Therapeutic Device In Good Will Hunting

The movie Good Will Hunting follows a young man named, Will Hunting, who is a genius that struggles with his past as an abused orphan. Will is quick to defend himself and his friends with both his intellect and his fists. It is his fighting that gets him in trouble. While working as a janitor at M.I.T., Will also solves difficult math theorems on a chalkboard outside of one of the classrooms that only a handful of people in the whole world can solve. By solving these theorems, he attracts the attention of Professor Gerry Lambeau. Lambeau finds him at an arraignment hearing because Will had assaulted a cop. To avoid a jail sentence, the judge agrees to leave Will under Lambeau’s supervision under two conditions: 1) Will must meet with Lambeau twice a week to work on more advanced Physics and 2) he must see a therapist. With his sharp intellect, Will is able to cause several therapists to

Ferrante’s textbook defines deviance as “any behavior that or physical appearance that is socially challenged or condemned because it departs from the norms and expectations of the group” (Ferrante, 2015, p. 368). The subcategories in which deviance can be further divided into are soft deviance and hard deviance. One subcategory that is portrayed throughout this movie is soft deviance, which is defined as a “behavior which in the view of culture participants departs from social and cultural norms but does not actively threaten social order” (Raybeck, 1988, p. 377). In accordance with this definition, Will displays soft deviance with his intellect. By going against his stereotypical norm, Will is able to solve difficult math theorems that only a handful of people in the world can solve and he is only the janitor at M.I.T., not a student. This act is identified as soft deviance because while it goes against the social norm, it does not threaten social