Tropes about how the human (or nonhuman) mind works... or could be made to work, given some premise. Including tropes on therapy and the science of psychology.
Tropes:
Main topic:
Categories:
- Autism
- Character Flaw Index
- Character Reaction Index
- Dream Tropes
- Ego Tropes
- Emotion Tropes
- Empowerment
- Extraversion Tropes
- Hollywood Psych
- Identity Index
- Imagine All the Tropes
- Intelligence Tropes
- Internal Conflict Tropes
- Introversion Tropes
- The Jerk Index
- Madness Tropes
- Memetics in Fiction
- Memory Tropes
- Morality Tropes
- Personal Horror
- Philosophy Tropes
- A Polite Index
- Psychological Combat
- Psychological Horror
- Psychological Thriller
- Selfishness Tropes
- Selflessness Tropes
- Split Personality Tropes
- Stupidity Tropes
- Tropes to Cope
- Abuse Mistake
- Aggressive Categorism
- All Psychology Is Freudian: Psychology may have largely moved on from Psychoanalysis, but since it's captured the minds (pun very much intended) of both audiences and writers, it's the school you're most often going to see referenced in fiction.
- All Therapists Are Muggles
- Ambiguous Situation
- Anger Born of Worry
- Beneath the Mask: The way a person acts in public is not the person's real personality.
- Behavioral Conditioning
- Big Five Personality Traits
- Bizarre Alien Psychology
- Black-and-White Insanity: A psychosis where one is thoroughly convinced that everything they support is good and that everything they oppose is bad.
- Bullied into Depression
- Categorism as a Phobia
- Category Traitor: A person is considered a traitor by the rest of their kind for liking something that goes against their culture.
- Cathartic Chores
- Circumcision Angst: A man is upset about being either circumcised or uncircumcised, depending on the work.
- Condescending Compassion: A character looks down on someone by claiming to feel "sorry" for the person being inferior to them.
- Cope by Creating
- Cope by Pretending
- Crapsack Only by Comparison: A character enters a setting that they believe is an awful place, but it might simply be because they're used to better places.
- Date My Avatar
- Demoted Memories
- Destructive Romance
- Diagnosed by the Audience
- Doublethink
- Dr. Psych Patient
- Egocentrically Religious: A person is religious in a self-serving way.
- Emotion Control
- Epiphany Therapy
- Erotic Dream: A person has a sexual dream.
- Fan Flattering
- The Finicky One
- Five Stages of Grief
- Florence Nightingale Effect
- Freudian Couch
- Freudian Excuse: It is established that a villain or jerk is the way they are because of something bad that happened to them in the past.
- Freudian Excuse Denial: Someone rejects any claims of having some traumatic event in their past influence their motives.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The people the scoundrel has wronged and the person who intends to punish the scoundrel address that the scoundrel's past misfortune does not make their actions okay.
- Freudian Slip
- Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul
- Ghost in the Machine
- God Is Flawed: This trope is to a large extent about psychoanalyzing God.
- Grey-and-Gray Insanity: A person has the psychosis of being so caught up in moral nuances that they are unable to distinguish unambiguous right or wrong.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: A character who has a ludicrous tendency to get angry at the drop of a hat.
- Happily Failed Suicide: A suicide attempt fails, but the person who tried to kill themselves is happy that they survived.
- Heroic Safe Mode
- Hide Your Otherness
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs
- Hive Mind: An entire species shares the same brain.
- I Can Change My Beloved
- I Just Want to Be You
- Induced Hypochondria
- Inferiority Superiority Complex
- Inkblot Test
- Internalized Categorism
- It Kind of Looks Like a Face
- Jesus Was Crazy
- Lima Syndrome
- Living Is More than Surviving: A character learns that life isn't much fun without the risk of danger.
- Love Makes You Crazy: A person's love for someone drives them insane.
- Manufacturing Victims
- A Match Made in Stockholm
- Mental Health Recovery Arc
- Mental Story: What's going on in someone's head is the focus of the plot.
- Middle Child Syndrome: The middle child doesn't get as much attention and love as their older and younger siblings.
- Mid-Suicide Regret
- Mind Control
- Mind Hive
- Mind Screw
- Momma's Boy
- Myers–Briggs
- Nature Versus Nurture
- Nightmare Fetishist: A character aroused by or fascinated by stuff that most people are freaked out by.
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: A character who comes off as terrifying without intending to.
- Nonsense Classification
- Nurture over Nature
- Obsessively Organized: A character who goes nuts when things are not properly organized.
- Only-Child Syndrome: Stereotypes about being raised an only child.
- Opinion Override: A character complains about something they see as politically incorrect, when members of the actual minority group the person believes are being attacked do not care.
- Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality
- Past Experience Nightmare
- Phantom Limb Pain
- Placebo Effect
- Placebo Eureka Moment
- Psychoactive Powers
- Psychological Projection
- Psycho Psychologist
- Psychosexual Horror
- Questionable Consent
- Recurring Dreams
- Reluctant Psycho
- Retail Therapy
- Reverse Psychology: Tricking someone into doing something by pretending you want them to do the opposite.
- Sanity Slippage: A character gradually becomes insane.
- Sanity Strengthening
- Scrubbing Off the Trauma
- Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: A character who demonizes sex finds themselves wanting it anyway, often with bad results for whoever they want it from.
- The Shrink
- Single-Issue Psychology
- Sleepy Depressive
- Sour Prudes
- Straw Affiliation
- Sugary Malice
- Therapist in Therapy
- Therapy Backfire
- Therapy Is for the Weak
- There Are No Therapists: Characters suffering from mental issues are unable to find any professional help.
- Thought-Aversion Failure: Telling someone to not think of something, only for the person to end up thinking about it anyway.
- Too Upset to Create
- Trans Nature
- Troubled Sympathetic Bigot
- The Victim Must Be Confused: A so-called hero ignores a supposed victim's claims that their "captor" has done nothing wrong to them, insisting that the captor is playing with their mind or manipulating them.
- Upbringing Makes the Hero: It is established that a hero or a nice person is the way they are because they grew up in a close-knit upbringing that taught them their morals.
- Warrior Therapist
- Windmill Crusader: A person is obsessed with vanquishing a threat that doesn't really exist.
- Windmill Political: Trying to convince people that what you oppose is more dangerous and harmful than it actually is.
- Word Association Test
- Working Out Their Emotions
