Clay Jensen Psychology

Introduction

The character I will be analyzing is Clay Jensen from the TV series 13 Reasons Why. Clay is an eighteen-year-old high school student at Liberty High who lives at home with his mother and father. Unfortunately, Clay had a traumatic experience after his friend, Hannah Baker, committed suicide. Her death affected Clay greatly throughout the four seasons of the show. Clay had a kind, caring and loveable personality before Hannah's death but had a significant behaviour change after she passed. He started experiencing depression, anxiety and an increase in risky behaviour. Clay and Hannah developed a friendship when they began working together at The Crestmont, a movie theatre in their neighbourhood. Clay was intrigued by Hannah

Before Hannah's death, Clay was kind, sweet, intelligent and caring. When Hannah passed, he had a significant shift in behaviour and started acting impulsively and recklessly. The first psychological concept I will be using is the drive reduction theory. Drive reduction theory is defined as “Human motivation is rooted in biological needs that lead to drives that motivate behaviour.”(Cherry, 2020). This concept is shown throughout the four seasons of the show. Clay is motivated to decrease his pain and grief but does it by acting irrationally. For example, a shooting occurred at Clay's high school, Liberty High. After the school shooting, the principal decided to have a practice lockdown to better prepare students and teachers for possible future situations. The principal had the police come and shoot rubber bullets and bang on doors to make the students believe this was another shooting. When the lockdown was over, Clay realized it was just a drill when he saw the principal talking to the officers. This made Clay very angry, and he started yelling at the principal. “You are killing us! Don't you get that? You made a drill with gunshots and hammered down the doors to prepare us for what, exactly? To practice what it feels like to be hunted? To practice getting ready to die?” (Season four, episode six). This shows drive reduction theory as Clay is motivated to reduce his anxiety by attempting to tell the primary source