Vincent+Chase

**Vincent Chase**
by Kalin Naidoo


 * Biography**

Vincent Chase was born in Queens, New York sometime from 1979 to the early 1980’s. Not a lot is known about his childhood. Vince was a child of six who grew up in a very poor household. His father was a alcoholic and isn’t around in his life. He has a certain charm about him, it seems to be why he is so successful with both the box office and all the women in his life. Vincent Chase is one of those people who would be in a Rags to Riches story on VH1. His acting career has gone been a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Vince went from being on “Vicks” and “Mento’s” commercials to playing the lead role in Aquaman, one of the highest grossing movies ever. After Aquaman, Vince became the biggest thing to hit Hollywood but his luck would soon change when he plays Pablo Escobar in the movie “Medellin”. The movie ends up tanking and Vince seems to fall off of Hollywood’s A-list actors line up. After the Medellin disaster Vince has a breakdown and flies to a beach in Mexico to get away. When Vince finally returns to Hollywood he seems to be a new man. He starts reading scripts and went as far as forgoing the lead role in the movie “ Smoke Jumpers” and accepting the second lead role. Vince eventually has a problem with the director of Smoke Jumpers and gets fired during the production of the movie. As lead role offers start to diminish it seems like Vincent’s career is on the way down and he and his friends decide to go back to Queens. While Vince is down and out his best friend Eric decides that as his manager he would get Vince back on his feet, he tries to get Vince a job by showing a director some footage of Smoke Jumpers. This saves Vince’s career and he eventually gets a job as the lead role in the movie the Great Gatsby. The movie becomes a hit and Vince becomes a superstar again. However the success seems to get to Vince’s head and after the movie he starts dating a porn star named Sasha Grey. Their relationship mixed with a accident he has in his latest movie about Enzo Ferrari seems to alter his personality. He begins to form a cocaine habit and he ends up alienating himself from his friends. His story ends with him being released from the hospital looking like he just lost a fight, and a policeman who seemed to have just found cocaine in Vincent’s possession.

The Neo-Analytic is a good way to analyze Vince because it looks at his personal self and what it has gone through in life, to get where it is right now. The neo analytic approach is also a good choice because it looks at the social impact on the personality as well as the unconscious struggle that goes on within a persons self. Eric Erickson focused on identity formation, which is the “process of developing ones individual personality and concept of ones self” (Friedman, 2009, 137). Erickson was a European psychologist who had more of an American philosophical, that people go through change in personality as they take some sort of responsibility of their own life (Friedman, 2009, 135). As far as Erikson is concerned, Vince seems to have made it to the fifth stage. The fifth stage is Identity vs. Role Confusion where a person tries to figure out their own identity as a human being as well as balancing their role they play with others in Vince’s case, he is a actor, a friend, and a son and a sibling. For the most part Vince has a solid sense of his own identity but it is shaken up whenever he any sort of trouble in his career. This can be seen in season five, after his movie Medellin tanks he has an identity crisis as an actor and he ends up hiding out in Mexico trying to run away from his problems. Vince’s biggest struggles comes from the sixth stage Intimacy vs. Isolation. This is the stage where people learn to make deeper connections to people. Although Vince is certainly charming and can easily make friends he struggle to make meaningful connections with women. Through out his life, he has only had superficial relationships with women he seems to care about but never love. The only exception to this was when he fell for Mandy Moore. Alfred Adler would say that during the course of Vince’s career he seems to have picked up a Superiority complex. This is when a person seems to have some sense of exaggerated arrogance. An example of this is seen in the last season where he tells all of his closest friends that they need him, but he doesn’t need them. Karen Horney was a neo-analytic psychologist who focused more on the influences of culture and family. She would say that Vince seems to have a form of basic anxiety. Basic anxiety is a fear of being alone and helpless. This may come from the absence of his father in his life. This seems to be a major theme in his life because he can never seem to do anything alone. In the sixth season, he seems to struggle with basic anxiety the most as all of his friends begin to start their new life’s without him being the focus. In the final season is when his basic anxiety seems to start causing problems and with all his friend busy Vince starts doing cocaine, starting a downward spiral of events that leave him in a hospital. Vince seems to also battle with Carl Jung’s archetype “persona” in his collective unconscious. This is because he is always dealing with the American public and how they view him. He seems to be pretty self-conscious about other peoples opinions up until the last season. At this point his life seems move more toward the “shadow” archetype. The shadow archetype are the “shameful desires and motives that we would rather not admit” are they are usually things that are against the social norm (Friedman, 2009, 114). This is seen when he starts he puts up a video clip online of him drunk sponsoring a new brand of tequila while he was with a porn star. As time progresses he starts publicly dating her and eventually picks up a cocaine addiction.
 * Neo- Analyitic Approach:**

Analyzing traits has been around for thousands of years, it was created by a ancient Greek philosopher named Hippocrates who described peoples temperaments in four different bodily humors all representing different types of personalities (Friedman, 2009, 258). The next thing to happen to the trait approach to personality was the big five. The big five which was started in 1960’s, bases personality on following five different dimensions: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness. Extroversion is the first trait of the big five. Vince would be in the high of extroversion due to his energetic an sociable personality but he does get somewhat shy and quiet at times. The second trait is Agreeableness, people who posses this trait are kind, friendly, worm and giving. Vince is high in the agreeableness trait, this is because of his certain charm he seems to posses that makes him seem friendly and easy to get along with and although he isn’t the most altruistic person, he still gets involved in charities if the opportunity invites itself. The third trait is conscientiousness, something that Vince does not have a lot of. The Conscientiousness trait measures how dependable and responsible a person is. Vince is low in this trait because of how impulsive and careless he is. Vince shows this in when he irresponsibly when he starts buying expensive cars and homes when he doesn’t have the cash to afford it. The next trait is neuroticism. Neuroticism is when people are emotionally unstable, they are usually nervous and high strung. Vince was relatively low in neuroticism until the last season where he seems to have become more emotionally unstable and high strung. This is seen when he flips out about his girlfriend doing an adult movie, starts a cocaine binge and ends up in trouble with the law. The last trait is openness, it measures how open people are to experience and intelligence and culture (Friedman, 2009, 267). . Vince is a very open person, he is both imaginative and witty. His wit is how he manages to do so well with the fairer sex.
 * Trait Skill Approach**:

Every human being is complex and Vince is no exception. His personality has had its ups and down just like his career. Over the last seven season he went from being a innocent and a nobody to being incredibly famous. Both of the approaches I mentioned before are good analyzing Vince’s personality. To me the Neo- analytic approach is the best way to describe Vince’s personality. This is because it looks at the struggles that Vince has to deal with in his life and it looks at how the how the environment he’s in effects his personality. One of the things that I didn’t think about when I started this is how the absence of his father effected his personality and the Neo analytic approach looks at things like that. When looking at the trait approach its clear that Vince’s personality has become more neurotic, its going to be interesting to see where it leads him in the next season.
 * Discussion**

References:

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"Entourage: Homepage." //HBO//. Web. 22 Apr. 2011. .

Ellin, Doug, dir. "Entourage." //Entourage//. HBO. Television.

"Entourage (TV Series)." //Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia//. Web. 22 Apr. 2011. .