Running With Scissors Running with Scissors is a movie detailing the life of a boy who has an absent father, a narcissistic mother, and is adapted by a dysfunctional and delusional therapist. It displays many of the psychological disorders that many people do not come into contact with in their daily lives. Many of these disorders are further explained by the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow. This psychological view looks at how people grow and get to self-actualization, this is found by moving through his five levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy. Maslow believed that we come into the world bright and good and as we mature we find a drive to self-actualize. However, this goal cannot be accomplished unless we fulfill our deficit needs and satisfy each section in his hierarchy. One thing that is so emotionally unsettling and upsetting is that Augusten has not fulfilled 4/5 of this hierarchy and is still striving for an emotionally fulfilling life and to one day be self-actualized. The first four needs are what Maslow referred to as deficit needs; what differentiates these needs from the last level, being needs, is that the person is drawn to meet these first four needs but is compelled to satisfy the being needs …show more content…
He has a set group that he stays around but the majority of them either leave him or he leaves, so he clearly does not feel like he fits in that well with them. In the beginning of the movie he has no place where he belongs and he has no chance to find one, all he cares about is the approval of his mother. As the movie progresses this lessens as he gets closer with the Finch’s, but every time you think he is free of her grasp she calls him back and he goes running. What is ultimately his crutch from completely achieving this step in the hierarchy is his mother. Without her and their toxic relationship he could belong and have people that he truly cares about that also care for