Good Will Hunting

Movie/TV Show Being Reviewed:
Good Will Hunting

Reviewer:
Tom Sweeney

Genre:
Drama

Movies/TV Shows:
Movie

Suggested Age Range:
Parental Guidance

Age Range Explained:
Profanity, psychological dynamics, family abuse

Subject Headings:
PTSD, Child abuse, male and female relationships, career development, effective and ineffective counseling interventions, advanced techniques.

Review:
This Academy Award winning movie written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck propelled their careers into the Hollywood limelight. Will (Damon), extraordinarily gifted intellectually, is discovered solving complex mathematical problems while cleaning the floors as a janitor at MIT. The story unfolds around Will’s struggle to overcome early child abuse and his South Boston Irish values and lifestyle, and learn to trust his and others’ feelings in relationships. Robin Williams, brilliant and struggling with the loss of his wife, grows along with Will through a sustained counseling relationship.

I have used this movie to demonstrate resistance, facilitative challenging, authentic friendship, transference, counter-transference, accurate and substantive empathy, life style, early recollections, and how one’s culture and adult modeling can be for good or bad in any particular case. This movie is rich with possibilities for counselors-in-training as well as experienced clinicians.

Favorite scenes: initial interview (client resistance); sitting at the lake (facilitative confrontation); Will recounting why he won’t accept a better job (private logic); Will and friend at work - told the best 10 seconds of friend’s day is when he hopes Will is not home and has left this life behind (friendship); Sean (Robin) challenges Will to accept that his child abuse was not his fault (accurate depth empathy).

Originally posted on 8/26/2008 at csi-net.org