TheGodfather

= Michael Corleone in The Godfather =

Biography
The movie The Godfather starts with Vito Corleone, the Don of the powerful and well-connected Corleone mafia family. Michael Corleone is Vito’s youngest son, a decorated war hero who has no aspirations to join the family business. However, after Don Corleone rejects a business proposition from a drug dealer named Sollozzo, this dealer puts a hit out for the Don’s life. Although Vito is not killed, he is no longer able to run the family business, so Michael’s older brother Sonny takes over. Sonny is a hot head, bent on blood and revenge and as such orders the murder of the drug dealer Sollozzo. Michael volunteers to kill Sollozzo, not out of revenge, but rather out of calm, levelheaded business sense. Michael, being a very cunning and intelligent person, accepts a business meeting request by Sollozzo where he shoots and kills both the drug dealer and his corrupt, police captain body guard. media type="youtube" key="ymoGJsaSS6c" height="385" width="480" align="center" Michael is then shipped off to Sicily for safety while all of New York goes to war over the murder of the drug dealer. 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. Michael Corleone is a firm man of strength who commands respect, as evident by his proposal and the immediate acceptance of marriage by her father. Soon after he and the girl, Apollonia, are married, Michael hears word from America that his brother Sonny, the new head of the Corleone Family, was lured out and murdered by another crime family. After hearing this news, Michael, who is very loyal to his family, is about to leave Sicily for home when his car explodes. 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, leaving Michael single and disheartened on his way back to America. Now Michael is the Don of the Corleone Family and with the help of his ageing father he is able to establish himself as a prominent mob boss in New York City. He uses his cunning to find the mole in his organization, and consequently has the mole killed along with all the major crime bosses almost simultaneously while he is made Godfather at his nephew’s baptism. He also must deal with his sister’s husband Carlo, who was the one who lured Sonny out of protection and into a trap. Michael has Carlo killed as just consequence for the death of his brother, even at the expense of his sister and his newly baptized godson. Thus, Michael cuts all the loose ends and sets his sights on moving the Corleone Family to Las Vegas where he can start a legitimate business free of any illegal activities. media type="youtube" key="F-fa6oY9YmY" height="385" width="480" align="center"

To conclude, Michael is very loyal to his family, as evident by the murder of Sollozzo and the police captain following the attempted hit on his father. He is also very cunning, as evident by the way in which he killed off all his enemies. He arranged for the series of murders while he was present at the baptism of his nephew in a very public place, thus eliminating any direct connection between the two. Michael is very firm and strong too, as evident by personally killing Sollozzo and ordering the murder of Tessio the mole and his brother-in-law Carlo. The last characteristic of Michael Corleone is respect, both his respect for family traditions, values, and principles and the respect he commands from all others around him.

Psychoanalytic Perspective
The psychoanalytic perspective of psychology is a basic approach to understanding personality. Sigmund Freud used free association to delve into the unconscious mind, what he believed was the key to people’s personality. Freud used people’s dreams to understand the unconscious and to form his theory of the structure of the mind. The id, which contained a persons basic instinct and impulses, the ego, which develops in order for a person to solve problems in the real world, and the superego, which develops to internalize societal rules and guide behavior in socially acceptable ways. The psychoanalytic perspective of Michael Corleone’s personality would argue that Michael is controlled by his ego. His id, or basic instinct, leads directly to his ego, processing his needs and solving problems in the real world. Michael Corleone doesn’t possess a superego to check his behavior and make sure his decisions follow socially acceptable practices. As a criminal, a mob boss, and a murderer, his social guidelines and moral code do not follow what the rest of us would call normal. Therefore, the psychoanalytic perspective would maintain that Michael Corleone has no superego to guide his actions in a socially acceptable fashion; rather, his id impulses are directly acted moral upon by his ego without any dilemma. Freud also theorized that personality emerged from a series of psychosexual stages that occur throughout an individual’s development. If a person remains fixated at the oral stage, when infants are driven to satisfy their needs of hunger and thirst, then as adults they still have issues of dependency and attachment. If a person remains fixated at the anal stage, when children are toilet trained, then as adults they enjoy making messes of other people’s lives, are excessively stingy, and are passive aggressive. The next stage Freud explored was the phallic stage in which children focus on the genitals and as such develop an Oedipus complex. Because a child cannot kill his father and marry his mother, like Oedipus in the classic Oedipus Rex, young boys identify with their fathers to resolve this conflict. The latency period of Freud’s stage theory states that during this time there are no important psychosexual developments taking place so sexual urges are channeled into other activities like school and making friends. The last stage of Freud’s development theory, the genital stage, begins in adolescence and states that attention is now turned towards heterosexual relationships. Michael Corleone exhibits behavior that can be easily attributed to several of the stages found in Freud’s psychosexual development model. First of all, Michael’s devout loyalty to his family can be seen as an oral fixation. Although he is a very independent person, Michael feels very attached to his family and will go to any lengths, like murder, in order to make sure his family is kept safe. He is also a very ambitious person, always seeking new knowledge and information that could help expand his empire and legitimize his business. Michael Corleone’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. Michael saw his father Vito as a strong male figure who brought his family out of Italian poverty and into American wealth. Thus, he took on his father as a role model and strived to become a man by becoming just like his father; a powerful and respected crime family boss on the way to exceeding his fathers accomplishments. Michael Corleone’s psychosexual development can be seen as fixated on both the oral and phallic stages in Freud’s theory. The last insight into Freud’s psychoanalytic approach dealt with defense mechanisms, or the process by which the mind distorts reality to protect the ego. Repression, denial, projection, and rationalization are just a few of the ways in which Freud hypothesized that reality is altered in order to protect the ego. This is the one aspect of Freud’s psychoanalytic approach that is difficult to relate to Michael Corleone’s personality. Michael does not use defense mechanisms. He confronts his problems head on, usually anticipating threatening impulses before they happen. He is a calculating, cunning, and composed with a vision that that will not be deterred. If he or his family is threatened he eliminates the problem. Instead of accepting the threat as a threat, he simply gets rid of it rather than denying, repressing, or displacing it. Michael Corleone does use one defense mechanism, however. After committing numerous crimes, although always following his own unwavering code of ethics, he does use rationalization in order to keep his family safe from knowledge of his deeds. He lies to them in order to protect them from knowing all of the criminal acts he does. In this way, Michael Corleone does use rationalization as defense mechanism, but only for the protection of his family.

The trait approach to psychology uses a limited set of adjectives or adjective dimensions to describe an individual and their personality. One trait psychologist was Carl Jung, who introduced extraversion and introversion to the field of trait psychology. 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 Corleone, being a logical and objective man of power, would fall under the rational, thinking function. He is also a very extraverted person, directing much of his energy outside of the self, more specifically, toward the safety of his family. This evaluation of Michael Corleone is true of his personality because he is always cool and composed and never irrational when it comes to business decisions that involve his family. Another trait psychologist was Gordon Allport, who defined a trait as a core tendency that underlies behavior across time and situations. He theorized that a trait is an internal structure that views many different stimuli as functionally equivalent, thus eliciting a similar response over various situations. Along the same thought process, Allport stated that every personality has a personal disposition or trait that is unique to the individual. This trait can either be a cardinal disposition, which exerts an overwhelming influence on behavior, or it can be made up of central dispositions around which personality is organized. Allport would say that Michael Corleone fits his trait approach theories. Michael’s decisions and beliefs never waver and are always calculated and formed around his personal moral code. Therefore, no matter what the situation, he always reverts back to his personal cardinal disposition, which is his will exerting an overwhelming influence on behavior. The next aspect of the trait approach is the Big Five Model. This model is a self -report test that measures people’s personality levels in five categories; extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. Michael Corleone would be considered extraverted because of his dominant behavior, although other aspects of extraversion like sociable and talkative do not describe his personality. He would not be very agreeable, as he is not friendly, cooperative, or trusting but he would score high on conscientiousness because he is very cautious, dependable, organized, and responsible. On both the neurotic and openness dimensions, Michael has aspects of both because although on the outside he appears calm and content, internally he is very alert and tense. Also, he is not very imaginative or artistic, but his plans for control are very original and witty which would make his ratings on the openness dimensions higher. The last aspect of the trait approach to personality is Murray’s Needs Theory. Murray used the term “needs” to describe a readiness to respond a certain way under given conditions. He stated that people have a need for achievement, or a need to succeed on task that society sets. People also have a need for affiliation, or a need to win the affection of others. He also theorized that people have a need for power, or to seek positions in which one can exert control over other and that people have a need for exhibition, or a need to show one’s self before others to shock and excite them. Michael Corleone shows a need for achievement within the society in which he is a part of, the criminal underworld. He also shows a need for affiliation in the love and affection he requires from his family. Michael most definitely shows a need for power in that he spends his entire life striving for higher positions of authority where he is in charge. Lastly, Michael Corleone doesn’t personally show a need for exhibition, but he commits crimes that send messages to other bosses in order to spread shock and fear, a lesson he learned from his father after he put a dead horse head in the bed of a man who disrespected him.

Discussion
After looking at Michael Corleone through both a psychoanalytic and trait approach to his personality, I have a greater appreciation for his character. He is an orally and phallically fixated mob boss controlled by his ego without any superego to socially check his actions and behavior. He doesn’t even use any defense mechanisms because he eliminates all of his problems before they exist. His cardinal dispositions of always remaining logical, objective, conscientious and extraverted are a deadly combination when it comes to his position as a family Don. Additionally, Michael Corleone’s need for achievement and power drive him to excel and expand his mob family to larger and greater things, eventually leading to a legitimate family business. He represents the extreme bounds of the personality spectrum in both the psychoanalytic and trait approach while remaining an accessible and relatable character. Michael Corleone remains one of the most dissected and complex personalities in the history of film