The Godfather

• Never feels as a part of the family business.

• Transformation – Father is nearly assassinated.

• Murders the people responsible

• Flees to Sicily – Relationship with Apollonia

• Brother’s murder – Responsibility of family

• Marry Kay – Legitimize Family Business

• Vito’s death – Conspiracy against Michael.

• Kills his brother in law, Carlo

Godfather II n III

• Business with Hyman Roth

• Kills his brother, Fredo

• Handover mafia activities to other families

• Daughter relationship with Vincent

• Rise of Vincent, his nephew

• Loss of his beloved daughter

• Lonely death

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This kind of behavior reflects the influence of his infantile desires – ID and exemplifies the Pleasure Principle. Example: He knew that Carlo Rizzi was responsible for his brother’ s death. But Michael kills Carlo only after Don Vito’s death because Carlo is still family. This represents the Intervention of his Ego to come up an “acceptable” solution.

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He waits till his mother’s death to kill his brother Fredo who betrayed him and unintentionally leads to the attempt on his life.

• psychosexual development • Freud believed that personality develops through a series of

childhood stages during which the pleasure-seeking energies of the id become focused on certain areas.

• 5 stages:

– Oral, Anal, Phallic, latent, Genital

• Oral Stage: – The primary conflict at this stage is the weaning process--the child

becomes dependent upon caretakers. If fixation occurs at this stage, Freud believed the individual would have issues with dependency or aggression.

• Phallic stage:

– Michael’s personality could also be seen as fixated on the phallic stage of psychosexual development.

– Although as a young adult he never had ambitions of taking over the family business, it is evident that he had an unconscious Oedipus complex.

Defense Mechanisms

• Rationalization:

• He uses Rationalization by not letting Kay and his family know his “Business”.

• He lies to them in order to protect them from knowing all of the criminal acts he does. Michael uses rationalization as defense mechanism, but only for the protection of his family.

Carl Jung Typology • Jung used the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to theorize that there are 8

personality types that are determined by 4 functions (sensing, thinking, feeling, and intuiting) and 2 attitudes (extraversion and introversion).

• Michael would be an Introvert – Intuitive – Thinking – Judging.

• Typical characteristics of INTJ: – INTJs are natural leaders, although they usually choose to remain in the

background until they see a real need to take over the lead. When they are in leadership roles, they are quite effective, because they are able to objectively see the reality of a situation, and are adaptable enough to change things which aren't working well. They are the supreme strategists - always scanning available ideas and concepts and weighing them against their current strategy, to plan for every conceivable contingency.

Agreeableness

Extroversion

Conscientiousness

Neuroticism

Openness

• Ruthless: • Michael, accepts a business meeting request by Sollozzo

where he shoots and kills both the drug dealer and his corrupt, police captain body guard.

• Critical : • Michael killed Carlo as just consequence for the death of

his brother, even at the expense of his sister and his newly baptized godson. Suspicious :As a mafia hood he is cautious and suspicious of the people around him.

• Scores low on agreeableness parameter

• Reserved : – Michael was very reserved . Even at an occasion like her sister’s

marriage he spent time with his girl friend alone. But as a Don he had to spend time on the “Family Business” which involves a sense of extroversion.

• Quiet and loner :

– He was not a loner. Being a don, he always had people supporting him but he divulges with only a few among his family.

Scores middling on extrovert parameter

• Ambitious: • Establish himself as a prominent mob boss in New York City. He never moved

to any alternative.

Movie 1: He tries to dominate over all the mafia families. Movie 2: He tries to expunge all charges against him made by the senate. Movie 3: He works to make Corleone family legitimate. • Strategic:

• Michael is a strategist, he plans to counter all possible attacks that could happen to him or his family in any way.

Scores high on conscientiousness parameter

• Emotionally stable : • When Michael was about to leave Sicily for home . One of the crime families

had found out where Michael was being harbored and rigged his car to explode once the ignition was started, only it was his new wife, Apollonia, who had started the car. She was killed. He was emotionally stable after such a huge loss to him.

• Calm : • Michael has aspects of both extremes because, although on the outside, he appears calm and content, internally he is very alert and tense. Michael volunteers to kill Sollozzo in the first part, not out of revenge, but rather out of calm, levelheaded business sense.

Scores average on the neuroticism parameter

• Original thinker:

• Although he was not very imaginative or artistic, his plans for control are very original.

• Frankness:

• While in Sicily, Michael sees a woman, follows her to her home, and very bluntly asks her father for her hand in marriage before ever knowing her name.

He is nonconventional and creative.

On his command, Tom Hagen convinces Pentangeli, a student of history, into committing suicide, just as the Romans did after a failed plot against the Emperor.

Maslow’s Pyramid of needs

Physiological needs

• He was the son of Don Vito Corleone

“The God Father”. He belongs to one

of the wealthiest and powerful

families.

Safety and security

• He took over as the head of the family after his father Vito Corleone died. He ran their family business.

• As he was mafia Don he had regular murder attempts on him.

Love and belongingness

• Michael flees to Sicily, where he lives for two years. he falls in love with and soon marries a beautiful young woman named Apollonia. she is killed by a car bomb intended for Michael, planted by a corrupt bodyguard.

• About a year after he returns to the United States, he reunites with Kay and marries her. Within two years, they have two children, Anthony and Mary.

• Later he banishes Kay from their family and they divorce later that year.

Self Esteem

• Lower needs:

– He was respected by his friends and other families.

• Higher needs:

– “I will become wiser when I am dead”

Self Actualization

• He constantly tries to protect his family from the mafia threats. He tries to be an ideal parent.

• He kills all his enemies(tentative threats) and becomes the head of mafia in New York for 20 years.

Thank you