Insecure/Unstable Sense of Self Having an insecure or unstable sense of self means not being sure of who you are and what you want. This leads to confusion, self-doubt and lack of confidence and security.
The film revolves around Miles and his loss and uncertainty of his identity after he’s bitten by a radioactive spider. The story line consists a lot of him trying to learn who he is now and who he wants to be through a series of adventures and confronting events. He has to learn to become who he was always meant to be: himself. Miles being himself means coming to terms with the fact that he has to be Spider-Man and understanding how he can do that. He lacks faith in himself and how he’s supposed to be Spider-Man, however with the assistance of some newly made friends he is able to overcome his doubt. He becomes confident with being Spider-Man and starts to revert back to his old self. By the end of the film Miles is comfortably Spider-Man and he understands who he is again. He realises that even though he’s a superhero that doesn’t change who he is as a person but it changes his obligation and some goals.
Defence Mechanisms: Avoidance Avoidance is when you avoid certain feelings and things for reasons like past trauma, fear, uncertainty or simply not wanting to do something.
Avoidance is shown in ‘Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse‘ when Gwen avoids becoming friends with Miles. This is due to her past trauma of losing her best friend. She’s avoiding becoming friends with anyone because she’s scared of the pain she might feel if she loses them too, she’s not ready to go through that again so is avoiding human connection to protect herself from her fears of losing someone close to her. It’s shown through her reluctant tendencies like snarky remarks, not acknowledging Miles’ feelings and acting distant towards him when it came to befriending him.
This leads to fear of intimacy and fear of abandonment which I will discuss more about on the next slide.
Core Issues: Fear of Intimacy Fear of intimacy is a fear of letting people get too close, whether this is a mental or physical connection. This is most often due to past trauma. People have a fear of intimacy to protect themselves and others from getting hurt.
There are two characters that strongly portray this aspect and they are Peter B Parker and Gwen Stacy. Peter’s fear of intimacy is explained through his fear of letting MJ down. He became scared when she wanted to start a family with him so he left to protect her from what he thought would be him not being enough and himself from the pain of thinking he’s not enough. However he still possess strong feelings for her and would like to overcome his fear of not being enough.
I feel that avoidance and fear of intimacy are very strongly connected so believe that I covered most of Gwen’s fear of intimacy in the last slide.