An Analysis on Luna Lovegood from Famous Book “Harry Potter”

In the field of psychology, there are innumerable theories on personality and motivation. Digging deep into what makes a person who they are and inspires them to do the things they do is not a new concept. Evolutionary theory, Big 5 personality traits, psychodynamic perspective, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as well as Person/Situation interaction will all be discussed in detail. The subject of our discussion, for the purpose of exploring these theories, will be Luna Lovegood Luna Lovegood is a young witch in the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling. She is a Ravenclaw student one year behind the famous Harry.

She was nicknamed “Loony Lovegood”(Rowling, 2003) because she is seen as being eccentric, and a bit dotty. Her mother passed away from an experiment gone wrong when Luna was nine years old and she was raised solely by her father after that. She becomes part of Harry Potter’s core group of friends, the only non-Gryffindor amongst them. She has compassion for people and creatures. In the Order of the Phoenix installation of the Harry Potter series, Luna and Harry unexpectedly meet in the hallway before heading back home for the summer. Harry asked her why she was not in the feast and she responded, “Well, I’ve lost most of my possessions. People take them and hide them, you know. But as it’s the last night, I really do need them back, so I’ve been putting up signs”(Rowling, 2003). At this point in the story, Harry had just witnessed his godfathers untimely death and was not in the mood to socialize, but felt a rush of empathy for Luna. When he told her that they should not do that and asked if she needed help, she turned the focus from herself onto Harry

Instead of accepting help finding all of her belongings, she chatted with him about his godfather and her mothers passing. Then she promptly headed off for the feast, trusting that her things would make their way back to her. Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory does not appear to come into play with Luna Lovegood or this scenario. We do not see any sexual selection or finding of mates, though perhaps Luna’s individual traits may be due to evolutionary natural selection. Taking a look at the Big 5 traits, a few are obvious right away. Luna Lovegood would be rated exceptionally high in openness to experience. Luna is widely known for believing in the wizarding version of conspiracy theories and outrageous ideas. She is always willing to go with the group on any dangerous, insane adventure. Not to mention she adorns herself in bizarre accessories and fashion.

In terms of conscientiousness, Luna would land medium-low on the rankings. While she is not viewed as the most organized person, she was sorted into Ravenclaw. Ravenclaw house is centered around the value of intelligence and discipline, which means that Luna is implied to have a certain degree of these traits. I would classify Luna under medium extraversion. While she is excited and happy to be around her friends, she is often seen doing solitary activities. When she is not spending time with Ginny, Neville, or the rest of the group, she is reading magazines or caring for exotic, misunderstood creatures. Luna is always agreeable, putting her at the very top rating for agreeableness. She is friendly to everyone that she meets and she does not make a fuss when other students bully her, whether through name-calling or hiding her belongings. She is loyal to her friends and she is consistently shown comforting the main character, Harry Potter, through his times of difficulty. Despite the fact that Luna faces persecution and judgement from not only peers, but adults, she is almost never seen to display negative emotions or instability.

The only time Luna is witnessed angry is when someone insults her fathers’ magazine, The Quibbler. When all of her shoes are stolen from her and hidden, she merely accepts that they would eventually show back up. She would rank low, to nonexistent, on neuroticism. In terms of a Psychodynamic approach, it would appear that Luna’s Id is being well controlled by a strong ego. While she often says things that many people wouldn’t, she is a well-behaving, conscientious young adult navigating through the world. Though, perhaps her super-ego isn’t incredibly functional. In regards to the Psychosexual Theory, Luna does not appear to have any fixations with the particular stages, meaning her growth was normal and pleasant in each of those areas. When discussing her mothers’ passing, she does not seem to be using any coping or defense mechanisms. We can assume that she properly processed through her grief. If we were to take a look at the Myers-Briggs assessment, modeled after Carl Jung’s ideas, we can try to sort Luna.

In the Big 5, we have established she is more extraverted than introverted. When it comes to sensing or intuition, intuition is first choice as Luna is more about possibilities instead of reality. For our third category, I instinctively wanted to say that luna was feeling, instead of thinking due to her eccentric beliefs. The more time I spend considering, the more I believe that Luna, despite her outrageous values, has come to her conclusions through what she believes is logical with the information that she has. Last, but not least, Luna is a go-with-the-flow type of witch, placing her as perceiving instead of judging. This means that Luna, by my calculations, would fall under ENTP. Luna appears to have reached self-actualization. She has physiological and safety needs met, as she lives at home with her father who provides for her. While she has her father, she also finds belonging at Hogwarts. Harry, Neville, and Ginny form close friendships with Luna over their adventures together. Luna is seen as “dotty” by many of her peers, but her self-esteem is fully in-tact. She is confident in her beliefs and who she is. Last, but not least, she exhibits creativity and self-expression. For these reasons, I feel secure in saying that Luna Lovegood would have reached Maslow's idea of self-actualization.

To figure out if the person or situation were impacting the behavior heavier, let us first look at the situation. Luna is looking for her missing articles of clothing, hoping to get them back before heading home. She sees her friend who recently lost a loved one and brings that subject up in conversation. Then she abandons her search for her clothing and goes to enjoy the feast while she can. We have already established that Luna is an incredibly agreeable and kind person. We also know that she is often bullied and that missing clothing is common for her.

If Harry had not shown up, we have reason to believe that Luna still would have gone on to the feast as usual because her missing clothing is not an extraordinary situation for her. I would conclude that Luna’s comforting her friend amidst her own trial and then leaving it up to fate is more a reflection on her personality than the situation at hand.

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