Sylvester Stallone, Essay Example

Part 1.

Sylvester Stallone is a famous Hollywood movie star who has become mostly known for two outstanding roles and images that he has created on the screen: Rocky Balboa, an unknown boxer who managed to win fame only with his own forces, perseverance and personal strength, and Rambo, a fierce soldier who treats his enemies in a cruel way and establishes justice with violence and revenge. The life path of the actor resembles the images that he has embodied on the Hollywood screen very much; Stallone was born in 1946 in the poor part of Manhattan that was called Hell’s Kitchen and was a very tough place to survive in. His mother was a chorine, and his father was an Italian immigrant; the accident during Sylvester’s birth left him with the problem with the facial nerve for his whole life, giving the actor a very specific facial expression and a very characteristic manner of speaking (Brennan, 2010).

Stallone’s childhood was far from happy because of the constant financial problems of his parents trying to provide for his living and the life of his younger brother Frank. Parents had no consensus and spent most of their time fighting and quarrelling, which left both sons without attention. Sylvester even had to spend the first five years of his life in a foster home because of the parental hardships, and developed the skill of acting because of his wish to be loved and paid attention to. Stallone’s parents divorced in 1957, and the 11-year-old Stallone was left with his father. Studies at school were not successful as Sylvester was always involved in risky behaviors, trying to create an image of a hero of underdogs. At the same time studies went very bad, with low marks and persistent problems with Stallone’s behavior. He even attended the school for emotionally disturbed children (Brennan, 2010). However, at the same time Stallone’s aspirations the area of sports and acting started to develop; he acted at school and in the Devereaux High School, the American College of Switzerland etc., still continuing to be professionally engaged in sports (athletic scholarship, coaching, weigh-lifting, discus etc.).

However, Stallone has always been obsessed with an acting career, which never came true until the 1976 success of the film scripted by him personally, Rocky. There were several small achievements before Rockywas screened, but only through script-writing and creation of Rocky and Rambo Stallone finally found himself at the top of the Hollywood acting elite. Afterwards, there were several very successful films with his participation, though Stallone’s appearance on the screen became less frequent in the 21^st century (Brennan, 2010).

As for the personal life of Stallone, he was married three times and has two children from his first wife Sasha Czack, one of who pursues an acting career and another one was diagnosed with autism. The marriage with Brigitte Nielsen did not give him children and ended with an audacious scandal, while the third marriage with Jennifer Flavin gave Stallone a daughter whose in-born heart problems were luckily resolved soon after birth (Brennan, 2010). Stallone remains a famous, well-recognized personality nowadays and lives with his family, continuing to produce films and to star in them.

Part 2.

Psychoanalytic and Neoanalytic Theories. The central psychoanalytical theory is the one of Freud. It rests on the assumption that the human life is moved by two instincts, the life and death ones. The life instinct dictates striving for pleasure, while the death instinct is revealed in the person’s aggression (Kasschau, 1985). Here one can draw a clear line for Stallone’s psychoanalysis: the actor directed his aggression and striving for success in his films and heroes who solved their problems with aggression. Stallone did not manage to break the stereotype of him playing only aggressive, tough and cruel heroes. Thus, the psychoanalysis of Freud about people being led by instincts is rather efficient for analyzing his personality development. The childhood problems with the family have also produced much impact on Stallone’s life, so it proves effective for Stallone to a larger extent.

As for neo-analytic theories, such ones as Jung’s theory of archetypes claiming that the spiritual forces are also influential alongside with social and biological factors, and the theory of Erikson about social and political forces prevailing in personality development, are also efficient for the assessment of Stallone’s personality. Sullivan’s theory of core relationships also makes sense in the context of the influence of the environment on Stallone’s formation (Millon, 2003).

Psychosocial Theories. The psychosocial theory of development is much wider than the conventional psychoanalytical theory of Freud. Its founder is Erik Erikson who bases his assumptions on the psychosexual development but adds the influence during the whole life span and not only childhood, and emphasizes social relationships within a family and in the person’s environment (Cherry, 2010). Hence, it is more comprehensive, particularly in the case of Stallone’s personality development as it includes essential influences of the hard situation in Stallone’s family and hard childhood that caused much misconduct and even the state of Stallone’s emotional disturbance.

Nonetheless, the model rests more of the social and psychosexual factors of the personality development, which is rather limited for the case of Stallone. Even being thrown into hostile environment and suffering many psychological problems in childhood, Stallone did not follow a delinquent path and did not find the sublimation for his hard childhood days in the films that he made. Hence, it can be seen that the Freud’s theory and its extension in the psychosocial one does not seem to be of much effect on Sylvester Stallone.

Trait, Evolutionary and Genetic/Biological Approaches. The approach of trait, or biological personality development was typical for William Sheldon, the founder of constitutional psychology, and Raymond Cattell, the proponent of the factor theory. The founders of the biological approach to personality development stated that the human behavior is a compound phenomenon consisting of the abilities biologically inherited from parents and incorporated in his organism, and accumulated from the individual’s past experience (Kasschau, 1985).

Judging from Sheldon’s constitutional psychology, Stallone possesses a mesomorph somatotonic type of physique, and the majority of his personality development features depend on the constitution of his body. However, the main criticism of Sheldon’s approach is that it is limited to the assessment of the physical construction of the body but not to his/her way of behaving. Thus, the body in movement and behavior is the only tool for assessment; in other way, when it is assessed statically, there is no reliability in evaluation. The present model has sure disadvantages in assessing Stallone’s personality development because he does not represent a typical prototype of a mesomorph somatotonic type; Stallone developed his body, mind and soul at the same time; in case he were assessed with Sheldon’s method, the prognosis of his school-mates about Stallone likely to finish his life at the electric chair would have become true.

Cattell’s method is wider because it takes into consideration both observable, that is, superficial traits of the personality and the source traits that are more in-depth, characteristic ones. Deriving data from his factor theory, one can measure Stallone’s extent of openness with people, his intelligence, emotionality, assertiveness, objectivity, conscientiousness, shyness, tenderness etc. Some of the features are superficial and represent the way that Stallone is seen by the public. However, there are some tools for in-depth assessment of his true personality that is hidden from the public sight. Some disadvantage that can be found in the theory of Cattell is that too much data is taken into account, thus making the researcher lose the feeling of a personality and making him/her more generalizable.

Cognitive, Behavioral and Social Learning Theories. Bandura’s social learning theory suggests that once a person produces some actions and is rewarded for them, he or she learns a certain action. The theory has been supported much by animal research and claims that people’s responses to similar actions may be different depending on their past experiences. Thus, the response can be predetermined by the past experience of the respondent (Kasschau, 1985).

It is hard to apply the social learning theory to Stallone because he is a contradictory model for the present case. If Sylvester Stallone followed the social learning model, he would be more likely to neglect his children, to be less willing to engage in family relationships. However, there are some traits observable from the angle of social learning in Stallone – first of all, he was an amateur and learned much only by looking, which is the central assumption in the theory. Secondly, Stallone was a fighter by nature and achieved everything alone, which shows his attitude to his derived from childhood experiences.

Humanistic Theories. The humanistic approach to personality development analysis rests on the assumption that a person can be evaluated only on the basis of his/her inner perceptions of him-/herself and other that lead to self-realization. The major founders of the approach are Rogers and Maslow; the scientists state that the personality develops in the environment as a result of responses to it. The way personality develops is directly connected to the way the person perceives his/her environment and what he or she wants from it. Judging from the self-growth theory, Stallone can be assessed as a fighter who was put into hostile environment and chose one of the two ways – either to put up with the state of affairs and to refuse from any benefits in life, or to fight for the recognition, for success and well-being. The main assumption of the theory is the feel-good principle; the person thus has to do everything that may make him or her feel good in the environment (Kasschau, 1985).

Stallone chose the way of resistance but not accommodation, though he really behaved bad and won his reputation not with marks and conduct but being a notorious risk-taker. The actor’s interest to sports may also be explained as a natural response to the threat of the district in which he lived, the school in which he studied, and maybe the children who could abuse him if he were weaker. Besides, it is known that the interest to acting was also a response to the hostile environment of a foster house where Stallone was looking for some attention from adults. Hence, the self-growth humanistic theory appears the most successful for assessment of Stallone’s personality development (Kasschau, 1985).

Part 3.

The personality assessment is a complex process that requires comprehensive knowledge of the psychological theory and practice, possessing the large amount of biographical data about the person and utilizing the most popular and efficient theories of personality development that have been worked out within the past century of psychology development. The theories that have been discussed in the present paper surely have a set of advantages and peculiarities, but each of them has a realm of limitations and disadvantages as well. Consequently, the individual has to remember about the individual approach to each client for psychoanalysis; every personality is influenced by environmental, social, physical and other factors to a different extent, so the specificity of personality assessment is present in each case. Some more comprehensive models not enumerated in the present work are the five-factor model of Hans Eysenck, the self-actualization model of Maslow, the developmental causal analysis and Immelman’s model for the psychological diagnosis (Millon, 2003). They all explore the personality from various angles and offer a set of efficient recommendations on the procedure of data collection, diagnosis and production of conclusions.

References

Brenna, S. (2010). Sylvester Stallone Biography. Retrieved August 9, 2010, from http://www.fandango.com/sylvesterstallone/biographies/p112464

Cherry, K. (2010). Major Theories of Personality Development. Retrieved August 9, 2010, from http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydevelopment/a/persona lity-dev.htm

Kasschau, R.A. (1985). Psychology: Exploring Behavior. (2^nd ed.). Pearson Prentice Hall.

Millon, T. (2003). Handbook of psychology: Personality and social psychology. Vol. 5, John Wiley and Sons.