James Frey Book Report

I identify with; Lilly she’s kind hearted and listens, she has troubles in her life but knows how to keep them together for the most part. She helped James out a lot through out this story of his life. Lilly had her hard times, being an addict herself caused her much pain but she was still able to find someone and managed to help him even if her life wasn’t going as well as she hoped.

I don’t identify with her because I’m an addict, or because I used to be one. I identify with her, because no matter how rough my life gets no matter what God puts in my way I still can push it all aside and forget about my problems for just that few seconds to make a difference in someone else’s life. I found that she was incredibly brave, up until the end it didn’t say why but it did say that she committed suicide by hanging herself a few days after her grandmother had died, in the book it showed she was extremely close to her. It showed that she was so close with family, and I am too. My family means the world to me, and when things happen to them I can just barley make it out of bed the next few days.

She was incredibly in love with James, she sees past all of his flaws, and knows that he’s as real as people get. Full of faults, and problems but yet some how he’s perfect. With that said, I look at my relationship the same way, he may have his faults but I know he’s the most perfect man for me.

Page 152-155 in the book, James is walking on a trail and starts think about his life and gets so pissed off that he starts tearing apart a small pine tree. He says he hears a voice behind him but he doesn’t care, and then when he has almost demolished the tree he turns around to the voice, and it’s Lilly, and she hugs him and tells him that it’s ok, and just holds him and lets him cry it out.

This reminded me of the section of Psychology that we recently studied �Stress, Health, and Coping (chapter13)’ First it reminded me of chapter 13 because well obviously he has some sort of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, caused from his addictions and living in complete poverty and basically thinking his parents didn’t care about him as a child. Also because his life had many stressors, as the book described stressors are; Events or situations that are perceived as harmful, threatening, or challenging (Hockenbury, and Hockenbury, 2006). In this section of the book, he was obviously experiencing something’s in his life that he perceived as threatening, like the people in the clinic and his family.

I also found similarities in �Personality (chapter 11)’. I found Freud’s �Dynamic Theory of Personality’ located in the part of �The Structure of Personality’ with the death instinct, or which Freud called: Thanatos, which can cause threatening behaviors, including self destructive actions, which are clearly displayed with the drug abuse, and disassembling the tree.

Also in chapter 11 with the theory of the Id, and the Ego, well from what I understand of the Id and the Unconscious, I believe that the thoughts that he was having were moved into the preconscious. Some of the things that he was saying were quite irrational and it seemed that his Ego and superego were totally being ignored when he did things and also said and thought some of the things in this section, but in the first few pages it seems that is all that was there was his morals and rightful things to do. But then it skipped to uncontrollable rage, and then to just letting go to Lilly.

In this section there is also what chapter 11 called �Displacement’ which is a psychoanalytic theory, that says the ego defense mechanism that involves unconsciously shifting the target of an emotional urge to a substitute target that is less threatening