Needs Help: Hollywood Personality Disorders

I wiki walked over to Hollywood Personality Disorders from a character page and hoo boy.

• It's unclear what the page is trying to be, exactly. The overall content is closer to a Useful Note as it goes into detail defining what a personality disorder is and the characteristics of each one, but the title and page image imply it was meant to be about the stereotyped fiction versions.
• It's quite long and wordy, the tone is somewhat weird in a way I can't quite put my finger on, and the main description is a little incoherent with that "personality immune system" business.
• Few if any examples mention the character actually being diagnosed in canon or by Word of God; they're all "this character could have it because of criteria X, Y and/or Z." The bold part of the description outright states that this is speculation. Hella potential for shoehorning.
• I don't know enough about personality disorders to judge for myself, but going by the discussion page, some of the content may be inaccurate, stereotyped or misleading. There's two tropers on there who said they joined specifically to be able to comment because they were offended. Stereotypes in a page about Hollywood stereotypes would be one thing, but see point #1: the page is written as though the reader is supposed to take it seriously.

Is there anything salvageable here?

Opening.

Considering that we're not wikipedia and we're not psychologists, I'd be done for an Example Sectionectomy or converting this into an index on a Just for Fun page. There's a lot of speculation for many of the examples and it's also a bit of a redundant page. We have, for example, The Paranoiac and Narcissist so the sections on this page for paranoid personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder would just be copies of those example sections, I'd think. And the useful, real-life information could probably go in those tropes' Analysis/ subpages.

Do we have any Useful Notes pages for personality disorders? That page IS pretty bad. Sauron having OCPD because he is said to like to keep things orderly? Whaaat? We have the Super OCD page already (most of the examples are more similar to OCPD than actual OCD.)

edited 19th Sep '17 7:54:38 AM by PegasusKnightmare

If it's about real disorders, it should at most be a useful note. If we're collecting examples, it should more clearly be about how media portrays these disorders. We're a trope wiki, not a psychology wiki.

Should the page be split into useful notes (actual psychology) and stereotypical portrayal (fictional examples)? The current trope is a subtrope of Hollywood Psych, which suggests it should be the latter. We have Useful Notes pages for other types of mental illnesses, but not personality disorders specifically.

Not sure what you mean by "the latter" but the existence of Hollywood Psych makes me think that this article, as a trope rather than a Useful Note, is just redundant. We could probably move the disorders onto that page as additions to that index...

I think I'm with Water Blap on this one- whatever content in there is relevant to the Hollywood portrayals would fit fine on Hollywood Psych, since it already has a folder for individual illnesses (the "General" one under examples.)

The main thing I feel like we don't need is an examples list that's a list of, basically, armchair diagnoses. If we keep it, should it have a rule of "character must be stated in canon or by Word of God to have this disorder"? That would avoid the kind of examples Pegasus Knightmare mentioned.

If it's about characters some troper thinks has a disorder, but isn't mentioned in the actual work, then it's nothing but an opinion. From "normal" to some specific disorder is an extremely gradual and fuzzy shift. And with tropers thinking that stuff up, it ceases to be about what creators think disorders are and how they think they work.

I mean, a common reason creators don't specify in the first place is because they know it doesn't actually work like that, but it works for the plot, so that's how they write it.

So in the end, to actually call it something specific (as opposed by being inspired by something), the work, or possible Word of God, has to specify what it is.

Would it be better to cut subtropes like Hollywood Personality Disorders or cut the examples on the main Hollywood Psych page? Dear God, the Hollywood Psych page is BAD! I think I may take that one to the Natter Alert thread.

edited 20th Sep '17 5:06:49 AM by PegasusKnightmare

¿Porqué no los dos? Cut/merge the subtrope and clean up the examples.

Sounds like a good idea. The "general" folder for Hollywood pysch talks about what the disorders are and how they are portrayed, and the rest of the folders give actual character examples.

I just checked the Artistic License page and realized there is no Artistic License page for mental health/psychology. Perhaps we could convert Hollywood Personality Disorders (and related parts of the Hollywood Psych page) to an Artistic License page?

I would also be in favor of eliminating speculation on characters' mental illness (aside from maybe YMMV pages) and limiting it to Wordof God examples or cases where a character is stated to have a disorder in-universe.

Umm I think There Are No Therapists and All Psychology Is Freudian pretty much cover the vast majority of that.

The latter was even once named Somewhere A Psychologist Is Crying.

The artistic license tropes have their own problems, and clean-up has stalled on multiple occasions. So I'm def voting "no" on making another Artistic License trope unless it's near flawless, and this article — as already mentioned — is pretty redundant. And as Duck pointed out, an Artistic License Psychology trope would also be pretty redundant.

There Are No Therapists is about a lack of mental health care in fictional settings, and All Psychology Is Freudian is about how fictional psychologists tend to practice Freudian psychoanalysis or some other outdated method. I was referring to how fiction tends to represent mental illness itself inaccurately.

That makes sense. I noticed the Artistic License pages are natter magnets, not to mention the question of veracity.

As it is, I think the best thing is to just get rid of or throw all descriptions to some Useful Notes page (I prefer the former, as I've mentioned). The examples can go to Hollywood Psych or one of the subtropes, after cleaning.

Speaking of cleaning, a lot of examples are just personality traits that are written as character flaws rather than actual disorders. For instance, multiple examples under "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" are just selfish, and more or less described as such in the work. A lot of examples, as usual, don't actually explain why and how they're examples. I'd like to see how much would be left after cleaning.

If there's a need for a page for a specific disorder, that can be written up whenever someone wants to take up the task. I don't think there's a need for a page about general examples since we already have Hollywood Psych.

edited 22nd Sep '17 6:12:10 PM by AnotherDuck

I'm a noob where TRS is concerned... should we put it to a crowner or something?

This trope has 86 wicks. Is it possible to pick 50 of them?

Locking per New Year Purge.