them to manage peoples negative comments and to not let it be of a huge bother to them. It was their strong ego development that allowed them to not really push away but just know to not take in the negative comments and to just deal with it and everything that was thrown at them. They also had strong beliefs in what they were doing and felt that what they were doing was right to investigate into it which made them okay with receiving the negative comments. The people within the spotlight group had very strong adaptive unconscious which allowed them to act in the natural environment. They knew excaltyl what they needed to do in order to figure things out they didn’t need people to tell them step by steps but rather just knew what was needed. Another big thing was that even though they didn’t have to do this and look into more details and publish the article they chose to go ahead and do it anyway. This really relates with the relation of unconscious motivation. This was their push to be better in life and the want to be best at their jobs and they believed that choosing to look into and do this that it would help them look better over all and be stronger at the job that they do. Everyone in this movie had their own motives towards the event and the way that they were wanting to handle things. The first one off the bat was clearly the fact that the church wanted nothing to do with being seen or being brought out about the event they wanted to push it away and be out of people’s minds so that nobody knew what had happened. The people that were around they didn’t really push it off they knew that it had happened but they also didn’t sit and dwell on the topic but more so just believed that it was just a few bad people and that the people may be good but they just had a few moments of bad. This film had a lot to say how people act when an event happens whether good or bad it shows that a lot is also seen based on a persons character and also peoples motives based on the mind.
Terms:
ego development
Unconscious motivation
Adaptive unconscious
Ego
This week's film, Spotlight, focuses on the investigation team responsible for uncovering a Catholic church scandal involving priests molesting young children. I had never seen this film before, and must say that it is actually quite astonishing and appalling, what took place over the course of all those years. After watching this film, I wondered what the common denominator among all of those catholic priests was. What was it that drove that many of them to sexually abuse these young children? In the film, we see one of the reporters talk to one of the offending priests, who says that he admittedly "fooled around a little" but that the reporter didn't understand because he took no pleasure in it. As if he could rationalize it in his mind that sexually abusing a child was no crime because there was no pleasure involved. I believed this to be some kind of coping mechanism the priest has when I was watching the film. I wondered if that was the common feeling among the priests who were offenders, could they rationalize their actions somehow in their heads?
The film focuses on the victims quite a bit, which gives us some great (or not so great) insight on some unhealthy defense mechanisms. Throughout the film, the investigation team talks to various victims of these priests, each seem a little quirky in their own right, however they all seem to share one characteristic: shame of the incident(s). One of the victims talked to asked to remain anonymous because he had a child whom he didn't want to find out about the incident. This is a classic case of shame and denial because of that shame. The victim doesn't want anyone to find out about what happened to him because he wants to pretend it never did happen to him. This is also the case with the victim who played hockey at the high school. He says when talking to Michael Keaton in the movie "How did you find out about that? I never even told my wife." It seems that denial and repression are very common for people who have experienced something like this. The victims also tended to reference other repression techniques they used in the past. In one interview, it was said that first they turn to the bottle, then drugs, then when that doesn't work anymore, suicide. These are very common symptoms of someone who is repressing traumatic feelings.
Throughout the movie as well we see people who know somewhat of what is going on, and yet they choose to do nothing about it or not follow up. The investigation team pries information about the story out of every attorney, official, or religious representative they can. Each of them having prior knowledge of the incidents but choosing to remain silent. As the team gets closer to proving the case's validity, we begin to discover that these people chose not to disclose information because the church is a symbol of goodness in society. These people unconsciously were motivated to ignore disturbing facts because they believed the church was a non-corruptable institution. One victim's brother recalled that his mother set out cookies for the priest when he came to their home to apologize for the incidents.
Terms:
Unconscious motivation
Repression
Denial
Defense Mechanism
Spotlight is a movie about a true story about a huge child molestation cover-up within the Catholic Church which was uncovered by the Boston Globe.
Adaptive unconscious was one of the terms that I noticed the most while watching the movie. When someone is using adaptive unconscious, they are running an “automatic pilot as it carries out countless computations and innumerable adjustments during acts” (Reeve, 399). According to the textbook adaptive unconscious “set goals, make judgments, and initiate action, all while consciously thinking about something else” and is very good at doing all of these things (Reeve, 399). In the movie the reporters have set a goal which is getting enough information about the Catholic Church child molestation to write an article. They are motivated to make judgments and even when they meet with the lawyer and speak to him about the trial, they are making constantly judging the lawyer because they feel like he is hiding something that they could use for their story. Lastly, they are constantly having to adjust in order to get the story. What is interesting about how they go about doing all of this is that they aren’t consciously aware that they are being motivated.
Repression was another term that I noticed while watching the movie. When people use repression, they are unconsciously forgetting distressing information or experiences. When unconscious impulses try to pop up “anxiety emerges as a danger signal” (Reeve, 402). The first time that I noticed repression was when they were interviewing the first witness who was molested by a priest when he was 11 years old. They man talks about when a priest molests a boy or girl he doesn’t just physically abuse them, there is also spiritual abuse. What reminded me of the term repression was what they do when the terrible experiences emerge. When these children remember what happened and the anxiety emerges, these survivors reach for a bottle of alcohol, take drugs, or do whatever it takes to go back to repression.
One of the most interesting distinctions between the book and the movie has to do with the term conscious. Consciousness is a type of consciousness and is a “state of awareness of internal and external events”. What I thought was interesting about the term conscious and the movie is that the Catholic Church were conscious about the child molestation that were going on and instead of reporting the terrible crimes that were happening inside the church they created a “culture of secrecy that tolerates and protects pedophiles” (McCarthy, 2015).
Denial is the last term that I wanted to talk about. Denial is a ego defense mechanism and the textbook defines denial as “unpleasant external realities are ignored or their acknowledgement is refused” (Reeve, 408). When Sasha is looking victims that were molested, she actually finds one of the priest who was accused of child molestation. What I thought was interesting is that he didn’t deny that he molested the young children who have accused him, but instead ignored or refused to acknowledge what he did was wrong. He believes what he did wasn’t wrong because he didn’t receive gratification or pleasure from it and because he didn’t rape any of the children.
Adaptive unconscious
Repression
Consciousness
Denial
The film Spotlight is about writers of the Boston Globe who uncovered a hidden horrendous case of child molestation within the church. This film was actually much more interesting than I had predicted. I had a scandal that took place in my Christian High School that involved similar situations. The book mentions unconscious motivation and this directly correlates with the film. All of the different writers for the Boston Globe make it their missions to make the city, and potentially the nation, see just how horrible the church and “under the rug” law system that was being implemented beneath their own noses. Each member of the team became emotionally involved in the case. This shows the unconscious motivation they have to find every single fact that they can to solve the case. Along with this the concept of the Ego (what gives us our sense of self esteem and importance) we was seen in the film as well. The egos were in a sense attacked for the victims. When we see all of the different interviews that we’re talking place, we can see just how awful their experience was. In the film there was a gentleman who identified as homosexual and explained how his experience has severely negatively effected him due to his attraction to men. To go along with ego, we can also see the tie in of the concept of suppression as well. With the victims, primarily, we see how many did not want to think about the situations and did did not want to reach out. With families of the victims, we see how their passionate and strong connection to the church kept them from reporting the horrible things that happened to their children. One scene in the movie even stated that one man was trying to reach out to get help and went to his mother. But all she did was “laid out cookies”. I can see how suppression could be a strong factor when dealing with something like the church. In the movie, victims expressed how what they were doing was simply because at the time they thought it was “godly” or “it’s not like you could say no to God”. They simply suppressed the horrible situation and tried to move on. Sadly some committed suicide or turned to drugs, but the survivors were able to finally reach out several years later. With the defense mechanism of denial we see how many people including families and government officials denying their understanding or knowledge of the allegations that were being made of the church. When Sacha goes to a mans house, he tries to reach out and tell his story, but instead got the door closed on her when a lady came to deny the situation ever happened. Even with Jim we see how Jim did not want to express his thoughts or knowledge of was happening until he was guilted into doing so and eventually giving a lead on the case.
Overall this film opened my eyes to topics that are constantly being swept under the rug. I would have had no idea that this was an actual issue rather than just a joke/sick stereotype given to catholic churches.
Terms
Unconscious
denial
ego
repression
This week’s film, Spotlight, is a 2015 drama about a journalistic team uncovering of systemic sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests from the 1970s to the release of the article in 2002. This film brought the importance of this discovery back into the nation’s awareness nearly over a decade after it’s initial release. Throughout the film, concepts from chapters fourteen and eight are noticeable and will be discussed further in this blog post.
In chapter fourteen, on unconscious motivation, concepts such as suppression, ego defense, and object relations theory are relatable to the film. Firstly, an example of suppression can be associated with Robinson and the Boston Archdiocese. When considering Robinson, towards the end of the film, he explains that he was presented with twenty priests that had been accused of sexual assault. Although we are not given a lot of insight on his decision to ignore this evidence, it is clear that Robinson employed suppression to keep the issue quiet and avoid social conflict. The textbook explains this very point by saying, “Thought suppression turns potential social conflict into a private mental struggle...” Similarly, the Boston Archdiocese is found to have been covering up multiple cases via suppression to maintain a positive view of the Church. Although one can argue they suppressed this information for good reasoning, as is the reason suppression is often used, in doing so, many more children became victims.
Another reason why the Boston Archdiocese would use suppression is for ego defense. The view of the Church was in question and, in turn, the Archdiocese’s ego was under attack. Due to this, the use of the defense mechanism, denial, was employed to protect their collective ego. Once the Spotlight story was released, the Boston Archdiocese was forced to confront the issue, let down their defenses, and take the blow to their ego. When considering the impact on the victims, object relations theory is interesting to consider. This theory relates due to the caregiver-esque bond between the priests and the common victim (poor, minority, male, etc.). The priests chose this type of victim and were seen as mentoring them and the frequent connection between the two was not questioned. Initially, this relationship was probably a positive one for the victim before the sexual abuse began. By this, I mean that the relationship of mentoring was probably beneficial to the child but after abuse the attachment the victim had was broken. Due to this, the children’s attachment style was most likely negatively impacted. Most likely, the victims of sexual abuse carried over a different attachment style than they might have without this experience. It is likely that the victims lean towards an avoidant attachment style due to this past trauma.
When considering chapter eight, goal setting is evident within the Spotlight team. Once they learned about this information, the team had the collective goal of uncovering the truth of that the Church was trying to cover-up. Due to the sensitive issue, there was some conflicting goals within the team. For example, Rezendes believes they should release the story as soon as possible to avoid more victims while Robinson thinks they should investigate further and reveal the systemic problem. Although they have similar interests, they differed on what they felt was the best goal to address. In the end, Robinson’s goal is deemed more necessary and this is validated by the feedback after the release of the article. Due to the infamous nature of the story, the Church released a list of places in the U.S., and around the world, where cases of abuse had been reported. This feedback showed that Robinson’s goal was the proper one to follow as it led to the Church admitting to its decade long, systemic problem of sexual abuse by priests.
Terms:
Suppression
Ego Defense
Denial
Object Relations Theory
Avoidant Attachment Style
Feedback
We see quite a few ego defenses employed to reduce anxiety, from those who perpetrated the abuse, those who covered it up, and those on the investigative reporting team that cracked the story. Denial and rationalization are the two most common ego defenses employed. “They can’t” is the denial of many parishioners who do not want to believe that a priest was capable of doing something so heinous. The victims are often in denial about what is going on because the message they’ve believed about priest causes them to not see the grooming behavior for what it is. When Robinson finds out that he buried a story about 20 priests, he was in deep enough denial that he does not even recall the event that took place while he was on the Metro desk. The booster of the high school is in denial that the abuse could have taken place or been covered up until Robinson points out how luck led them to be on the football and track teams rather than the hockey team on which the abuse occurred in their high school. Pieces of the story came up repeatedly to reporters at the Globe, as well as to others, and yet there seemed to be a blind spot to picking it up as a sign of something bigger and more insidious. The reason that these work is that they are often unconscious reactions to severe anxiety-provoking situations. They would be harder to sustain if the people who employ them were conscious that this is what they are doing.
Rationalization is employed by many of the people either involved in the abuse or the cover up. Ex-priest Ronald Paquin rationalizes that it was OK because it wasn’t rape, and that because he was a rape victim himself, he knew the difference (more on this in the discussion on displacement). He also rationalizes the abuse because he claims he did not derive pleasure or gratification from the acts of abuse. Pete Connolly, in his attempt to suppress the story employs rationalization as justification to assuage his anxiety by arguing that “people need the Church… More than ever right now” and “the Cardinal… might not be perfect, but we can’t throw out all the good he’s doing over a few bad apples.” Jim Sullivan and Eric MacLeish both rationalize that they have made a lot of money for participating in the cover ups with the “I was just doing my job” and the ethical norms of their profession to confidentiality, as well as MacLeish justifying that given the laws cap on damage awards that this was the best the clients could do.
Father Paquin justifies his abuse in part due to his own rape, but besides a rationalization, we see the evidence of displacement of his anger at his own abuse from someone who he was powerless to get justice or revenge upon to others less powerful (his victims). The psychoanalyst, Richard Sipe, who worked for decades treating pedophile priests saw this as one of the common factors in the generational nature of the systemic abuse.
Speaking of the psychoanalyst, we also see his explanation for the abuse echoing Freud’s understanding of psychosexual development, where the perpetrators are described as stunted at a emotional and sexual developmental stage of an 11 or 12 year old. This aspect of Freud’s work has little to no empirical evidence to support it, but was common to that approach to understanding psychological disorders for those trained in the middle part of the 20th century. Sipe also discusses the predatory nature of how these abusive priests targeted victims who came from poor neighborhoods and broken homes with absent fathers. The importance of religion and the stature of the priests enabled them to count on the denial in their victims, the families, and other parishioners.
We also see how the reporters are driven to persist in the face of opposition and the emotional turmoil of hearing the victims’ stories. The long denial turns into rage/anger against the system they once believed in, in the cases of Mike, Sacha, and Matt, especially. Guilt at missing out on the story is also a motivating force for several on the Globe’s staff. The distance between their image of themselves and the actual evidence of not having put the pieces together in time to stop the systemic abuse and cover up earlier is clearly driving Robbie and Ben Bradley, Jr. Even MacLeish and Sullivan are motivated to correct their past errors in order to restore their sense of themselves as good people.
Terms: unconscious, ego defense, denial, rationalization, displacement, Freud, development, anger, guilt, motivation, self-image.
Jon Lutz - section 01
Elements of the self identification played a large part in the suppression of the scandal. Throughout the film it is constantly addressing the highly Catholic population in Boston. Judges are known to hide documents, police officers afraid to act against priests, and lawyers operate in back rooms so they can minimize the church’s losses off the record. How people view themselves in relation to the church dictates to the extent to which they defy it. While interacting with priests characters display behavior consistent with social expectations. Often the victims families would welcome a representative of the church with hospitality. One mother of a survivor brought out a plate of cookies. In this example the mother’s motivation to identify as a good Catholic overpowered her motivation to seek justice for her abused child. Even the survivors accounts of the abuse is consistent with identity confirming behaviors. Priests (a position of power) found little resistance from their young victims (a position of subordination) and were easily kept silent through the same power paradigm. The effect of this context is so powerful that more than once the priest's arrival is described “like God showing up.”
Freud would say the survivors suffered tragic blows to their ego development. The two main survivors interviewed displayed high levels of anxiety while recalling the stories of their abuse. One says, “I eat when I’m nervous.” This is very typical defense mechanism. The oral stimulation helps distract from the painful memories. Freud would be tempted to contribute this to the character of his abuse. Alcoholism and drug abuse are among other destructive behaviors displayed in the film. The very term “survivor” pays respect to those who took their own life to escape the pain. The mire of negative affect not only plagues survivors but contributes to their silence. The confusion attached to shame and guilt too often leads to the suppression of the traumatic event. Many survivors wait well passed the (ridiculously short) three year statute of limitations.
The priests themselves exhibited psychologically oppressive behaviors which psychodynamics would claim contributed to their compulsion to abuse. A psychoanalyst in the film notes a correlation between offending priests and abusive histories for themselves. Freud would suggest harmful formations of objection relation with respects to sex and child-adult relationships. Without healthy object relations they find themselves vulnerable to an out of control id. This is presented with the scene with one particularly troubling priest, who admits to having abused children. He seems to be oblivious to his culpability in the matter, having been raped himself, claiming “I didn’t enjoy it.” This falls severely short of any sane legal or moral justification. This delusion is implied to being propagated by the “treatment programs” offending priests are sent to, holding consistent with findings attributing psychoanalysis with creating false memories.
Even the reports showed interesting reactions to the stress of the situation. Mike and Robby do their fair share of projecting in the film. Mike says another character, “can be a real pain in the ass.” He is quickly informed that his particular work style brings other people discomfort. Once these two characters face their similarity they establish an effective working relationship. Robby confronts his long time friend about not doing anything despite the magnitude of the situation. Then he realizes he had done the same thing in the passed and how commonly people denied the problem. At the Spotlight’s most dire hour, Robby’s open acknowledgement of his fault propels the team to constructively move passed their errors.
Self Identification
Social expectations
Identity confirming behavior
Ego development
Defense mechanisms
Id
Object relation
Projecting
Spotlight is a movie that shows accurate scenes of concepts that can be learned about in chapter 14 about the unconscious aspect of our motivation. The main character Robby is called to be a lead editor on a team of journalists to investigate sexual assault allegations performed by John Geoghan. John is a priest at the Roman Catholic Church, that is being accused of molesting over 80 young boys. One of the jobs that the journalist team takes on is interviewing the victims to try to uncover some secret documents and other evidence. The reporters main goal in this case is to provide proof of a cover-up of the sexual abuse within the church. This is a huge case that the team is very interested in taking on and bringing justice. This would be a difficult job, because there are so many different aspects that need to be touched on in order to come up with a seriously conviction of someone responsible for the crimes taken place for this case. They had even tried to take on this case in the past, but it would unfortunately fall through, but they were willing to try again and be successful.
A concept from chapter 14 that comes up in the film is implicit motivation in which almost the entire spotlight team seems to possess. They are all working so hard on the case and trying to do everything in their power to prove the cover-up of the sexual abuse. Implicit motivation is shown here, because the team is not interesting in an external reward. They are not doing it for money, street credibility, or anything in it for them. It is ideal for them that they bring justice to not only the Roman Catholic Church, but also to the young boys that were victimized. They do not want anyone else to have to go through what they did regardless of how hard they have to work for this case. Getting the story right, getting in depth, accurate information, and are very emotionally involved with their high amount of empathy. The achievement aspect in Robby’s unconscious could be from wanting to do really well on the story after all the hard work that is put into it. He feels very strongly about his work, his teams work, and for the justice of the church actually not being involved with the sexual abuse case.
Defense mechanisms can be shown in multiple different scenes throughout this film naming just a couple like suppression, denial, and many more. According to Freud, all people use these defense mechanisms to deal with our anxiety and create a defense for it. These are controlled by our ego to make us feel better about ourselves and our actions and how it may be better from others. Suppression is shown throughout the interview process with the sexual abuse victims, because the memory is so horrible and traumatic that they do not even want it to come into their consciousness. Since their individual experiences with the priests abuse, they have tried to not think about it in order to heal and move on. It is actually a popular phenomenon that in sexual abuse cases specifically that a lot of victims in reality will use denial as their defense mechanism. They will try to convince themselves that they memory of the abuse never happened and it was all a figment of their imagination. This is much easier for the victims than thinking about it all the time and never letting themselves move on from the way that they felt. Also if they stay in denial, it prevents people from asking so many further questions about it and keeping it in their conscious.
Terms:
Psychodynamics
Psychoanalytics
Ego psychology
Freud
Eros
Thanatos
Repression
Subliminal motivations
Object Relations Theory
Dual instinct theory
The movie, spotlight was about different reporters from the Boston Globe who were all interested in a case about a sexual assault occurring in a church. The case was about priests who these reporters must question, along with the victims. They have to spend a lot of their time looking at the evidence and taking a look at what the victims had to encounter. Once they had enough data and knowledge on the subject they decided to publish the story. Nothing too bad happened, but it reflected very poorly on the church it’s self. Unconsciousness was very prominent in this film. Adaptive unconsciousness was shown, this is when you make a judgement then figure out where to go from there while you’re actually thinking about other things. You see this when one of the victims talks about the abuse and when it began. It started with helping out, then moved to being shown magazines which had pornography in them along with crude and dirty jokes. The victim knew that this was weird and unbecoming of a priest or an authority figure at all, but they let it happen because they were still getting attention none the less. The chapter in our book talked about the different defense mechanisms and these were shown a great deal in the film Spotlight. We learned that Freud developed the ego and explained it as our minds personal defense system. We talked about suppression as well, this being that there may be a memory in your head but you don’t actively think about it until something triggers it. So these victims may not have remembered or actively thought about a question they were asked by the reporters on a daily basis, but during the interview it brings these unconscious memories back into the conscious areas of the brain. Denial is another topic, this is when you try to convince yourself in some way that it didn’t happen or maybe that it wasn’t that bad. I have seen this in many cases of sexual assault (usually on TV). These victims put it in their minds that what happened wasn’t that bad and that they will be fine. This is how the “cope” with the problem, this makes a lot of sense to me. I think victims can be very hard on themselves and often think that these things are their faults so they have to resort to these defense mechanisms to help them feel better about all aspects of the situation that occurred. The church shows the most consciousness in the film, this being all of their thoughts about the situation and stating what they believed to actually happened, bringing along their emotions about the allegations and recalling memories that they have of this time. This story showed that the priests were conscious the whole time, they knew their actions were wrong but for some reason decided to look past that and continue to do it for their own selfish reasons. The church it’s self was very conscious in their own actions of covering for these priests.
Terms:
Adaptive unconsciousness
Defense Mechanisms
Ego
Suppression
Denial
Conscious mind
Unconscious mind
Spotlight is a film based off of a true story about how the Boston Globe investigated the scandal of child molestation inside the Catholic Church. The importance of this subject drives many people wild because of the intense religion side but also the impact of child molestation. The name Spotlight refers to the journalism team within the Boston Globe that took on this investigation and exposed many people who were covering up one of the largest criminal acts. The Catholic Church is guilty for covering these acts done by priests in their own community. Spotlight publishes and exposes all details they conclude about this case that was originally supposed to be forgotten about.
A basic idea that took over my mind after reading chapter 14 and connecting it to the movie was the section on defense mechanisms and ways to cope with the anxiety of this special case. I felt as though Spotlight revolved around these terms and are easy to relate to the fact that they were used all through the film. Freud’s concept of the ego is what acts as the mind of the defense system that protects the mind from feeling anxiety or distress from the situation. After hearing Dr. Maclin explain how a repressed memory works and the fact that it may not have actually happened, but you believe that it did is a concept that was not involved in these cases, but very well could have been. I think a lot of people experience this and with a scandal on a large scale like this involving many touchy subjects, it seems it would be easy to resort to repression. On a related note, suppression was also present in the film and definitely displayed in many of the cases. Right from the beginning of these stories being released, it was the attorney’s mission to suppress these memories/actions from everyone’s mind to allow them to “forget” it even happened. The Catholic Church was able to cover up the priests’ wrongful doings and keep their stories as far away from the public as possible.
A specific example that comes to my mind relating to denial and rationalization is when a reporter, Sasha Piffen, for Spotlight was interviewing many of the accused priests, she approached a man who admitted to being a priest who molested children. He rationalized this action by saying that he indeed molested boys at St. John’s the Baptist, but “As I said, I never got any pleasure from it, that’s important to understand. I want to be clear, I never raped anyone. There’s a difference, I should know, I was raped…” It is clear that he wanted to make sure people knew he thought this was a normal act done, which is why he taught the young boys that it was okay that he was doing this to them.
Adaptive unconscious was present when the reporters looked for a story related to their main focus of the child molestation. Though this had originally happened many years before, they never paid this close attention to the multiple facts that could have been in front of them the entire time. It was not until Marty replaced the old editor and asked the team to report on this case that was pushed away.
Consciousness was especially avid when seeing this case through the lens of the Catholic Church. It is clear that they knew exactly what was happening with their 70+ priests and did the public dirty by covering each case up.
Defense mechanism
Ego
Repression
Suppression
Denial
Rationalization
Adaptive unconscious
Consciousness
This movie was enough to make a person sick. It drove me crazy that such a disgusting, repetitive crime would be continually swept under the rug for decades. I began thinking: what motivated these victims to stay silent? What motivated these religious leaders to sexually abuse children? What motivated the press to cover certain issues rather than other issues?
With the victims, there are several reasons they would stay silent, such as suppression (attempting to push down/remove a thought) or avoidance (fearing judgment from others or backlash from the church). As to what motivated these priests to sexually abuse children, I believe it was suppression (telling themselves to be celibate, then becoming obsessed with sex) and a high desire for control. It was a self-confirming cycle of high and low engagement. The priests perceived themselves high in control and preyed upon children with low perceived control. By doing so, the priests gained more control as they convinced the children to perform sexual acts with/for them. The children trusted the priests, who were in positions of power, and went along with the sexual acts, feeling low levels of control. Several of the children mentioned the abuse happening multiple times, due to the self-confirming cycles. I found the press’s motivation interesting. They spent the majority of the movie blaming others for saying nothing to exploit and stop the abuse (projection defense mechanism), then it turned out that they had been alerted about the abuse many years earlier. Robby felt ashamed because he was alerted about 20 priests sexually abusing children when Robby first started working with metro. During this period of time, his mind was on other things, so the story did not get the attention it deserved. Near the beginning of the movie, the reporters took on the news story because it was assigned to them (extrinsic motivation). By the end of the movie, the reporters were intrinsically motivated to learn the stories of the victims, working late into the night and on weekends, clearly passionate about learning more stories, increasing relatedness with the victims, and challenging themselves to take down the “system,” rather than just one or a small group of priests.
Knowing people who have experienced this type of childhood sexual abuse through the church, I can say that it definitely affects people long into adulthood, whether or not they realize it or mean for the abuse to continue affecting them in adulthood. From what I’ve seen, this type of childhood trauma can affect people’s sexuality, faith/beliefs, use of coping mechanisms, perceived and desired control, and mental health (anxiety, depression, etc.). It makes me wonder how these people and their lives would be different, had they never endured that confusing, life-altering abuse as children. It makes me so sad to think that there were adults who knew about the abuse and did little-to-nothing to stop it. Instead of firing the priests and pastors from their churches, legally charging them, and getting them registered as sexual offenders, the priests and pastors were simply moved to another church to prey on a new set of children, just like the movie portrayed. It’s maddening and sickening.
Terms: suppression, avoidance, relatedness, intrinsic motivation, perceived control, high desire for control, self-confirming cycle of high and low engagement, avoidance, extrinsic motivation, projection
Spotlight is a team of investigators who spend hours upon hours uncovering the abuse of children in Catholic churches. These priests have gotten away from child molestation for decades, and the system has purposefully hidden the encounters from the rest of the world. Spotlight strives to uncover these secrets by proving what the system has been hiding, and to do this they talk to hundreds of victims of these priests. Their main goal is to let it be known to the entire world what these hundreds of priests have done to children and that the system of the Catholic church is the reason they’ve gotten away with it for so long. I was happy to realize that they successfully did this by the end of the movie. Throughout the movie we see a strong representation of ego in effect in the idea of what these priests are doing as well as in the investigators of spotlight. Among the concept of ego, we see the idea of ego defense.
The ego is the part that sits in-between the conscious and unconscious that deals with self-control and self-esteem aspects of our lives. The ego goes through different stages of development over the years and those are symbiotic, impulsive, self-protective, conformist, conscientious, and autonomous. The symbiotic stage occurs at infancy and solely depends on the caretaker to develop. In the impulsive stage, external forces, and not quite the ego, tend to curb the child’s desires and impulses. The ego’s job in this stage is to internalize consequences for things done wrong and helps guide them into developing self-protective capabilities. In regards to the movie, I would say that because these children are being molested as young as they are, their ego is being “bruised” by what these adults are doing to them. As these things happen to them, the internalize that because a priest is doing it to them, it must be okay and fail to develop those self-protective defensive capabilities when they need to in order to stand up for themselves. The next stage is the conformist stage, where the ego internalizes group-accepted rules and becomes anxious is their impulses want to challenge those rules. Related to the movie, I believe that a lot of the reason it took over 20 years for this horrific story to get out in the public was because no one was able to let those impulses out and say what they truly wanted to. Because of society and what was socially acceptable at the time, their ego protected Spotlight employees by directing them to bury what they’d found in order to stay at a homeostatic level and not in an anxious one. After this stage comes the conscientious stage, where the ego is now molded as a set of internal standards to curb and counter impulses, which also relates to the example just given. And the last stage of the autonomous ego relates to self-motivation and self-regulation concerning one’s own thoughts, plans, goals, and behaviors. Over the years when these children were growing up dealing with what had recently happened to them or with what happened to them in the past, their ego was continuously fighting with them. It was telling them that in order to protect themselves from embarrassment, anxiety, and exposure they must just go along with what was happening to them. The priests managed to get inside their heads and make it seem like they were making the autonomous decision to inappropriate things with them. These priests gave them a false sense of choice, and it is the people of Spotlight’s capabilities of pushing past their ego that made it possible for the molested children to feel relief that something was finally done about it.
Terms: Ego, Ego Defense, Unconscious, Conscious
For this week’s assignment, we watched the film called “Spotlight” that talked about a team of reporters from the Boston Globe who choose to work on a case of systematic burying of sexual impropriety by the Catholic Church and its priest. This case proceeds by getting forced to talk to many victims and priest as well as spending endless hours going through the information that seemed way too abhorrent and cruel. After spending many hours and collecting enough information and evidence, they decides to broadcast the story and try to notify people about what was happening and what they’re going to do in order to finish this case accurately and effectively. After, the cardinal was advertised and after it happened, the church had to face this situation that extensively degrading to its reputation.
One of the main point that I have noticed in the movie that related with the chapter was the connection of unconscious motivation and the spotlight group. We knew as viewers that they did not have to investigate this case. They could have chosen to report just like everyone else and be done with it but, their motive was to make a difference and be different from the rest of everyone else so they waited until something very important and significant event took place so they will have something new to advertise and bring people to a better acknowledgement about the case and the investigation. Since we are focusing on the unconscious motivation this week, it is pretty clear to point that their unconscious motivation was to be successful at work, work hard enough to make a difference rather than just showing up there and not considering to perform any task that is necessary. Since this group worked extremely hard, many people asked them if their families are OK with them working long hours. Their response was as same as we think it could be which is they also stated that their families thought that they do work very hard.
Another element from the movie that related to the chapter was the adaptive unconscious. Adaptive unconscious can be described as how we perform in our everyday environment. I would say there was a scene that was very confusing and made a little sense to me was when they were talking about what they are going to be needing in order to proceed in procedural step in their journalist climate. As viewers, we do get a pretty fair idea on this. However, they all seemed to be pretty much on the same page because their unconscious was suitable for them to work there. I can think of an example in my daily life which would be being super busy in college and being a busy mom as well. This life (right now) is definitely way different than it was in high school. Things change over the years because we accommodate to our atmosphere and we can perform our tasks without even thinking heavily in.
One of the important part of the film was the ego and personality and how these people try to administer their own at the paper. By their personalities, I could say that must have a strong defense system to take critique of their articles and from trying to collect the important information. We could tell when there’s a loud communication and them running into bizarre situations. There’s a scene that shows a great example on strong ego development which means controlling your emotions and feelings when there’s a harsh situation rather than just melting down and crying. Another great example I can think of is when they were looking through those documents and evidences and just imagine what they must have gone through after seeing those records. This was very hard for them because they knew that these people were getting away from the illegal activities they have performed. However, people with weak ego development (like myself) would have a hard time controlling their emotion while working on something that is way too cruel and hard to handle. But I think, that without the proper development, it would have been way easy for them to just go to the cops regarding this case.
This movie portrayed many scenes that showed many examples of unconscious motivation for people, reporters and the church as well. We know that reporters wanted to be the best at the work that they do and after finding out that people had the motives to legitimize the actions and lastly, the church had a great motivation covering it up. The reason for this was obviously to cover themselves from getting blamed and look bad in everyone's eyes. There were also many scenes that showed the unconscious motivation even though it was hard to see.
Terms Used:
Motivation
Adaptive unconscious
Unconscious Motivation
Ego
Ego development
Spotlight is about a group of four reporters who work within a “department” of The Globe to investigate local reports of crime within Boston. The group of reporters begins unfolding the case of sexual abuse allegations within the Catholic church. As the group begins unfolding a “few bad apples” they run into many victims, and a researcher (Richard Sipe) who calculated that there should be approximately 90 predators who are or were former Catholic priests in the area.
When the Spotlight team begins interviewing people who fell victim to being molested or sexually abused as a child there was a victim who said that he was lucky to be there, being interviewed. The victim said that most people who had experienced the abuse during their childhood were drug addicts, had overdosed, or committed suicide. This relates well to suppression that was described in chapter 14. Suppression is something that occurs intentionally in one’s life in order to remove negative thoughts about a person or an experience. Suppression occurs in the film again when we see Robby admitting to getting the information during the 1980’s regarding the incidents of sexual abuse within the church but ignored the information. In my opinion, I think that Robby intentionally goes about this because he had gone to Catholic school, married someone who was Catholic, and a majority of his friends and coworkers were also Catholic—using the defense mechanism of being in denial.
An iconic scene for me to watch the film is when Matt (reporter with the moustache) is looking through clippings of a home where multiple known Catholic priest/predators had been living, he runs outside of his house and puts two and two together that the home has been down the block from him and his wife and kids. After Matt notices this, he begins setting up defense mechanisms for his children to steer clear of the home. On page 406 of the text, there is a figure 14.1 that has 1) begin changes in external reality= this would be when Matt prints off a picture of the house, tapes it onto his fridge with instructions to stay away from the house for his kids to see it. 2) this leads to anxiety and distress about him having to worry about his children becoming a part of the statistic of children being abused in the community.
Nearly 100% of the children who had been prayed on fell into the category of low socioeconomic status. Because of this, the children who got positive attention from the priests felt that the church and their “Father” were their primary caregiver. When the priests began abusing their power and asking the children for sexual favors, the child felt that they needed to oblige because they had the mental representation that it was the right thing to do. This is a great example of Object Relations Theory—leading these individuals who end up viewing the church as a whole not being able to be trusted.
ME TERMS
Suppression402
Defense Mechanisms406/08
Denial
Objection Relations Theory411
The film Spotlight follows multiple reporters and focuses on trying to report on several sexual assault reports that have happened within the church. They communicate with the victims and the priests to try and make the story publishable with facts. In the end, they gather enough evidence and everyone’s stories and publish an article.
Chapter 14 talks about our unconscious motivation and other terms related to this. The movie displays unconscious motivation in all of the reporters. Each reporter had their own unconscious motivation and reason to investigate this report in particular, whereas they could have almost easily waited for another Kardashian to get pregnant or something and hit the lottery. Instead, their unconscious decided it was best for them to uncover a series of tragic events and unveil a nasty situation and report the details to the general public. Once this belief hit their conscious, it was almost like a desire to find the truth and report on it just to show what happens within the church sometimes.
The reporters ended up getting emotionally attached to the case and started reporting based on their implicit motivation. This is when we attend to emotionally linked environmental events. The church had an emotional link as well as the sexual misconduct. The victims also tried to suppress the experiences that were inflicted on them inside the church. Suppression is a defense mechanism that suppresses an experience or thought from our memory. When we suppress something, it often is very hard to retrieve if done correctly. This was a very big part of Spotlight, because the victims had experienced intense emotional trauma. The worst part about it was the fact that the church continued to molest these people and would constantly sweep it under the rug like nothing had happened.
Something that we discussed during lecture today talked about how many things happen because we want control. In this case, the priests wanted power over the children which was their main reason for molesting them. It wasn’t because they were homosexual, they did it to ensure that the attention from the children would remain. Many of the victims were in denial after experiencing the trauma. Denial is convincing yourself that a traumatic event did not occur, wasn’t so bad, or did not even occur.
Another interesting term is reaction formation. This means that most people try and stop an unacceptable impulse by displaying the exact opposite behaviors or desires. This can be seen in the priests that were molesting children. Power and dominance were the main causes. The tendency to molest children in the church could have stemmed from their homosexual behaviors. The priests could have done this to the children because they are in denial of their own sexuality. When the news came out that a few of the apples were bad in the church, many of the priests who were innocent felt stereotype threat. Even though there were several priests who molested the children in this film, the good ones felt that they would confirm a negative stereotype of their group just by being a priest. This is also easily applicable to real life currently. The news of this has already hit a while ago, and priests are still in this negative stereotype for doing this to children.
Terms:
Unconscious motivation
Implicit motivation
Suppression
Denial
Reaction Formation
Stereotype threat
The majority of mental life is unconscious. This can be seen throughout the movie, Spotlight. The biggest part of chapter fourteen that I saw within Spotlight was relating to defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are used to reduce anxiety, depression, and distress when there is a change in internal or external reality. These changes could include environmental dangers, instinctual presses, and superego demands. Defense mechanisms could explain seemingly inexplicable aspects of one’s behavior. Initially defense mechanisms are unconscious, but they can be recognize and brought into the conscious later on.
Denial is an immature defense mechanism, meaning it fails to recognize reality. Denial is when one convinces themselves that a traumatic event did not occur, was not their fault, or isn’t as bad as it seems. In Spotlight, several victims failed to come forward until years after the molestation occurred. In some cases, this could be the result of denial. The victims may have unconsciously convinced themselves that the molestation did not occur, so there was nothing to report, until they recognized it as reality later on. Another instance of denial was with one of the priest that Sacha spoke with as she was going door-to-door. He told Sacha that he “fooled around,” but he “never raped anyone.” He minimized the severity of the traumatic event, making it seem not as bad as it actually was. This made him feel better; it reduced his anxiety.
This same priest is also an example of rationalization. Rationalization is the creation of acceptable, logical reasons for outcomes that are not acceptable. Molesting children is not acceptable, and it caused the priest anxiety. Thus, he rationalized to reduce his anxiety. His rationalization was, “I never got any pleasure from it.” His logic was that since he didn’t enjoy the act, it was an acceptable thing to do. That obviously isn’t the external reality, though.
Displacement is another important defense mechanism displayed in Spotlight. Displacement is when a threatening impulse or desire is redirected elsewhere. In the movie, Michael is angry about the lack of punishment for the ninety priests who have molested children in Boston. Instead of taking it out on the priest, which isn’t a realistic option, he screams at Robby about wanting to print a smaller version of the story immediately, rather than waiting for a bigger story. Another small demonstration of this was when Sacha took her anger about the same situation out on her dishwasher. Both of them were unconsciously decreasing their anger about the molestations by releasing anger about other situations toward other people/things.
A final concept I want to question is stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is the concern or threat that you will confirm a negative stereotype of your group. The mere presence of stereotype threat makes it more likely that the stereotype will unconsciously be fulfilled. This poses the question: Is there a high number of priests who molest children because there is a stereotype that Catholic priests molest children? I think this could arguably hold true. It’s also important to recognize that much of the unconscious is non-predictive, not scientifically testable, and simply speculation.
Terms: unconscious, defense mechanisms, superego, denial, rationalization, displacement, stereotype threat