History Main / HollywoodPsych

* It probably was Hollywood that actually created the public idea of the 'psycho'- an AcceptableTarget with a Flanderized condition that takes the most antisocial elements of psychopathy and psychosis and fuses them both into AxCrazy-ness.

* ''Comicbook/ArkhamAsylumASeriousHouseOnSeriousEarth'': According to the "[[InformedAbility doctors]]" in this work, ComicBook/TheJoker 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 [[HollywoodTourettes Tourette's]]! You know what else? It's a load of bullshit! Creator/GrantMorrison might as well have a physicist claiming that black holes happen because people fart while sleeping because of String Theory. Most interpret this [[TropesAreTools 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]]. To elaborate, this "Super-Sanity" is that the 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 one's 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 [[FourthWallObserver aware of the fact he's a comicbook character]]. Which could, possibly, turn his earlier diagnosis into major FridgeBrilliance. 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".

* FiveStagesOfGrief
* NinetyPercentOfYourBrain
* PsychoPsychologist

* AttentionDeficitOohShiny

* EasyAmnesia

* HollywoodTourettes
* InsaneEqualsViolent

* LaserGuidedAmnesia
* TheMadHatter

* StockholmSyndrome

* SuperOCD
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes

* FreudianCouch
* FreudianExcuse
** FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse

* InkblotTest
* MommyIssues
* ThereAreNoTherapists
* WordAssociationTest

Another thing Hollywood tends to skip in psychology is the idea that most events of the average plot would leave TheEveryman severely traumatised by the end of it, not just shrugging it off with a smile and one-liner. Because really, [[RuleOfFun which of those sounds more fun]]?

* In the manga to ''Manga/SchoolLive'', Miki tries to find what's wrong with Yuki. She looks up with her symptoms in a book and comes to the conclusion that Yuki either has Dissociative Identity Disorder or she's faking it. The problem is that Yuki doesn't have any symptoms of DID. She suffers from hallucinations and is in denial over the ZombieApocalypse. These hallucinations were brought on [[spoiler:by the traumatic HeroicSacrifice of her friend and teacher Megumi]]. In fact, [[spoiler:Yuki still hallucinates that Megu-nee is still alive]]. Eventually, Yuki is shown to "snap out" of her state, [[spoiler:only for Yuuri to develop the same symptoms]].

* ''Comicbook/ArkhamAsylumASeriousHouseOnSeriousEarth''
** According to the "[[InformedAbility doctors]]" in this work, ComicBook/TheJoker 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 [[HollywoodTourettes Tourette's]]! You know what else? It's a load of bullshit! Creator/GrantMorrison might as well have a physicist claiming that black holes happen because people fart while sleeping because of 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 [[ComicallyMissingThePoint an accurate interpretation of the Joker's psyche]] though.
** To elaborate, this "Super-Sanity" is that the 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 one's 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 [[FourthWallObserver aware of the fact he's a comicbook character]]. Which could, possibly, turn his earlier diagnosis into major FridgeBrilliance. 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.

* In ''Film/BatmanBegins'', Dr. Jonathan Crane quotes woefully out-of-date Jungian ideas to explain Falcone's ravings. There's no scarecrow archetype in Jungian psychology, but gambling that laypeople don't know that is a lot safer than telling people that he intentionally drives people mad while wearing a homemade gas mask that looks like a scarecrow.
* ''Film/BatmanForever'' doesn't do much better with Creator/NicoleKidman.
-->"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 ''Film/TheTerminator'', with the police psychologist stating "In technical terminology . . . he's a loon."

* * In ''Fanfic/MisfitsUltimate'', [[spoiler:Stormer]] has [[SplitPersonality dissociative identity disorder]] because of heavily repressed anger and hostility. In real life, DID is usually caused by early childhood trauma.

** 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 {{flanderiz|e}}ing psychosis (meaning "out of touch with reality") into rampaging violence.

* The ''Arthur'' fic ''Fanfic/ProperDiscipline'' has D.W. diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, with a possible second diagnosis of Histrionic Personality Disorder. D.W. is a kindergartner. Personality disorders typically only start manifesting in early adulthood and are normally only diagnosed in adults. At earliest, they'll be diagnosed at thirteen. Five or six is way too young for a NPD diagnosis.

* Subverted in the ''Series/LieToMe'' episode "Beat The Devil," which has a chillingly realistic portrayal of a murderous psychopath.

* The ''Arthur'' fic ''Fanfic/ProperDiscipline'' has DW diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, with a possible second diagnosis of Histrionic Personality Disorder. DW is a kindergartner. Personality disorders typically only start manifesting in early adulthood and are normally only diagnosed in adults. At earliest, they'll be diagnosed at thirteen. Five or six is way too young for a NPD diagnosis.

Research is hard. While this is generally true of [[HollywoodScience 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 [[UrbanLegends still in popular culture]] despite being [[ScienceMarchesOn debunked]]. Writers fail to recognize this, and the [[InformedAbility supposed professionals]] in their stories will quote woefully out-of-date representations of [[AllPsychologyIsFreudian Sigmund Freud's]] theory of the unconscious, Carl Jung's collective unconscious {{archetype}}s, or Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This is the equivalent of a modern physicist [[YouFailPhysicsForever discussing luminiferous aether]], a chemist trying to create a PhilosophersStone, or a biologist believing LamarckWasRight.

** Another 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. [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement 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.

* ''Everything'' about ''WebOriginal/JeffTheKiller'' and other creepypastas about MarySue teenage killers. Insanity is never portrayed as a hindrance - in fact, it's the [[PowerBornOfMadness polar opposite]]: insanity makes you charismatic, confident, immune to pain and more effective in battle (since you're "not holding back"). Psychotic episodes serve as a SuperMode of sorts, instead of making you helpless and vulnerable. Delusions like voices in your head or hallucinations are cool and funny, and never stop you from functionally interacting with reality. And of course, you never ''actually'' lose control over your very thoughts and actions. Needless to say, stories like this are written by actual children/teenagers as self-insert fantasies, and psychology is far from the only thing they fail to get right.

* [[LaughingMad Crazy laughter]] is the number one most common and stereotypical trait of insanity in fiction. While neurotic, hysterical or uncontrollable laughter does indeed happen with some mental illnesses that hinder your ability to communidate deotions propely (like schizophrenia), it's far from the only symptom, and it's situational. All the while, the media makes you think that literally every single psychological disorder ever turns you into a laughing lunatic and that this is the only type of patient in mental asylums.

* ''Everything'' about ''WebOriginal/JeffTheKiller'' and other creepypastas about MarySue teenage killers. Insanity is never portrayed as a hindrance - in fact, it's the [[polar opposite PowerBornOfMadness]]: insanity makes you charismatic, confident, immune to pain and more effective in battle (since you're "not holding back"). Psychotic episodes serve as a SuperMode of sorts, instead of making you helpless and vulnerable. Delusions like voices in your head or hallucinations are cool and funny, and never stop you from functionally interacting with reality. And of course, you never ''actually'' lose control over your very thoughts and actions. Needless to say, stories like this are written by actual children/teenagers as self-insert fantasies, and psychology is far from the only thing they fail to get right.

* Jon from ''WebVideo/GameGrumps'' thoroughly criticizes the "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over" stereotype during the ''Donkey Kong Country'' playthrough, jokingly stating that "the definition of insanity is when you're flinging your shit at the wall," and that pegging the definition of insanity as belonging to any one specific behavior "is as anecdotal as it gets."

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': ExtremeDoormat Fluttershy gets some questionable assertiveness training in the episode "Putting Your Hoof Down". Then again, other episodes have shown her justifying a spot on BewareTheQuietOnes, and she gets all her "training" from a motivational speaker and his well-meaning, for-profit courses.

[[folder:Film]]

** 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 ''Film/TheTerminator'', 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.

** Though Haymitch is an alcoholic, in the first book he very conveniently decides to stay sober only when he needs to be on the condition that Peeta and Katniss not interfere with his drinking when he feels like it. Real alcoholism isn't quite that convenient. Bit better in later books when we see him at least having difficulty sobering up.
*** Many real-life alcoholics do go through periods of sobriety in-between benders so Haymitch's sobriety in itself is not such a stretch. The fact that it happens from one day to the next, on the other hand...

** OCD is almost always played for laughs in entertainment.

* Almost everything psychological in ''Series/{{MASH}}'' ever, especially the later seasons, especially the finale.
** This could be considered more accurate than a currently correct treatment. ''Series/{{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.
** 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.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic''. ExtremeDoormat Fluttershy gets some questionable assertiveness training in the episode "Putting Your Hoof Down". Then again, other episodes have shown her justifying a spot on BewareTheQuietOnes, and she gets all her "training" from a motivational speaker and his well-meaning, for-profit courses.

* L and most of the other children from Whammy's House in ''Manga/DeathNote'' display many RainMan-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 KnightTemplar VillainProtagonist, who claims to be killing people for the greater good.

** The word "psychotic" itself has become ''the'' diagnosis of HollywoodPsych. 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 [[LaymansTerms Troper's terms]]: [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic Pinkie Pie]] and WebAnimation/HomestarRunner are psychotics; [[Literature/{{Discworld}} Carcer Dun]] and [[TheSilenceOfTheLambs Hannibal Lecter]] are not.

** 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.

** 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. [[PotHole 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.

* The arc in ''Comicbook/{{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 [[InformedAbility 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.

* The entire movie ''Film/BenX'' 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.

* Christopher Boone of ''[[Literature/TheCuriousIncidentOfTheDogInTheNightTime The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]'' fame has either UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome 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. [[http://iautistic.com/autism-myths-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time.php This article]] goes into it more fully.
** Then again, Mark Haddon, the author, never intended to define Christopher as explicitly autistic, and doesn't really care for attempts to label him as such. Indeed, he never uses the term in the book, and no one in the novel (not even Christopher himself) ever brings up exactly ''what'' his condition is.
* The ''Literature/{{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".

* Almost every attempt to portray more severe Kanner's autism tends to be a cutesy-poo VerySpecialEpisode about a Mother struggling with her non-verbal child. The aim is usually to either find a cure, show people how angelic (or ax 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.

* Christopher Boone of ''[[Literature/TheCuriousIncidentOfTheDogInTheNightTime The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]'' fame has either AspergerSyndrome 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. [[http://iautistic.com/autism-myths-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time.php This article]] goes into it more fully.