In this Psychology reflection paper, I am going to discuss the movie “ The curious case of Benjamin button” released in 2007 and apply three psychology theories on the selected scenes. This movie is about the life of an unusual man called Benjamin. He has an opposite life than everybody else’s. He aged in reverse, born as an old man and get younger every day. His mother died after giving birth, and then his father abandoned Benjamin because of his appearance. He was raised in a nurse house by a woman named Queenie and lived with those real elderly. He met his love in his life there, Daisy, who was a little girl at that time.
He became a tugboat worker at 17 as he wanted to see the world. Until Benjamin and Daisy caught each other age, they fell in love and lived in a duplex together. However, after Daisy gave birth to his baby, he decided to leave her because he didn’t want to be Daisy’s burden, and started travelling around the world. In Benjamin’s last days, Daisy moved in with him until he passed away as baby. Although Benjamin has an old face when he was young, and grew younger and younger physically every day, he had a psychological development like normal people.
There are three psychology theories can be applied in scenes in this movie. They are Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development, Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, and long term memory. First, in the first twenty minutes, there is a scene showing old (little) Benjamin was sitting in the dining room which was full of old people, he narrated that he didn’t realize he was a child at that time, he thought he was like everyone else, at the same time showing that he was banging a fork so as to listen the sound from banging it.
Sensorimotor stage of Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development can be applied to the above scene. In general, Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development refers to how a person perceives, thinks, and gains understanding of one’s world through the interaction and influence of genetic and learned factors (Lee, 2011). There are four stages, including sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, and formal operational stage. Sensorimotor stage is the first stage of the cognitive development, it lasts from birth to two years old.
