This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Bein Sane: This page has way too many non-subversions and aversions, so much so that it almost outweighs the legitimate content here. Who wants to clean it up?
Following discussions moved from There Are No Psychologists, due to redirect. Add new discussions to the top of the page.
I do not agree with the last "real life" example because it seems to just be a shot in the dark from a troper who had a crazy shrink. Justify please, or it should be removed. —-
This seems to be related to the phenomenon I have seen in a lot of television shows and also anime. I am trying to think of a snappy name for it. Perhaps "Simplified Psychology" or "Just One Trauma" would do it.
Television is full of troubled characters whose problems stem from one single traumatic event, and they will remain troubled until they undergo an epiphany and accept it. The single most common trauma in this context is witnessing the violent deaths of their parents or other loved ones.
These people never, ever have anything else in their pasts they need to come to terms with, and, if they simply decide one morning to accept what happened, they instantly become cheerful, well-adjusted, and normal.
Real people in the real world are not nearly so resilient, and real people with real problems can seldom just decide to be happy one morning, but in the world of fiction this is EVERYWHERE.
Burai: My kneejerk thought would be to call the single-trauma phenomenon "One Engram From Clear", since it seems to match up nicely to typical oversimplified presentations of Dianetics (e.g. in an infomercial or intro pamphlet).
Incidentally, the Apocalypse Now example seems utterly misplaced. The sense I have is that this trope is about the apparent lack of expected societal aids in coping with traumas, or more informally, the urge to ask "Um, why aren't these people in therapy?" when watching a show. That film's characters have been explicitly isolated from any societal aids, so such questions are mooted.
Mister Six: Edited the entry to be more explicit.
Kizor: It's not only anime: "Um, why aren't these people in therapy?" is exactly what I say when I try to watch a soap.
Pychologists are researchers and scientists, think rats in mazes. They went to grad school and have Ph Ds. Psychiatrists can treat patients and prescribe medicine, think people on couches. They went to med school and have M Ds. Just as there is a huge difference between a biologist and your family physician, these two occupations should not be mixed up. The article title should be changed.
Seth: I'm training as a psychologist so seconded. Though a clinical psychologist does treat patients, few people could afford one, most people go to a psychiatrist - an MD with a few months/years psychology training who tends to prescribe drugs before using therapies. (That's probably just because a CP can't prescribe drugs... yet) It is one of the reasons that behaviour modifying drugs like Ritalin and anti-depressants are being over prescribed.
Kizor: Renaming it is, but to "psychiatrist" or "therapist"? I say the latter.
Lale: I vote for "therapists." We're really talking about people who have high-stress jobs and dysfunctional/absent families, after all- people who could use serious therapy.
Ununnilium: Indeed. Plus, therapy works even for worlds that don't have the mind-crushing evil benefit of psychiatry, but have other mental-health-type stuff.
Sci Vo: Right, fictional characters generally can't even get a "therapist" with certificates in massage and aroma therapy to talk to them, let alone a "counselor" with a bachelor's degree in politics, let alone a "psychotherapist" with a master's degree in social work, let alone a real psychologist (Ph.D. or Psy.D.) or psychiatrist (M.D. or O.D.).
Seth: I love the Kanon example. Goes through all these serious reasons as to why they don't have any support culminating in "She isn't even supposed to be out"
sporkpimp: I've removed the following exchanges:
- The vast majority of psychiatrist and psychologists follow that study and career path because they want some way to help with their own issues. Naturally, this doesn't lead to a large amount of psychologists with possibly more psychological issues than the people they're supposed to help...
- Mental health professionals often seek therapy themselves. Additionally, the profession traditionally has had a high suicide rate...
- While this troper has seen psychiatric drugs improve people's lives, he can't say the same for psychoanalysis.
- That is because psychoanalysis was developed to help people with specific sexual hang-ups. Analytic psychology, the more generalised method originally developed by Carl Jung, actually does help.
They're off-topic. Sub out "therapists" and replace them with "priests" and the point is still that this trope is about characters suffering without intervention by the safety nets we have in the real world (whether medical, legal, or religious), and *not* about our personal feelings towards the psychiatric profession.
The topic of mental illness is attractive to people who have an ax to grind with "the system", it seems, but can't they at least keep it topical?
Mouser: I'm trying to decide whether the Zelda example fits better here or in Angst? What Angst?. It follows:
- Possibly justified in a quasi-medieval quasi-European fantasy setting, but Link of The Legend Of Zelda : Ocarina of Time deserves special mention. When the story begins, he's a ten-year-old child put in charge of saving the world from an evil wizard who had just murdered what amounts to his cultural god and parent figure with a curse, after having had spent his entire life as an outcast in said culture. He then goes on to kill several monsters the likes of which would give most adults nightmares for the rest of their lives before learning that everything he just did only helped the villain, after waking up as an adult, which is something he didn't know was possible. He goes out into a haunted, dead landscape that's partially his fault and later told that he's not even the same species he thought he was. At the end of the game his best friend leaves him, possibly forever, as he's changed back into a child against his will.
- To say nothing of what he goes through during Majora's Mask. Really makes you wonder what goes on in his head after all that.
- To answer that question, refer to the page picture for Room Full of Crazy.
- To say nothing of what he goes through during Majora's Mask. Really makes you wonder what goes on in his head after all that.
Greenygal: Re the Magneto and Moira argument: Moira does not say that her process made Magneto sane. What she says is "My process was a failure, Magneto—effective only so long as the subject never used their mutant power." She then goes on to talk about how it's impossible to brainwash mutants because using their powers resets them to their default state, so yeah, it's confusing, and the fact that she responds to Magneto's demand that she do the same thing to the X-Men by brainwashing them doesn't help. But I can't see what's ambiguous about "my process was a failure." Is there a point where somebody else establishes that Moira's procedure really was responsible for Mags' behavior in the Claremont years (as opposed to a very unwell Magneto jumping to conclusions)? Because it's not in that storyline. All of which is admittedly mostly irrelevant to the main issue—Magneto has mental problems, he could use some help, he isn't getting it—but as far as I can tell what I said wasn't wrong.
