“What about Bob?”
“What about Bob???”
“What about BOB??!!”
The above lines from the movie, What About Bob?, not only share the title’s name, but are a running question that the central characters ask throughout the film. And it begs another question: What exactly is it about the film – and the main character, Bob Wiley — that is also a central question to psychology and personality theories?
From its more modern advent in the late 19th / early 20th centuries, psychology has evolved extensively from Freud pioneering psychoanalysis and psychodynamic theory, to the many other psychologists who have revamped psychodynamic theory throughout the decades, or formed other theories that strayed liberally from Freudian thought.
Karen Horney and George Kelly, two of the several psychologists whose influences echoed throughout the 20th century, each contributed an angle to personality theory that would eventually morph over time into the now popular Five-Factor Personality Model – also simply known as The Big Five.
Horney, whose work was an offshoot of psychodynamic theory, veered away from Freud’s emphasis on biological factors underlying personality development. And like other psychoanalysts after Freud, Horney was completely opposed to Freud’s theories on psychosexual development. Above all, Horney was much more interested in how culture affects personality development and gender roles. Her studies included a detailed analysis of neurotic behaviors, which she believed were the direct result of cultural influences. Horney also believed that neurotic behaviors spawn from childhood experiences, and that cultural context emphasizes those experiences (Kelland, 2017).
Kelly, who pioneered cognitive psychology, was yet another defector from Freud’s theories. And while Kelly did see some value in Freud’s base work on psychoanalysis and psychodynamic theory, Kelly had a fundamental issue with the therapist role of interpreting a client’s disorder: He believed that because there are so many variables to how individuals perceive reality, it is necessary to factor a client’s individual experiences and perspectives / how these are used to form a particular view of reality. Kelly turned this analysis into what is now known as the Personal Construct theory (Cherry, 2020).
Let’s now explore the synopsis of What About Bob, as well how Horney’s and Kelly’s approaches to psychology could be applied to the environmental, biological, and social causes for Bob’s behaviors. And full disclosure: What About Bob? Is one of my all-time favorite movies!
To begin, What About Bob? — starring Bill Murray (Bob Wiley), Richard Dreyfuss (Dr. Leo Marvin), Julie Haggerty (Fay / Marvin’s wife), Catherine Erbe (Anna / Marvin’s teenage daughter), and Charlie Korsmo (Sigmund / Marvin’s pre-adolescent son) – features the main character, Bob Wiley, as a 30th something, divorced male who feels mentally trapped within numerous phobias, which make him highly neurotic and dysfunctional in everyday society.
After Bob’s therapist ends up in his own meltdown from letting Bob’s behaviors ignite his own neurosis, he sends Bob over to Dr. Leo Marvin, a psychologist whose book, called Baby Steps, catapults his career into celebrity-like status, including an invitation from Good Morning America to interview him about his book.
Because Bob is plagued with many phobias – including germaphobia / using a tissue to touch anything outside the confines of his apartment, claustrophobia, and having severe anxiety all-around — his first meeting with Leo Marvin is a colossal effort, mostly because of his excessive anxiety just to leave his apartment, to using public transportation, to showing up to Leo’s office drenched in sweat, after having run up several flights of stairs, instead of taking the elevator.
Leo’s first meeting with Bob sets the stage for the rest of the movie: Leo picks up early on that Bob – who is fully transparent about his issues – is severely neurotic: Leo, who just so happens to have several copies of Baby Steps on-hand in his office, gives a copy to Bob and explains how “baby steps” work. Bob, who is already obsessive with his phobias and daily regimens, follows Leo’s advice immediately, albeit painstakingly. Leo, in the meantime, takes his family up to their summer home in Lake Winnipesaukee, for what is supposed to be a relaxing vacation and Leo’s grand moment of being interviewed by Good Morning America.
Leo’s plans are derailed when Bob, who was not supposed to meet with Leo again until after the Marvin’s vacation had ended, manipulates his way into tracking down Leo (and family) and begs Leo to do something – anything – to help relieve his situation. Leo literally writes a prescription for Bob to “take a vacation” from his problems.
What starts as advice — which Leo assumes will be carried out when Bob leaves Lake Winnipesaukee and returns home — turns into Bob taking his vacation right there in Lake Winnipesaukee, befriending the town locals, winning over the empathy and affection of Leo’s family, sleeping over at the Marvin home during a torrentially rainy evening, non-maliciously causing a fiasco during and after the Good Morning America interview, and getting cozy with Leo’s visiting sister – all while sporting a t-shirt that reads, “Don’t Hassle Me – I’m Local”.
Like the beginning of the movie, the tables turn drastically as Bob dramatically overcomes his neurosis, while Leo ends up in complete psychosis. The movie ends with Bob and Leo finally making peace, after Leo “wakes up” from his meltdown to thwart Bob from marrying Marvin’s sister. Bob, of course, still marries Leo’s sister — and he even goes on to become a psychologist himself!
Now, let’s take a look at how at Horney and Kelly may have explained the disorders that made Bob a frustratingly difficult, yet ultimately loved character in the film. Horney — who was primarily concerned with how childhood development affected neurotic behaviors, and the cultural contexts that also influence them – would have certainly wanted to explore Bob’s own childhood to understand what specific experiences could have prompted Bob to become highly neurotic (Kelland, 2017). Although the film does not delve into Bob’s childhood, it does shows Bob’s life as being in the middle of a heavily populated metro area with the often loud sounds, sights, and congestion that comprise big city life. We do not know whether Bob was raised in that same city; however, it appears that he had lived there for most of his adult life.
And despite the lack of info about Bob’s childhood, Horney probably still would have wanted to understand better his city’s demographics and his cultural upbringing: Were his parents immigrants? Did his family rigidly follow specific traditions? Did he mix much with other cultures, or did he live in a more homogenous environment? Then, based on her observations regarding Bob’s neurotic behaviors, she would have applied her views to their origin and how she viewed neurosis in general (Cervone & Pervin, 2013).
In addition, because Horney’s work was also sort of a precursor to self-psychology, she may have worked with Bob on pinpointing his internal struggles and guiding him on a path towards self-realization (Kelland, 2017). This somewhat relates to the Baby Steps book that Leo Marvin promotes in the film, as the book uses said “baby steps” as its own example path towards the similar self-realization that Horney espoused.
Kelly, on the other hand, would have probably focused more on Bob’s overall view of reality and what has kept him trapped inside that perception. Kelly’s central idea, which he called constructive alternativism, explains that individuals can vary in how they retrieve, process, and interpret information and experiences. Therefore, Kelly would have been particularly interested in the environmental and social experiences that have contributed to Bob’s afflictions, and the reality he created from them (Cherry, 2020).
For instance, similar to Baby Steps and how Leo shows that Bob is far inside his own reality, Bob eventually sees he is a victim of himself and must transform that into dealing with reality in a more logical, healthier way. In fact, because Kelly’s work was so tightly integrated with discovering self-potential that, like Horney, Kelly would have emphasized a path to self-realization and change that can be adapted throughout a lifetime.
But what about biological influences? Neither Horney nor Kelly had put much of their efforts into the relationship between biological factors and psychological disorders. Horney purposely diverged from Freud on biology, as she did not believe it carried as much weight as environmental and cultural influences (Cervone & Pervin, 2013). Meanwhile, although Kelly was not as strongly opposed to the biological links to psychology, he put more of his efforts into refuting Freud’s version of psychodynamic theory, as well as promoting human potential and a healthy perception of reality (Cherry,2020).
That said, regardless of which approach could have been applied to Bob’s situation, Bob ultimately needed to achieve self-realization and potential. And in a very comical way, he did.
References
Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2013). Personality: Theory and research (12th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Kelland, M. (2017). Personality Theory. https://www.oercommons.org/authoring/22859-personality-theory/8/view
Cherry, K. (2020). George Kelly and His Personal Construct Theory. https://www.verywellmind.com/george-kelly-biography-2795498#