Good Will Hunting Essay

In the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, a movie that underlines an everlasting relationship between therapist Sean Maguire and young hothead yet genius Will Hunting. Therapist Sean Maguire seems to be able to infiltrate young Will’s trust using a rather unorthodox method in which we do not usually see in conventional psychotherapeutic sessions. At the beginning of the movie, we understand that Will was brought up in foster care and faced physical abuse and abandonment as a child. His defiant and mistrustful character resulted from having such a negative background in which he was portrayed as someone who lost his sense of self-worth. Throughout the movie, Will has been subject to different types of therapy including psychodynamic and hypnotherapy.

Up until the moment when Therapist Sean Maguire enters Will’s life, we do not see any breakthrough in Will’s attitude and behavior. He remains in a constant state of denial as he continues to ridicule the efforts of psychotherapists trying to heal him. Then enters Sean Maguire, a psychotherapist that uses a more cognitive approach to therapy in order to surpass the boundaries set by Will. We see many examples of his use of cognitive psychotherapy when Sean undeniably puts Will’s illogical thinking in check and uses his own life experiences to assert trust between him and the client. Trust, which was a major aspect that was missing in past therapeutic sessions, seems to be the twilight zone in which Will broke out of his conventional way of thinking and opened up to his new therapist. Sean’s use of cognitive therapy enabled him to focus on Will’s subjective thoughts, feelings and behaviors at the present moment. This in turn allowed Sean to unravel Will’s past and truly understand the basis of his current behavior. Moreover, Sean understood that Will’s use of defenses mechanisms and his lack of trust