N480 The Pursuit of Happyness Family

The Pursuit of Happyness Family

By Kenneth A Molnar

N480: Family Visual Assessment Project

Meet the Gardners

Intimacy vs isolation

Married to Chris and mother to Christopher. Linda is a handmaiden at a hotel that often works double shifts to cover financial expenses for family. She married Chris after becoming pregnant with Christopher five years ago. When Christopher turned 5, Linda leaves the family and moves across the country. She is in the Intimacy vs Isolation stage and pursues isolation from her family, closing her self off from intimacy and ultimately leaving

Industry vs Inferiority, 5 Christopher

Christopher is five year old son of Chris and Linda. Christopher goes to daycare and gets dropped off & picked up by his father everyday. He dreams of being a basketball player when he grows up. He enjoys telling jokes and spending time with his dad. He is in the Industry vs Inferiority stage. He is beginning to have life goals, socialize with his peers, and understand circumstances of his family (Mcleod, 2018).

Chris 30, Intimacy vs isolation

Chris is married to Linda and the Father of Christopher. He grew up without his father, meeting him for the first time at age 28. He vows to be a best father he can be for Christopher. He graduated the top of his class in high school, but never went to college. He works as a medical device salesman, but doesn’t make enough to cover his family’s expenses. He ultimately becomes a single dad and homeless with Christopher. He eventually seeks becoming an investment broker in the pursuit of lifting his family out of poverty. Chris is in the Intimacy vs Isolation stage, choosing intimacy and commitment to his son (Mcleod, 2018).

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD)

This disorder can be defined as a “pervasive pattern of perfectionism and inflexibility” (Morgan & Townsend, p.270, 2018). The symptoms include characteristics such as “Excessive devotion to work and productivity to the exclusion of pleasure”, depressed mood with being overly judgmental of oneself, and difficulty expressing tender feelings (Morgan & Townsend, p.270, 2018). This is repeatedly modeling in Chris in the film. He has difficulty expressing his inner feelings and insecurities with his wife, which eventually drives his wife to leave him. He also projects his failures on his son at times, backtracking his mistake when he watches his son’s reactions. He devotes himself to maximizing the productivity of his work, even going as far to not drink water to use the bathroom less. And he also routinely monologues about the failures in his life and how he would “get this good feeling about all the things I could be. And then I never became any of them” (Muccino, 2006)

Duvall Family Theory

According to Duvall, the Gardners are in the stage 3 of family theory, “Families with preschool children”. In this stage, the parents are assessing and adjusting to their roles as their child begins aging (Lang, 2020). In this period, children are learning to be guided in proper directions, learning to socialize with others, and beginning the process of education (Lang, 2020). In the movie, Christopher is repeatedly guided by his father to learn continuously, always challenging Christopher to understand the vocabulary he uses and its importance. Chris also challenges Christopher to follow his dreams, “Don’t ever let someone tell you, you can’t do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you gotta protect it” (Muccino, 2006). Throughout the challenges in the movie, Chris becomes the guiding father to Christopher that he never had.

Communication

The Gardners often struggle to communicate effectively with one another due to the overwhelming stress that affects their lives. Linda is struggling with her independence from her family and prefers to get closed off when speaking to her husband, ultimately choosing to leave the situation altogether. Chris struggles to not press his insecurities and past failures onto his family, often needing to reevaluate his words and change his position. He also has high level of attachment anxiety to his son and seeks his approval of him being a good father, as expressed in many OCPD individuals (Pozza et al, 2021). Christopher mimics both his parents styles in situations, but grows to communicate more like a better version of his father.

Strengths

● Despite all their struggles, Chris absolute motivation in life is to be a great father to his son. In spite of any hardship they face, he always places his son’s needs first.

● Chris routinely uses his and his son’s imagination to reengineer the environment they are in and create one that brings joy to the both of them.

● Christopher may struggle with the circumstances they are in, but he he always trusts and follows his father.

● Chris repeatedly drives his son to excel in whatever he wishes to pursue, pushing him to have his dreams, and is always supportive of the choices he makes.

Challenges

● Linda decides to abandon the family due to the financial & personal pressures, creating a single parent family.

● Chris repeatedly pushes his failures on his son at times. He realizes his mistake and changes when Christopher becomes closed off like his mother.

● Chris and Christopher fail to establish strong relationships in the community when they become homeless, requiring them to focus on living needs over social ones.

● Throughout the film, Chris decides to internally brunt all the stressors of their situation. He tries his best to create a normal life for Christopher, but Christopher is able to understand their situation over time and he struggles to adapt to his changing childhood.

Family Culture

The Gardners, and ultimately just Chris and Christopher, live in poverty. They struggle to pay their bills and eventually become homeless for a period, living their lives day to day trying to find shelter and food. Despite this, Chris instills in his son the values of pursuing education, the importance of having dreams, and the work ethic needed to achieve them. Chris teaches his son the importance of having values and treating people right, all while he struggles to provide the basic needs for his son. And for Chris himself, the importance of being there for his son and providing the best life for him is the ultimate goal and motivation for achievement. Similar to the title of the movie, Chris believes happiness needs to be pursued for his family, it is not freely given. The Gardners are not depicted to be religious.

Bowen’s Family Systems Theory

According to Bowen, families are intensely and emotionally connected with these emotions affecting thoughts, feelings, and actions of individual family members such that the family is a multifaceted system (Willis et al, 2021). “Bowen distilled these processes down to eight interlocking concepts: differentiation of self, nuclear family emotional system, triangles, family projection process, multigenerational transmission process, emotional cutoff, sibling position, and societal emotional process” (Willis et al, 2021). A key principle of this theory when it comes to separated families is Bowen’s theory on triangulation, which is when one member of the family picks a side over the whole. In the film, we see Christopher choose his dad’s side, as well as Chris choosing his son over keeping the marriage together. The result is a worsening of Chris’s OCPD to work harder for a better life for his son and Christopher’s stress increasing as a result of the separation of his parents along with the changing of their living situation.