NAME : AMELIA RAMADHANI

CLASS : 5AG3

ID NUMBER : 40300119062

SUBJECT : REVIEW AN ARTICLE/THESIS/DISERTATION

THE CHILDHOOD TRAUMA OF PRINCE ALBERT

AS SEEN IN DAVID SEIDLER’S THE KING’S SPEECH
By FADHLIAH ANWAR

This is a graduating paper from Fadhliah Anwar (A student of English Department,

Faculty of Adab and Cultural Sciences, State Islamic University Sunan Kalijaga, Yogyakarta,

2013). This paper discussed about the childhood trauma that faces by Prince Albert’s life. It

described in the King’s Speech as a movie that tells about a son of King George V of England. In

the story, his son named Albert experienced a lot of pressures from his father who forces him to

follow all the rules of the kingdom and he compelled to be a King to replace his father one day.

There are several reasons why the writer chose The King’s Speech as the object of her

research. Firstly, this movie is one of the UK’s films where in that country the film potrays some

of the important figures like: Winston Churcill, Queen Elizabeth, King George V, etc. it also

shows about the condition of Britain Kingdom in 1925. Secondly, this movie had won numerous

awards which culminates the victory of the Britain’s most successful independent film in

Academy Awards and also it won the Oscar for the best picture, best director, best actor, and best

screenplay.

The writer used library research’s method with the sequence to watched the movie first

while reviewing the script and then chose the data relating to the topic. In this research, the

writer applied the theory of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud concerning about the trauma and

also applied the anxiety theory and the defense mechanism of Freud to describe the effect of

trauma. Psychoanalysis is the literary theory that explain the progress of human personality

Sigmund Freud which has the concepts relates to human psyche such as pessimistic view of

human nature, emphasis on nature biological forces, early experiences shape personality (age 5),
and universal development stages. In this movie case, the concepts of early experiences shape

personality (age 5) is related. That means what people do since early experience or childhood

like happy experiences, unhappy, trauma, and so on, it can shape people’s personality in

adulthood. And this concept relates with the main character of this movie that experiences

childhood trauma.

After analyzing the collected data, the pressure and child abuse that Albert faced are the

main causes of his childhood trauma. The writer describse the pressures that given from his

father as the causes of Albert’s personality changed. His father always orders him to be what his

father wants and also he gets a pressure form his brother David who always mocks him. And

then, he also experienced child abuse especially in physical abuse that he gets from his father and

his nanny that makes him a right handed and an ashamed person.

As the result of the research, the writer found because of all that treatment, Albert feels

the effect such as anxiety and the stammering. He always has a fear feeling to face the unknown

people and the stammering always appear if the anxious feeling comes, so that it makes less

confident of him. Beside analyzed the causes and the effect of Albert’s trauma, the writer also

applied the defense mechanism type of fixation to discuss his anxiety and how to cope his

anxious feeling. In the paper, it explained that when Albert uses fixation to conceal his anxiety,

he usually smoking and gets a drink when he can not cope his anxiety. And not only that, he also

gets an angry to anyone that is near him without causing. Albert did all that to forget his problem

just a moment.

That is all my review about this paper. As the conclusion, this paper used psychoanalysis

theory to analyze the movie entitled The King’s Speech as the object. The topic that writer

analyzed is about childhood trauma of Prince Albert and there are some causes that found in her

analysis. Prince Albert have got pressure and child abuse from his father, his brother and his

nanny. So that, he felt anxiety and stammering. In this paper, the writer also described about how

Prince Albert to conceal his anxiety.