Hollywood Psych

Q: How many Psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
 A: Only one, but the bulb has got to really want to change.

Research is hard. While this is generally true of all science, psychology in particular is vulnerable, as it's a very, very new field still under heavy development. Only recently has psychology emerged as a mature science with robust theories, and supposed "facts" of the past are still in popular culture despite being debunked. Writers fail to recognize this, and the supposed professionals in their stories will quote woefully out-of-date representations of Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious, Carl Jung's collective unconscious archetypes, or Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This is the equivalent of a modern physicist discussing luminiferous aether, or a biologist believing Lamarck Was Right.

Further complicating things is the Rule of Cool: if there are multiple versions of a disorder, a writer will tend toward the most interesting, dramatic, or visible of them. Thus, in fiction, all dyslexics can't read anything past a fourth grade level, all people with Tourette's compulsively swear, and all people with schizophrenia think demons are out to cover up the truth of global warming. Many people, overexposed to the fictional versions, are surprised to discover that not only are there milder versions of all these disorders, but the milder versions account for anywhere from 90% to 99.9% of the people diagnosed with them.

Naturally, there is some Truth in Television. Freud is still relevant, he is simply not the state of the art, but rather, one of the beginnings (similar to the way Newton's Laws are still used alongside Einstein's). While many or even most of the theories of Freud, Jung, and other early psychoanalysts have been refuted scientifically, their work shaped and continues to shape psychology and the popular mind. Concepts like projection, defense mechanisms, and the like are still used in therapy... simply not in their antique form. For instance, Hollywood is woefully unaware of the refinements suggested by Anna Freud (Sigmund's daughter) and his other students.

One big area where Hollywood really missed the boat is that from the 30s well into the 60s, radical behaviorism dominated psychological research. Researchers attempted to stamp out "mentalism" (that is, the study of consciousness itself) in favor of quantifying behavior. Psychology was ghetto-ized, and in the US, survived in the shadow of psychiatry (a medical field, ironically enough). This may partially explain the powerful, anachronistic hold Freud has over Hollywood. The Freud of Hollywood is psychoanalysis of the 60s, flanderized and spun for drama.

Tropes:

See also Emotion Tropes, Intelligence Tropes, Madness Tropes, and Parental Issues.

Examples of Hollywood Psych include:

General

  • Dissociative Identity Disorder (known as "Multiple Personality Disorder" under the World Health Organisation's classification system) comes in two ways on television: Jekyll and Hyde or Super-Powered Evil Side. It's also far more common in fiction than in reality. To the point where in reality, it's debatable whether or not it actually exists. The vast majority of first world countries refuse to recognise it as a disorder.
    • For many years D.I.D. was referred to on TV as "schizophrenia." Anything even remotely resembling actual schizophrenia had another word for it - "crazy."
    • Actually, the popular culture symptoms of 'split personality' tend to actually mesh better with bipolar disorder- the two 'personalities' being the same person in depressed and hypermanic states (and possibly a third when they're neither.)
      • This misunderstanding is likely due to the fact that schizophrenia literally translates into English as "Split Mind", though it's meant in the sense of broken rather than bifurcated.
    • It's still called such by many people, on TV or not.
  • On the topic of Psychopathy, the term is still used by Psychologists (but not Psychiatrists just to confuse you all) but not in the way that it's used on TV or indeed in any media. Sociopathy however is no longer in use. Currently definitions characterise psychopaths as being narcissistic but interpersonally charming, lacking in emotional depth and in particular empathy and highly anti-social, irresponsible, and impulsive. Please note that psychopaths are completely in touch with reality and are highly rational; this takes a break from many media representations which seem to equate psychopathy with psychosis. When people also speak the word "psychopath" they talk about those "Exclusively Evil Serial Killers", but not all serial killers are psychopaths, nor are all psychopaths serial killers (although you do get psychopathic serial killers e.g. Ted Bundy).
  • It probably was Hollywood that actually created the public idea of the 'psycho'- an Acceptable Target with a Flanderized condition that takes the most antisocial elements of psychopathy and psychosis and fuses them both into Ax Crazy-ness.
    • In fact, successful CEO's and wealthy businessmen (not to mention dictators) can be clinical psychopaths - the traits described above make for an excellent way to shaft innocent people for personal gain without feeling a hint of remorse.
    • For the record, the majority of serial killers are indeed psychopaths, and psychopaths are thought to be responsible for something like 60% of all serious violent crime in the United States (though this may be simply from the Hare Checklist, which is fairly accurate but which even Hare admits should not be taken as much more than a guide). That said, this does not mean that 60% of psychopaths are violent criminals; many of them live completely normal lives. (They are, however, much more likely than the general population to commit white collar crimes and get away with it.)
    • Writers, critics, and commentators like to use the word psychopath when they want to emphasize the monster hiding underneath and use the word sociopath when they want to emphasize the normal appearing facade.
  • Any show to mention Asperger's Syndrome. In Real Life, it's (to make it simpler than it really is) the "milder form" of autism that tends to show up as sensory-related problems, social difficulties, and concentrated interests in a limited number of subjects. Many with it have above-average intelligence and the names Steven Spielberg and Albert Einstein turn up in any discussion about it at least once. However, the TV version of it always concentrates on the "difficulty with social norms" and "above average intelligence" aspect.
    • The internet has its own Hollywood Psych version of Asperger's. On the internet, due to the "socially awkward" and "above average intelligence" parts, Asperger's Syndrome becomes something you self-diagnose if you are socially awkward (often, outright hostile or offensive) but want to claim that it's okay not to try to improve because you are "smarter" than anyone else. Even if you're not. It's basically an excuse to behave badly at will and still demand sympathy, and it annoys the average Internet denizen to the point that the faked syndrome has been nicknamed "Ass Burgers". In contrast, most people who actually have Asperger's strongly desire not to inadvertently hurt other people and will lay low about it and either attempt to imitate typical people, or, if such imitation is undesirable or impossible, work specifically on the skills that help them to be more diplomatic. (Some actually just don't mention it specifically because of how many people believe the Hollywood Psych version of Aspergers and lump them into stereotypes.)
      • L. Frank Baum probably said it best... "Thereafter he walked very carefully, with his eyes on the road, and when he saw a tiny ant toiling by he would step over it, so as not to harm it. The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything."You people with hearts," he said, "have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful."
      • Of course, Baum was trying to say that the Woodman did have a heart.
        • The internet has also adapted their concept of the condition as a verb: anyone who demonstrates a ridiculous amount of knowledge and/or obsession with a topic (usually some sort of hobby) can be said to be 'sperging' about it.
    • Occasionally, Asperger's will be used as a sort of off-brand psychopathy, as part of the characterization of a Hannibal Lecter Lite villain, with patients portrayed as lacking any understanding of emotions, and often as being emotionless themselves. It's probably because the writers confused Asperger's patients' difficulty with nonverbal social cues with a lack of empathy. In reality, people with Asperger's have normal levels of empathy—basically, they care how other people are feeling, they just often can't tell.
  • Similarly, dyslexia on the internet is often used as a free pass by people who simply can't be bothered to write coherently or spellcheck, since it guarantees White Knighting if anyone calls them on it; it's particularly popular with trolls. Real dyslexia might make language difficult, but it doesn't make the sufferer a moron; indeed, non-internet dyslexics often take great pains to ensure their grammar and spelling is up to scratch.
  • Bipolar affective disorder (otherwise known as manic depression, a term no longer used by psychiatric professionals) is almost universally depicted as the relatively rare rapid cycling variant, in which the extreme variations in mood take place over much shorter periods - days, or in extreme cases hours, rather than weeks - than is typical; the personality of a Mood Swinger will sometimes be justified this way. Also, it is rarely acknowledged that a person with bipolar disorder will experience the symptoms maybe a few times a year rather than constantly.
    • A small correction : some researchers distinguish Bipolar disorder and Manic-depression as two separate disorders.
    • Also, in a person with Bipolar II, the manic phases, known as "hypomania," actually do tend to only last a few days, though the depressive phases are still long and painful.
  • Panic is among the more misunderstood psychological conditions, and an unusually dangerous one to misunderstand. A great many people believe that people are very likely to panic in disasters. Panic is very difficult to induce: One needs a sense of potential entrapment (if people feel themselves to be definitely trapped, they are more likely to go limp), a sense of great helplessness, and a sense of profound isolation (one can have a panic attack in the "safety" of their own home). This is especially dangerous, because it prevents the dissemination of useful safety information and the conduct of useful safety training.
    • One Brazilian official nearly refused to allow a simple fire drill to occur because he was worried people would bite off their own tongues in panic. It went no differently than if it were held in Great Britain.
      • This was remarkably common in North America before the Our Lady of Angels school fire.
    • It can actually be counterproductive to tell people during a disaster that they shouldn't panic. For one thing, when people are told not to panic they sometimes slow down to the point that they don't escape in time. For another, some might not even think to panic until they're told not to. Telling people not to panic also wastes time that could be used to tell people how to get out. Most victims of large fires die because they unthinkingly try to exit the building the same way they came in and end up being squeezed together so tightly that they can't breathe. Telling people what to do also gives them a purpose - they'll move faster.
  • Insanity in general. Some shows like King of the Hill show people being able to check into a mental hospital or pretend to be insane and be checked in. Or someone will try to use the Insanity Defense to get out of prison. (Or try to be acquitted of all crimes) Typically, people who are legally insane don't know it. Although emphasis on typically, as some people actually do know that something is wrong with them. Usually, if you try to be insane, people will be able to see through the act.
    • This is why it can be very hard to write insane characters; especially since the Hollywood version of "Crazy" is "someone obsessed with blood, death, and inflicting pain on others" or "Schizophrenic". A lot of sociopathic serial killers actually don't fixate on blood or death.
    • The psychotic disorders, schizophrenia being the most well known, are usually what people think of when they hear mental illness. Mood and anxiety disorders are probably a close second. There are also dissociative, personality, drug related, eating, sleeping, and many other kinds of mental disorders.
    • The word "psychotic" itself has become the diagnosis of Hollywood Psych. It's usually used as a blanket term for "crazy", where "crazy" itself mostly consists of "murderous and loving it". Psychosis is medically defined as "a loss of contact with reality", which can manifest as delusions, hallucinations, or "disordered thinking"; in fact, it's usually a symptom of another disorder (or even just heavy drinking) than the problem in and of itself. It is possible for psychotics to be dangerous as a result of their disconnect from reality, but being psychotic does not automatically mean being dangerous, and vice versa. In Troper's terms: Pinkie Pie and Homestar Runner are psychotics; Carcer Dun and Hannibal Lecter are not.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia, specifically the variant where you repress traumatic memories, causing angst, depression, or other mental problems. To "uncover" repressed memories was popular with psychiatrists in the 1980's and 90's, but is now pretty much seen as a scientifically and ethically dubious practice. Oh, it was also very popular in incest cases. Yeah, therapists actually mind raped their patients into believing that they were molested by close relatives, and then put said innocent relatives in jail.
  • According to much print media and the internet, any previously healthy and contented young person can very quickly develop an eating disorder of potentially lethal severity if she (usually girls) see enough pictures of Hollywood Thin people of their own gender. This is improbable, to say the least- the Hollywood Pudgy trope may upset and confuse young people, but genuine life-threatening eating disorders are still very rare, are Older Than Celluloid, and usually have no single cause, rather most specialists see them as an expression of complex psychological and emotional problems- most people are not susceptible to such extreme behavior patterns for any significant length of time.
    • In a Real Life incident, the actress Keira Knightley sued The Sun newspaper in 2007 over a story which clearly implied that a distraught mother held Knightly at least partly personally responsible for the death of her particularly young anorexic daughter. (Naturally, the Sun didn't shoulder any blame for inserting said pictures into their pages for very little reason several times a week throughout the last year or so...)
  • Assertiveness Training in fiction usually plays out as an Extreme Doormat undergoes Assertiveness Training (usually in the form of hypnosis or reading a book) and he/she will suddenly become either a greedy, self centered, egomaniacal, Jerkass or a raging lunatic with a Hair-Trigger Temper and end up alienating all their friends. Unlike in real life by the end of the story everything will be back to normal with no repercussions for their behavior. Real Assertiveness Training is not at all like that and involves multiple sessions with a trained psychologist. It's about learning diplomatic ways to stand up for yourself and get your fair share, not how to bully others to get what you want.


Anime and Manga

  • L and most of the other children from Whammy's House in Death Note display many Rain Man-ish tendencies. Also runs with Silva's ideas about autistics being morally deficient. While all of them are ostensibly on the side of good, they are also completely amoral and freely admit that they only solve crimes for the intellectual challenge and are willing to sacrifice people's lives in pursuit of their goals. This inhuman morality is mostly to make them better foils to the Knight Templar Villain Protagonist, who claims to be killing people for the greater good.
    • But neither L nor the other kids are ever referred to as autistic, and most of the kids are not morally deficient as they are pretty upset when L details his Family-Unfriendly Aesop approach to crimefighting. Near and Mello are the only ones who are intrigued and Near explains his own moral philosophy later. So this trope is either inverted or averted. The only explicit psychology in the entire series seems to be L's profile of Kira, which is brief but spot-on.


Comic Books

  • The arc in X-Men where Emma Frost seduced Scott Summers, is a clear case of bad psychiatry (probably an intentional one). Not only was she treating him when she made advances, when Jean brought up that her husband was being taken advantage of, to Xavier, who has been an actual psychiatrist for years, he tells Jean she is overreacting, and doesn't even consider Emma just might be violating ethics. And as a double blow to actual psychiatry, Scott is now portrayed in a happy relationship with Emma.
  • According to the "Doctors" in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, The Joker is not insane (a legal term, that one won't find a mental health professional saying in that context) but Supersane! Yes it's a condition similar to Tourette's! You know what else? It's a load of Bullshit! Grant Morrison might as well have a physicist claiming that Black Holes happen because people fart while sleeping and is similar to the String Theory. To be fair most interpret this as a way to show that the Doctors in Arkham are a bunch of quacks and that they are the reason no one ever gets better in Arkham; this hasn't stopped a sizable part of the fanbase to adopt it as an accurate interpretation of the Joker's Psyche though.
    • To elaborate, this "Super-Sanity" is that Joker remakes himself every day because he finds the flow of modern life too stressful and overpowering. Now, firstly, there is no universally agreed definition of sanity, but generally speaking it is understood by psychologists to be ones ability to function normally in everyday life, and how "normal" you are. So the idea that being Super sane means that the world is crazy is a contradiction in terms. The second thing is that what the psychologists are describing is actually more like an extreme form of Dissociation, a psychotic break from reality caused by trauma and/or an inability to deal with life's stresses. So Morrison and his shrinks are wrong twice over (assuming, again, that Morrison didn't just intend the doctors to be talking out of their asses).
      • Subsequent writers have occasionally made use of the term "Super-Sanity", as well, though the meaning seems to have shifted somewhat. Usually it just means he's at least slightly aware of the fact he's a comicbook character.
        • Which could, possibly, turn his earlier diagnosis into major Fridge Brilliance. If the Joker knows he's a comicbook supervillain, his behaviour actually is perfectly sane. His purpose is to entertain his fans, thus his violent acts and his constant reinventing of his own personality (to keep up with readers' changing tastes) are completely justified. As long as people keep buying and enjoying the comics he appears in, the Joker is, from a sufficiently meta point of view, a perfectly functional member of "society".
        • All this discussion could be Moot, considering this IS the Joker we are talking about. It's an equally valid idea that he simply managed to convince his doctors of something and is laughing his ass off about it.


Film

  • In Batman Begins, one of the earliest tip offs that Dr. Jonathan Crane is not as good a psychiatrist as he claims is that he quotes woefully out-of-date ideas by Jung. (A Fan Wank is he was trying to cover for Falcone's mumblings of "...scarecrow..." to throw off Rachel's suspicions.)
    • Not to mention that there's no scarecrow archetype in Jungian psychology. But it's obvious that he's deliberately improvising some random plausible-to-a-layperson-sounding psychobabble to cover his own tracks. That can't even possibly be considered Fan Wank; the film makes it absolutely clear that, since he is the Scarecrow, he has to lie about what "Scarecrow" means. Duh.
    • Batman Forever doesn't do much better with Nicole Kidman.

"In my professional opinion, this guy's a total whacko."

    • Nygma is a total whacko, but that's beside the point.
    • On the other hand, she's probably making a joke, a professional using a highly unprofessional term. The same thing happens in The Terminator, with the police psychologist stating "In technical terminology . . . he's a loon."
      • "He's a wacko, and that's my professional opinion" is probably the Official Joke of the psych professions—that and the lightbulb one, on this very page.
  • The entire movie Ben X is built around this trope, showing how patients with Asperger's supposedly can't function without a minute-to-minute schedule, have extremely vivid hallucinations, are incapable of something as simple as taking a train, and can't interact with other human beings at all. The film was praised for its accuracy.
  • A Beautiful Mind. Schizophrenic hallucinations aren't that vivid or focused, though naturally they had to be portrayed that way in order to keep the audience from catching on in the beginning and keep them from getting confused toward the end.
    • The real John Nash once said in an interview about the movie that he had only auditory hallucinations, not visual ones, but he was okay with the change because otherwise it would not have been as credible in a visible medium.


Literature

  • Christopher Boone of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time fame has either Asperger's Syndrome or high-functioning Kanner's autism (it's never totally clear), but either way, it's stereotype city. Christopher has no emotions, no personal insight, no empathy, virtually no social skills at all, and is obsessed with- you guessed it, maths and science, which he understands to crazy savant levels. Despite his intelligence, however, he doesn't seem to know what commas are for as he writes in big long 'and then' lists, stating things that are happening around him but never elaborating on them.
  • The Discworld's Altogether Andrews probably suffers from DID, or something like it. He has eight different personalities, and none of them answer to "Andrews". He seems to get along with his beggar compatriots okay, except for the personality answering to "Burke"; he's not described in detail, but it's not pretty. Aside from the fact that Burke is said to be "kept buried by the other personalities", there's no indication that the different personalities are aware of one another.
    • One other character puts forward the theory that he was just a meek individual with psychic inclinations who was overwhelmed by other personalities squatting in his head.
      • Supported by the one piece of evidence (aside from the other seven personalities "keeping Burke buried") that they actually are aware of one another; when the Canting Crew puts in a vote for something, Andrews hesitates for a moment, then raises "five democratic fingers", and the Duck Man declares that "the ayes have it".
  • In House Rules by Jodi Picoult, the typical portrayal of autism is actually inverted. Most portrayals have a character who simply is very smart and has no social skills, however Jacob has all the signs of severe autism but is simply said to have Asperger's Syndrome.


Live Action TV

  • There was a recent House episode where having synesthesia was depicted as being like the conclusion of 2001. They wish it were that cool. In reality is really lame stuff like 7 having an intrinsic redness to it. And while there are slightly less lame versions (musical pitches having intrinsic colors is a version that many world renowned musicians have put to good use) none of them are anywhere as cool as that.
    • Then, of course, there's the first episode of the sixth season where psychiatry in House's universe apparently never left the 70's. Admittedly, the creators stated that some of the mistakes were intentional to make allusions to One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.
    • Another recent episode had a girl with DID that came as a result of a car accident she was in when she was a year or two old, which killed her father; she blamed it on herself because she had been crying. Forgetting for a moment the debate that exists around the validity of multiple personalities, two things are wrong with this: one, she was a baby when it happened, an age when she wouldn't have been able to even remember the incident, and certainly would not have been able to put together that her crying caused the crash—basically, the entire cause of her illness wouldn't have caused it at all. Two, the accident would have been more likely to cause PTSD than DID.
  • A psychiatrist treating Niki in an early episode of Heroes diagnoses her with Multiple Personality Disorder, outdated terminology and all. In real life, one of the main symptoms of DID is that the victim isn't aware of the other personalities.
  • Monk not only seems to have both Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder simultaneously, he is a picture of retro-Freudian "neuroticism," seemingly to teeter into Generalized Anxiety Disorder (with agoraphobia, naturally), Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and sometimes even sociopathy. Underlying it all, of course, are deep, unrealized issues surrounding his dead wife. This is of course Played for Laughs when it isn't giving him supernatural insight into crimesolving.
    • OCD is almost always played for laughs in entertainment.
    • All OCD will have behaviors in common with GAD; they're both forms of anxiety disorder (OCD's compulsions can be seen as a maladaptive coping mechanism for the underlying anxiety). And most people with anxiety disorders do actually find the crap their illness puts them through funny, at least in hindsight.
  • Almost everything psychological in Mash ever, especially the later seasons, especially the finale.
    • This could be considered more accurate than a currently correct treatment. MASH was supposed to be set in the early 1950's, remember. PTSD and Survivor's Guilt were still "shell shock", and the usual treatment was to send the guy home and expect that he'd get over it, and Freudian psychology was still pretty much the king of the hill.
      • Actually, the dominant psychological school at the time was Behaviorism. It wasn't until the Cognitive Revolution in the Sixties that it even became acceptable to even discuss Freudian ideas, and even then, most Cognitivist psychologist view Freud as being ultimately flawed. But that is a completely different trope.
    • Although the psychological stuff might be historically accurate for the time period, the fact that it always works textbook perfectly (see: the finale) still fits this trope.
  • In Pushing Daisies, the cheese-loving aunts's agoraphobia without panic disorder is mistakenly called "social phobias" (social phobia, in the singular, is now usually called "social anxiety disorder"). It's also partially cured by homeopathic antidepressants put in pies. Now, if instead of homeopathic remedies, it had been St. John's Wort, that part would have been semi-accurate, though of course you'd have to eat an awful lot of pie to get a high enough dose to be effective. What's more, an overdose of the antidepressant causes one of the aunts to act stoned and have vivid hallucinations.
    • How exactly would a homeopathic antidepressant work? Do they cram sad thoughts into the pills? Of course, this extends to homeopathic anything, but come on.
    • If it's a placebo-type homeopathic remedy, how would it be possible to dose someone with it without them having noticed already?
    • The show really isn't meant to be realistic. It's got a car that runs on dandelions, come on.
    • "Social Phobias" also fits way better with the general tone of the show and its narration, and as such was probably completely intentional.
  • Averted in Supernatural. No doubt Season Two had flaws but one thing that it has been praised for is the treatment of Dean's Survivor Guilt and depression. He's trying too hard to stay like himself (be a good soldier, defend Dad from outsiders and protect Sam at all cost, no chick flick moments), trying for suicide more times than he should and just when you think he's been fixed, something happens to prove just how bad it's gotten.
    • The reactions to it are pretty realistic to it too - throughout the series. While it's very sad that he has an abandonment complex, Sam (both times) and John couldn't very well stay just to please him. Sam really does try to help him out but he's got his own soul-crushing issues to deal with as well. By All Hell Breaks Loose, there was a mass war going on and while Bobby was clearly worried about finding one more dead body when he got back, the best thing Dean could do was to save the angst for later and - for the moment - buck up and help out. And as for the demons, why do you think they always tell him how useless/damaged/worthless he is? Dean's deep, dark pit of self-loathing is just so frigging easy to get into that there's not much point in telling him anything else.
  • Averted in |The Flash, when a criminal psychologist gives a deadpan assessment of the loss and guilt, narcissism, and worship of law and order figures that would motivate a costumed vigilante like the Flash.
  • Generally averted in The Sopranos. It helps that creator David Chase has had therapy.
  • Almost every attempt to portray more severe Kanner's autism tends to be a cutesy-poo Very Special Episode about a Mother struggling with her non-verbal child. The aim is usually to either find a cure, show people how angelic (or axe crazy, it depends on the writer) autistic children are or just highlight the turmoil these families go through. Good luck trying to find anything that has a non-verbal autistic person as the main character. This is perhaps one of the worse examples, as non-verbal autistic people are often, despite appearances, perfectly aware of their surroundings, and perfectly capable of rational thought. However, this doesn't sell as well, so it rarely comes up in any form of media, and as a result, most people think that low-functioning autism = no awareness whatsoever.
    • House managed this, with a kid who was totally non-verbal but who House managed to prove was very aware of the world around him.
  • CSI is guilty of this trope due to one episode misrepresenting Asperger's Syndrome.
    • However, CSI also had Gil Grissom, who is charming and personable to his co-workers, but socially withdrawn, focused on scientific minutiae, and has described himself as a "ghost". It was hinted at least once that Grissom had Asperger's, and certainly displayed a more realistic array of the symptoms than most overtly-labeled TV portrayals.
  • Boston Legal had a character with Asperger's demand a partnership at knife point when he thought he'd been shafted. However, BL being what it is, he's since become a main character and quite a competent lawyer. When the most flattering portrayal of something that you've ever seen in prime time is the Boston Legal version, you've got a problem.
  • Law and Order Trial By Jury had the defendant try to use his Asperger's Syndrome as a defence in a rape case.
  • The Canadian series Regenesis averts this; one of the main characters has Asperger's Syndrome, and he manages to get along fine with others (though with a slight degree of difficulty). He's also exceptionally talented in the area of chemistry as it relates to scent, and there's talk of how he could make a fortune if he decided to go independent and start a perfume company.
  • Apparently Mary McDonnell (a.k.a., President Roslin ) guest-starred on Greys Anatomy as a heart surgeon with Asperger's.
    • Most of her three-episode appearance can be seen here, here and here. (For as long as the links stay healthy). A basic summation of her character is that she is very smart and very aware of her surroundings (and the motivations of others), but she is also quite rigid with her routines and methods (often getting upset when her expectations or plans don't follow through), and really sensitive to touch, having a conservative type of movement and dressing up in A LOT of surgery scrubs/winter wear.
  • Karla Bentham from the third season of Waterloo Road is a sympathetic version (created to highlight the issues surrounding adolescent mental health, which she does well), but still has a condition that less resembles Asperger's than ADHD with elements of OCD and generalised anxiety disorder.
    • The big problem with Karla is that she's more of a plot device than a character in her own right. It would be easier to forgive her OOT pedanticness and almost total lack of social skills or independence if she was shown the same sort of respect that the other characters get, but she isn't. The plot is never told from her viewpoint- every time she has a meltdown, for example, the perspective cuts to her TA, and their attempts to calm her down. She has been in the show two years and viewers still have no idea what she thinks and feels about things. She also never gets a plot that is unrelated to her Aspergers. It's a shame because she was written in the best of intentions, but woefully executed.
    • OCD plus ADHD actually is reasonable facsimile of Asperger's. Enough that a lot of Aspies get diagnosed with one or the other.
  • As a subversion, the actor who plays Dr. Spencer Reid on Criminal Minds works under the assumption that Reid has Asperger's (possibly complicated by inherited schizophrenia). Reid is not socially graceful, and often tends to go on about the unpleasant statistics about the current kind of case just a touch longer than civilians may find comfortable, but he's a fully-developed character.
    • There's some Alternate Character Interpretation at play with this one. Reid's actor thinks he has Asperger's, yes, but the only verbal indication of it on the show itself is given to us by an unsub who also believes that Morgan is "a pumped-up side of beef", Elle can't make it in "the BAU boys' club", and Aaron "I am not a narcissist" Hotchner would stab Gideon in the back to advance his career. As such, a portion of the fanbase believes that Reid isn't autistic, just badly socialized. Since Reid does show autistic tendencies (such as the social awkwardness), it's more likely the incorrect part of the unsub's line was that Gideon fails to see the symptoms.
    • Played straighter in one episode, where it was implied that the unsub's psychopathy (called by name, so no excuses) resulted from childhood abuse. "Multiple Personality Disorder" was also suggested earlier on.
      • Psychopathy in the show is a word that has been thrown around quite a lot in the last few seasons. They seem to be using it to describe any Unsub that is inherently incapable of empathy and compassion, regardless of the underlying reasons. This isn't totally inaccurate though since psychopathy is not currently recognised as an official psychological diagnosis (so they have a bit of leeway on how they use it) and lack of empathy and compassion are generally regarded as two of the key symptoms in any current definition of the term.
      • Also in the very first episode, the unsub brings up Split Personality and Gideon correctly calls it DID.
    • In fact, Criminal Minds as a whole is really bad about this. The majority of the psychology on the show is either out of date, misapplied, grossly exaggerated, or just flat out wrong, which can result in a lot of exasperation for psychologists watching the show. The most egregious of these is the premise of criminal profiling itself, which has been shown more than once to be inaccurate to the point that lay people do just as well on it as professionals.
  • Fans of Bones have commented that the behaviour of doctors Brennan and Addy looks a bit like Asperger's, though its never mentioned in the show. This is not to even mention her view of Psychology seems to be Hollywood Psych, as she claims it's far "softer" (i.e. a social science rather then a natural science) a science then Anthropology. Most neuropsychologists would debate this.
    • Honestly, there's a good chance that even most anthropologists would debate this. Large swaths of anthropology is done using ethnographic observations, which make no claim to Brennan's beloved objectivity. Instead this method encourages the researcher to make their biases explicit because the work cannot be done in an unbiased manner (thus allowing the analysis to approximate objectivity even though the observations were very subjective and biased). In fact, depending on where they sit theoretically, some researchers might reject the notion of an objective "truth" entirely. While psychological research is largely done using controlled experiments in laboratories - very strange that Brennan doesn't prefer that.
      • Dr. Brennan is a physical anthropologist, primarily, and that has actually a lot more in common with biology than it does with cultural anthropology. As for objectivity in psychology, that was for a very long time mostly the realm of biological psychology, which she may or may not have gotten much exposure to. If the psychology departments she's had much contact with were dominated by the...looser schools, it's probably the view she would have developed of psychology.
      • But Brennan does have a degree in sociocultural anthropology, or at least an education in it - just look at all the things on culture she spouts in the show, and the episode with the circus had her revealing that she did some ethnographic work with a circus, which she wouldn't have done unless she was doing serious work on it in university. The above point, then, that she criticises psychology for being unscientific when one of her own areas is far less scientific, is accurate.
    • Zack Addy having Asperger's was confirmed by Word of God.
    • Word of God says Dr. Brennan does not have Asperger's, but the actress, Emily Deschanel, says she thinks the character does have it, and she plays the character that way.
  • Subverted in the Lie to Me episode "Beat The Devil," which has a chillingly realistic portrayal of a murderous psychopath.


Web Comics

  • Happened with Kylie in Ménage à 3 from the moment she says that she is a psychology major. Undergraduate psychology majors don't have the experience or knowledge to do therapy or "fix brains," let alone have licensure, and no one with any body of knowledge about psychology would use the terms "fix your brain!" or nearly call someone crazy to their face. Not to mention "Phallophobe?" Someone is trying too hard on a subject they're clueless about.
    • Oddly enough, her attitudes and tendencies to act like she knows what she's talking about does approximate how a lot of first-year psychology students do act, so this may be an example of Truth in Television, especially since her attempts to "fix" people have only resulted in a slight, and mostly superficial, change of the neurosis.
    • Yuki's "delusions" follow Hollywood logic. She's entirely sane (if abrasive) all of the time except for one very specific trigger, whereupon she becomes completely psychotic and violent, then snaps back to normal as if nothing has happened. It's the usual Hollywood combination of schizophrenia with dissociative identity disorder (and possibly post-traumatic stress disorder), while flanderizing psychosis (meaning out-of-touch with reality) into rampaging violence.
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