First of all, the change of Mike’s feeling to and development of his sense of belonging to this foster family, which may be the most important and drastic change. Since he was a little boy, he has been deprived of the right of living with his own mother and the right of enjoying the motherly love and care. Always feeling hopeless and lonely, he is afraid to make friends with other people and in such way he goes through his childhood. So he seldom talks and doesn’t want to be the burden to his foster family, and prefers to sleep in school gym at night. He is lucky to meet Leigh, the woman who helps him unconditionally. Leigh resolutely decides to adopt the child. She not only gives the boy a warm family and the respect should be enjoyed by all human beings, regardless of the race and birth. She never complains about his dumb and is always patient. She teaches Mike by personal example as well as verbal instruction. She is so brave to face all the rumors and doubts, she always encourages Mike to be a man and speak out what he’s thinking. As an old saying goes: He that walks with wise men shall be wise. She is successful in opening Mike’s heart and making him happier and outgoing than before. The most important is that Mike knows how to love and care his family. We can see this when Leigh finds Mike’s has no clothes to wear and takes Mike to the horrible part of the town to buy dreadful clothes, Mike tells Leigh doesn’t be afraid because he will protect her.
In the field of psychology, we may ascribe this to the influence of positive psychology.
Martin Seligman, the founder of the positive psychology, pides this field into three related topics: Positive objective experience, including feelings of happiness, joy, gratitude and achievement; positive personal characteristics, insisting of inpidual strength, talent, interest and value; positive institutions, including family, school, business institutions, community and society. Moreover, there exists a very special and significant relationship among the three topics: positive institutions can promote and reflect the development of positive personal characteristics, and therefore promote the active subjective experience production. (Seligman, 2010: 15)
Just as it expresses in the above paragraph, positive objective experience could model positive personal characteristics. In this film, Leigh’s optimism and passion touches Mike, becomes an objective experience of Mike, and gradually become a characteristic of Mike. This explains the change of Mike’s sense of belonging and attitude toward family.
When we turn back to the film, it is not difficult to find that Leigh leads a happy and rich life with a husband who always supports her ideas and action and two children. The positive institution, a happy family, contributes to her particular personality strength, also to the material conditions needed for her kind actions. In the film, Leigh is a warm, kind lady always filled with energy and passion. While keeping her family well and taking good care of her families, she also has her own interest and enjoys her own leisure time. Apart from all these, she also enjoys a high social status. All these positive factors have a great impact on the growth of Mike.
At the same time, this positive relationship also brings great effects to Oher. On feeling those experiences of happiness and joy, his positive personal characters have been developed and his strength of personality has been boosted. Of course, we shouldn’t ignore his talent for football, which has been maximized through the influence and improvement of this kind of positive institution. It is said in the Positive Psychology: The word promotion avoids the harsh words restrictions deliberately. It can make people enjoy happiness and achievements even they lack good characters, make those who live outside the institutions can possess kind personalities.however, when the characteristic and experience of institution and person unit, it becomes easier. Actually, the beauties and happiness of lives always represent the harmony in the above important fields.(Peterson, 2010: 13) 电影《弱点》英文论文(5):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_2963.html