The Grinch

Using the Freudian concept of psychoanalytic to evaluate the Grinch it is easy to break his character and the reason he changed his opinion on the Who's down.
The Grinch's death instinct and his desire for destruction, death and decay keeps him from rewarding himself with anything pleasurable. He instead shows his pleasure being that of the destruction of the Who's and their love and joy of Christmas. Actions like this are typically shown when a person is acting out of their own anger about something in life. They do this because of things like resentment and contempt for other people having things they want.

Projection is shown when the Grinch goes out of his way to take away what he believes is important about Christmas. He takes away all the presents and trees and everything in their stockings. All things that can be bought is why he sees Christmas as important. He projected his feelings of Christmas onto the Who's.

The Grinch which is usually anxious about Christmas is classic case for sadistic. He becomes aggressive and hostile anytime Christmas or anything relating to it is mentioned. He becomes hostile and takes his actions out on the Who's this is classic sadistic behavior.

The Id is the basic principal of instant gratifications and exhibited throughout the whole story. The Grinch does not take other people's feelings or actions into account with even a hint of morality he is only looking for his own pleasure. He made every attempt to keep the Who's from being happy about Christmas and being able to enjoy it for his own satisfaction. His impulsive and deliberate actions kept no regard at all for the Who's.

Using the Skinner and Pavlov behavioral approach to evaluate The Grinch and the reason he acted why you also get some insight from the psychological aspect his actions and reasoning.

The operant conditioning is a learning effect that happens from the realizations of consequences. The Grinch thought that the Who's only cared about the material part of Christmas so he stole all their presents and belongings. He expected them to be sad but instead they were still happy even if they had nothing.

Positive reinforcement is when a stimulus is given after the fact of an action and the behavior is repeated looking for more stimulus to be given. This is a great example of how The Grinch actually came around and decided to change . The Who's kept giving The Grinch invitations and acceptance until he finally gives in by the end of the story and changes his ways and actions.

Negative reinforcement is when a stimulus is removed after an action occurs causing the person to stop doing that action so they can receive a stimulus again. The Grinch kept trying to bully and take away the fun of Christmas from the Who's and this caused them to slowly lose their fear of him. As they lost their fear they stopped pushing him away and treating him poorly as this happened he no longer felt the negative reinforcement of his actions and came around in the end.
Classical condition is used to decrease or increase the behavior of something. When the Who's just kept ignoring and forgiving The Grinch for everything he did wrong. He learned that no matter what he does he is not going to be able to ruin the Who's Christmas.

The Grinch learned though out all his attempts of sabatoge that his negative influence and behavior would not affect the Who's ability to enjoy Christmas. The more he does this and the more he tries and fails it causes him to slowly open up to them as he is forgiven time and time again. If they would have reacted in a different manner his actions would have been reinforced and probably continued to escalate. He slowly learned along the way that he gets more pleasure from joining them instead of trying to sabotage their Christmas because they complete his basic needs of love and acceptance that he was lacking this was the main reason for his change of heart.

You don't get to see the change of heart in The Grinch until the very end of the movie when he finally tries to stop sabotaging them and changes his views on why they enjoy Christmas. He believed that the Who's only cared about Christmas because of the materialistic things that it represented so he tried to ruin it by taking all of it from them. He learned after that plan failed that what they really cared about was enjoying each other on that day in a realization that Christmas isn't from a store. This though and understanding caused him to have an understanding of what he believed to be true was actually false and they were right. His heart grew as he realized this.

According to Freud The Grinch changed because he came to realize that he was wrong in the way he viewed the Who's belief on Christmas. He subconsciously was able to see that he was wrong in everything he had been doing and he really wanted to be part of the Who's Christmas celebration but only listened to his Id and not his Ego or Superego. Since he could not be part of the celebration he wanted satisfaction of ruining theirs and when he could not ruin what he thought was important he realized that he was wrong.

The Behaviorist way of analyzing the change in The Grinch is to say that you are a product of your environment and the things that happen to you. The Grinch changed the way he viewed Christmas and the Who's because his negative actions kept being met with no stimulus or positive stimulus that slowly each time he did something slowly changed his negative actions into the desire of belonging.