An adlerian analysis of “The kid” movie

Abstract

The main inspiration of cinema is human life, and cinema is an important tool in the journey to the human inner world. Therefore, psychology, as a science which tries to understand the individuals, has always been inside the cinema. This article presents an Adlerian approach towards the movie “The Kid” which was directed by Jon Turteltaub and written by Audrey Wells. The movie was released in 2001 in Turkey. Authors of the article focus on the life of the main character, Russ with an Adlerian perspective and analyse the movie using Adlerian terms such as social interest, lifestyle, inferiority feeling and superiority striving, superiority complex, family impact, life tasks and early recollections. It has been revealed in the document analysis conducted that childhood memories have left marks on the life of the main character, Russ; that his personality is influenced by the intense inferiority he felt during his childhood and that his lifestyle, his occupation, and his interpersonal relations have been shaped according to these life events. As a result, this study shows that the movie, “The Kid”, can be used as an experimental learning material for teaching the theoretical knowledge about the Individual Psychology.