The Grinch Who Stole Christmas Analysis

This assignment was required to watch the documentary called “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”, and to explain the theoretical perspective that was assigned to us. The two theoretical perspective that will be talked about more in depth in this essay is psychoanalytic theory and trait theory. Sigmund Freud was a neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis and created a better understanding of human mind and personality.
Freud’s theory consisted of our personality is made up of three components that consisted of: the id, ego, and superego. Ego helps develop the young child response to the real world. Id’s unconscious energy that is constantly strives a type of satisfaction to basic sexual and aggressive drives. Superego is a part of the personality that, represents internalized ideals and provides types of judgement standards. Our conscious awareness is like the part of an iceberg that floats above the surface.
Beneath our awareness is like the larger unconscious mind, with its thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality. Trait theories examine characteristic patterns of behavior. For example, each and every one of us has a unique multiple trait and curiosity that helps motivate in way that only ourselves can understand.

Summary of Behavior
The Grinches personality is best defined as a mean, anti-social, and cold-hearted wicked character who lives far away from the Whoville on a top of a high mountain in a cave with his dog Max in the documentary. The Grinch is known very well for hating Christmas and plans on ruining Christmas by stealing presents and vandalizing the Whoville’s houses.
In the beginning of the documentary the Grinch is an obnoxious charcter with a bad temper and bad attitude and has a heart that’s two sizes too small beating in him. He meets a little girl one night in Whoville named Cindy Lou Who and she decides that she likes the Grinch after that one night and wants to bring him back to the Whoville to redeem himself.
The Grinch stole all the presents and tress and Christmas decorations from the houses and puts them in a bag to throw over a cliff. When the Whoville awoken with no presents and Christmas decorations not even a crumb for mouse they continued to celebrate the holiday of Christmas instead of being sad and gathered in a circle and continued to sing. The Grinch grew this feeling of happiness inside him that he had never felt before when he hears the Whovilles singing and forgets about ruining Christmas and finally gets into the Christmas spirit.
He feels guilty for what he had did and stops the presents from falling over the cliff. The day of Christmas that the Grinch had ruined, he then promised to ruin their Christmas by stealing the Who’s presents and cutting the rotisserie chicken. He goes from someone who hated Christmas to actually loving Christmas at the end of the movie and finally redeems himself.
How Theory Explains Personality
One other perspective different from the one that was assigned to me is Social-cognitive theory. Its different from the other ones that were assigned to me because it explores the interaction between people’s traits and their social content. Albert’s Bandura’s theory believed that we learn many of our behavior either through conditioning or by observing and imitating others. Social-cognitive is similar with trait theory by Sigmund Freud because they both involve patterns of behavior influenced by others around you.
Standards of Assessment and Evaluation
A good test defines three important properties of any good psychological test are validity, reliability, and standardization. The number of questions you answer correctly, on an intelligence test could reveal almost nothing. To know how well you performed, you would need some proof of information of your comparison. The scores help the next testing group by helping future groups compare different results throughout the year or month. If you take the test following the same procedures, your score will be meaningful when compared with others.
This process is called standardization. Knowing your score in comparison with other groups helps the stadardization group learn that the results won’t tell you much unless the test has reliability. A reliable test gives accurate scores, no matter who takes the test or when they take it. To check a test’s reliability, researchers test people many times to see different variations on the outcome.
The higher the correlation, the higher the tests reliability. High reliability does not ensure a test’s validity the extent to which the test actually measure’s or predicts what it promises. Using a miscalibrated measure can cause inaccurate results and could affect the experiment. Your results can be very reliable depending in the score you get.
Testing the Grinch
The test I would use in my office with my client would have to be the IQ test. This test is not only for young children but its also for adults and helps determine scores of individual’s intelligence, memory, and processing speed. Someone that could be using a psychoanalytic perspective could help the Grinch with the insight of understanding his awareness and help improve himself.
The Humanistic theory focuses on our inner capacities for growth and self-fulfillment. The Grinch strongly dislikes the Whos at first but as the movie continues he learns how to socialize better and communicate better with the Whos. The Whos only knew the Grinch by hearing false rumors and never really got the time to actually get to know him.
Even after what he did to their presents and other belongings they decide to accept the Grinch for who he is and invite him to join the circle they were in to sing along with them. The Grinch regained his self-esteem and regained the trust of the Whovilles. Information that was gathered throughout the