History Main / SingleIssuePsychology

Compare with CynicismCatalyst or FreudianExcuse, when a DarkAndTroubledPast is used to explain why a villain is/became evil, and {{Idiosyncrazy}}, where a villain is obsessed with a single issue around which all their crimes are themed. See also BoredWithInsanity.

** In another one, Ned Flanders has a huge string of bad luck culminating in his family's house being destroyed by a hurricane. Eventually he snaps and yells at the whole town after everybody had turned out and done a poor job of rebuilding his house. He checks himself into a mental hospital where we learn that Ned never learned to express anger. This is apparently because he was a hellion as a child, and his parents were beatniks who never disciplined him. He got over that by being spanked continuously for a year by a therapist. That same therapist comes back and gets Ned to admit that he hates his parents, and Ned is immediately "cured." Hard to be completely sure if it's supposed to be a subversion, a parody, or what. However, considering Ned then says, with a cheery grin and an eye tick, that he'll run anyone who really pisses him off over with his car, and that this is ''{{The Simpsons}}'', you'd get good odds on a parody.

* Parodied in TheSimpsons, where Marge had a fear of flying related entirely to the shame of learning her father was a flight attendant. Her many, many other traumas coincidentally related to airplanes were ignored by her psychologist: "Yes, yes, it's all a rich tapestry." Inverted in that they were ignored not because they weren't relevant, but because now that they had made headway with her fear of flying Marge's therapist wanted to move forward with her far more serious problem- being married to Homer.
** Similarly parodied in the episode where Homer reveals that he found a corpse when he was twelve: "It's responsible for everything wrong with my life! My occasional overeating! My fear of corpses!" While his examples make logical sense, there is certainly a lot more with Homer's life that's wrong.
** It is implied that Mr. Smithers is gay because of a lie Mr. Burns told him when he was young.
--->'''Mr Burns''': I told him his father was killed in the Amazon by a tribe of savage women. ''(to Smithers)'' I hope it didn't affect you in any way.
--->'''Smithers''': We'll never know, sir.
** In another one, Ned Flanders has a huge string of bad luck culminating in his family's house being destroyed by a hurricane. Eventually he snaps and yells at the whole town after everybody had turned out and done a poor job of rebuilding his house. He checks himself into a mental hospital where we learn that Ned never learned to express anger. This is apparently because he was a hellion as a child, and his parents were beatniks who never disciplined him. He got over that by being spanked continuously for a year by a therapist. That same therapist comes back and gets Ned to admit that he hates his parents, and Ned is immediately "cured." Hard to be completely sure if it's supposed to be a subversion, a parody, or what. However, considering Ned then says, with a cheery grin and an eye tick, that he'll run anyone who really pisses him off over with his car, and that this is ''{{The Simpsons}}'', you'd get good odds on a parody.

* Defied in ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'' season six. When [=BoJack=] is in rehab, Dr. Champ's method of therapy focuses on finding the first time his patients took a drink; he assures them that, once they figure out ''why'' they took that first drink, they'll be cured. [=BoJack=], who's struggled with alcoholism his whole life, knows how naive that is and repeatedly takes Dr. Champ to task for feeding the patients false hope. Throughout the episode, we get flashbacks to significant incidents in [=BoJack's=] life that led to him relying on alcohol. Ultimately, they all contribute to his current substance abuse problems, and it's illustrated very clearly that removing any single one of those incidents wouldn't resolve the underlying issues that led to them.

* Present to a degree in "Webcomic/CheckPlease. Bitty's fear of checking stems from several instances of intense bullying, but the comic builds to the reveal of the first moment Bitty developed his fear: [[spoiler:during a game of peewee football.]] However, one of Bitty's major arcs in the comic involves him working to beat his fear of checking, facing triumphs and setbacks along the way, and he is never 100% fear-free.

* Subverted in Series/RedDwarf. We meet Ace Rimmer, a parallel universe's version of Arnold Rimmer. Ace lives up to [[TheAce his name]], while our Rimmer is a cowardly, neurotic, bullying, officious, psychological train wreck. We learn that the [[ForWantOfANail difference between them]] is that one Rimmer undeservingly passed a grade in school, while the other was held back. The subversion is that it's the loser-Rimmer who got the lucky break; Ace got left down a year and learned to stand up for himself as a result. Rimmer's the mess he is today for ''lack'' of a single traumatic event.

* The various shipgirls of ''VideoGame/KantaiCollection'' usually have traumas related to sinking based on their real-life counterpart's demise. For example, a good majority of them have issues with submarines, due to their historical counterparts being sunk by them. Ranging from fear (usually the destroyers) to pissed off (ex: Atago and Maya) to threatening (Tatsuta).

* Inverted in ''Birdz'': Morty Storkowitz's regular patient, Mr. Nuthatch, has a different hang-up in every episode.

* In ''Webcomic/TinasStory'', Tina's mother has a grudge against humans, as she was raped by a human as a teen, resulting in Tina. [[BelievingTheirOwnLies This turns out to be a lie]] to cover for the fact that Georgette was underage when she got pregnant. After the truth is revealed by Tina's biological father[[note]]Georgette's husband and Tina's stepfather, Stan[/note]], the hate she had for humans seemed to disappear.

** The other villains in the animated series also tend to follow a similar pattern while narrowly averting the trope. Except for the Joker, who's [[ChaoticEvil just flat-out crazy]], many of the villains start off with single-issue mental disturbances: the Mad Hatter is an Alice-fixated StalkerWithACrush, the Riddler is obsessed with winning, the Scarecrow is a lifelong sadist. But we never find out, at least within the animated series, what sort of experiences might have driven them to their current mental state.

** There's also Two-Face in the comics, who originally only had his scarring to contribute to his insanity. Eventually, he was given a severely screwed up mentality including issues due to AbusiveParents and problems with rage, which the scarring only pushed into pure insanity. He was also secretly violently schizophrenic, and actually murdered someone (a SerialKiller who got OffOnATechnicality) ''before'' the scarring. More modern versions, including ''The Dark Knight'', ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' and others, argue that part of the reason for his insanity was that the SlaveToPR and mass-media nature of modern politics made it harder for him to reconcile his public and private personas, creating a guy who was internally divided which finally becomes a LiteralMetaphor.

In fiction, to serve the demands of narrative, i.e. telling a complete story with a beginning-middle-end and having CharacterDevelopment, these things are flattened out. Psychological therapy and its tropes mirror narrative in many ways, it involves a plot to find some mystery, to tie together disparate parts into a coherent whole. So this feeds into storytelling easily, as well as creating story-arc and character-arc, it's a handy way of creating a distinct ensemble that [[RuleOfPerception sticks out to readers]], simply give different characters different issues and have them grow and change by identifying and then overcoming those problems. In story terms, finding out the dark secret of the past, serves as the MacGuffin, what it is specifically, is not important to the plot, but finding it out is the goal to be attained. Used this schematically, single-issue-psychology comes off as especially trivial. It's much easier when all a person's problems stem from a single traumatic incident, and [[EpiphanyTherapy working through that single incident will instantly cure them]], so fiction tends to represent character psychology in this way, especially genre fiction where much of the story is about an external plot and not character. In a plot, using such a trope explains the character to the audience, allows the latter to empathize with the main character, and likewise the action of the plot becomes emotionally resonant since audiences are aware of how it directly affects the character in his inner being. Expect realistic drama and serious fiction to avert this, or complicate this and stories with {{Deconstruction}} heavily subvert and at times mock this concept.

Remember, Administrivia/TropesAreNotBad. If psychological healing were played with 100% complexity, certain mediums couldn't manage to deliver it in time. Movies, for example, have time limits of about 2-3 hours maximum, and it would be impossible to cram that much detail into the story without risking the EightDeadlyWords. Likewise, having a single issue by itself does not mean that a character is one-dimensional, if a story uses a single issue as a means and not an end, it's on solid ground. Going too far in the other direction, i.e. giving the character multiple issues risks beggaring disbelief in the audience that an individual with that much baggage could actually be functional, and simply making everything about a character an "issue" is just as trivializing and misapplying psychology as single-issues can be at their most banal.

Human psychology involves many moving parts. Of these parts, the actual "issues" are merely one of them. Whether one has multiple issues -- psychological, some biological, some cognitive, and some related to experiences and memories -- or singular issues -- these issues, by themselves, are not always determinants or agents of human behavior. It very much depends on the patient. Whether these "issues" are problems is also not clear, since sometimes MiseryBuildsCharacter and psychological neurosis at times manifests as a coping mechanism to difficulties in a society, and merely adjusting to society without taking into account what the values of that society is and whether its worth adjusting to, makes psychological treatment very difficult and almost always a person-to-person situation.

In fiction, to serve the demands of narrative, i.e. telling a complete story with a beginning-middle-end and having CharacterDevelopment, these things are flattened out. Psychological therapy and its tropes mirror narrative in many ways, it involves a plot to find some mystery, to tie together disparate parts into a coherent whole. So this feeds into storytelling easily, as well as creating story-arc and character-arc, it's a handy way of creating a distinct ensemble that [[RuleOfPerception sticks out to readers]], simply give different characters different issues and have them grow and change by identifying and then overcoming those problems. In story terms, finding out the dark secret of the past, serves as the MacGuffin, what it is specifically, is not important to the plot, but finding it out is the goal to be attained. Used this schematically, single-issue-psychology comes off as especially trivial. It's much easier when all a person's problems stem from a single traumatic incident, and [[EpiphanyTherapy working through that single incident will instantly cure them]], so fiction tends to represent character psychology in this way, especially genre fiction where much of the story is about an external plot and not character. In a plot, using such a trope explains the character to the audience, allows the latter to empathize with the main character, and likewise the action of the plot becomes emotionally resonant since audiences are aware how it directly affects the character in his inner being. Expect realistic drama and serious fiction to avert this, or complicate this and stories with {{Deconstruction}} heavily subvert and at times mock this concept.

** Though the big one, Sasuke, averts it. He's had to confront his issues repeatedly over the course of the series but, while he made progress a few times, they still continued to haunt and drive him, plus each time he looked like he was getting better, something came along that screwed it all up. He's crazier than ever, and ''after'' dealing with the source of his troubles (albeit in a fight to the death). In Part 1, Kakashi actually warned him that he wouldn't be able to play this trope straight, since he'd seen too many people like Sasuke who let revenge consume their lives, even after they had achieved it, because their issues by then had grown beyond the initial trauma.

* ''Manga/{{Homunculus}}'' has this as a general premise, since the Homunculi themselves often take a form that represents each person's deepest insecurity. When time comes to resolve the person's issue, the Homunculus will usually break down and become more normal looking until the person looks more like themselves again.

** ''Franchise/SpiderMan's'' obsession with being a superhero stems entirely from his guilt over letting a robber get away who wound up killing his father-figure Uncle Ben. He consistently reminds himself that ''the one time'' he ignored his "responsibility", it cost him his father figure, and he resolves to use his powers to help others even if it costs him socially. More realistically than Batman, the comics and the live-action films repeatedly show that this by itself doesn't entirely transform Peter overnight, since he can't feasibly devote himself full-time to being a superhero, and that he often has to negotiate different parts of his social and professional duties, often trapped in a [[ConflictingLoyalty Cornelian dilemma.]]

* For the first fifty or so issues of ''ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica'', Obsidian was portrayed as a threat to himself and others and as suffering from symptoms superficially akin to schizophrenia. This culminated in his attempt to destroy the world, which was thwarted by his father's ThePowerOfLove speech. Obsidian hasn't been in any need of treatment since then, judging by subsequent appearances: apparently, working through his daddy issues was enough to entirely cure him. In this case, the "voice" he was hearing was, in fact, genuinely another entity, making it less "paranoid schizophrenia" and more "daddy issues and receiving a metric tonne of malicious advice". It would still probably be more complicated than it was portrayed to resolve, but it's not ''quite'' as bad as curing schizophrenia. Also, in a recent issue one of his teammates worried aloud if had stopped taking his medication when he began to act strangely, suggesting that when not medicated his problems may return.

** ComicBook/DoctorDoom's motivation for his hatred for Reed Richards stems from the fact that he ignored Reed's warnings about an experiment, said experiment backfired and gave him a scar and got him expelled. Said scar is the reason why he wears the mask and armour look. In Creator/JackKirby's views, the scar is actually a thin cut that Doom exaggerates out of proportion, but Creator/JohnByrne argues that the scar may have been thin but Doom overcompensated by putting a hot iron forged mask on his face truly twisting his features. Of course, the true reason for the rivalry between these two intellectual rivals, is made more complex and entangled as time goes on.

** Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/TheKillingJoke'' invented the proverbial "one bad day" concept, where the Joker tries to prove that a single instance of TraumaCongaLine can drive anyone insane, demonstrating it with the psychological and physical torture of Commissioner Gordon. It doesn't work on Gordon who despite being traumatized insists that Batman bring him to justice by-the-book. Psychologically speaking, Joker's literal approach i.e. spelling out exactly why he is doing and the purpose he wants to achieve on his victim is not conducive to creating the effect he wants and hence it's fairly easy for Gordon to resist. At the end of the story Batman tells Joker that his "one bad day" theory is bunk, that Joker is mentally ill, and while something bad may or may not have happened to him, Joker still has agency and culpability to try and cure himself. Joker briefly realizes this and decides that [[IgnoredEpiphany he won't get better after all]], and Batman himself laments that not only will Joker turn down his offer of help, but that he himself won't kill Joker for the greater good, since he doesn't believe himself to be sane to handle the responsibility of killing someone on his conscience. This part of Joker's characterization recurs in ''Film/TheDarkKnight'', but the Joker does it to [[spoiler:Harvey Dent]] this time, and [[spoiler:it works, resulting in Two-Face, mostly because Joker disguises it better, comes to Dent when he is alone and bitter with his co-workers and by use of the coin flip, {{gaslight|ing}}s Harvey into thinking that it is his decision]].
** There's also Two Face in the comics, who originally only had his scarring to contribute to his insanity. Eventually, he was given a severely screwed up mentality including issues due to AbusiveParents and problems with rage, which the scarring only pushed into pure insanity. He was also secretly violently schizophrenic, and actually murdered someone (a SerialKiller who got OffOnATechnicality) ''before'' the scarring. More modern versions, including ''The Dark Knight'', ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' and others, argue that part of the reason for his insanity was that the SlaveToPR and mass-media nature of modern politics made it harder for him to reconcile his public and private personas, creating a guy who was internally divided which finally becomes a LiteralMetaphor.
* Creator/AlanMoore (of ''The Killing Joke'', above) actually dislikes this trope or more precisely the way this trope is applied in comics to merely motivate and explain character actions and plot, which in his view makes the charactera automatons who are reducible to their neuroses, and therefore not capable of agency and change and he sought to avert this as much as possible in his superhero fiction:

** He averts this most notably in ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' which initially had superhero stock characters with, on the surface, fairly superficial traits and motivations, but the comics gradually explore their inner life and bring to light hidden parts of their past and in doing so revealsthat none of them are truly consistent, not even to their chosen identities and sense of being and all of them are capable of change: [[spoiler:TheCynic Comedian breaks down in tears and dies a lonely old man regretting some of his bad actions, Dr. Manhattan who has grown aloof from humanity gives the HumansAreSpecial aesop, Rorschach poses as a tough guy but dies in tears.]]

*** [[spoiler:Its more than that, Rage disorder, a chemical imbalance that can be as genetic as it is psychological, so maybe she can't help it, which explains why she just gets angrier after the story forces her to confront her issues and false assumptions that only hurt everyone, plus the fact she refuses to get treatment.]]
** Ranma also averts this, his issues stem from [[spoiler:the systematic abuse from his father giving him a strict set of what a man should be, and his own morals and honor that his immoral parent didn't stamp out(probably since his wife would kill him and it makes Ranma easier to control), but more specifically in the fanfic, it comes from everyone blaming his foot in mouth comments for Akane's anger, leading even him to blame himself, no matter how far he goes to avoid angering her. Combined with how much he actually loves her, the fact that defending himself, which he is quite capable of, only makes her look at him with hate that he finds worse than the injuries, this all leads to him becoming highly submissve, depressed, and unemotional as he feels that all of it is his fault for failing the one he loves, and thinking of himself as a failure as a man for all of this coming from a woman on top of the more emotional failings.]]

"One of those fellows who ask you questions about your childhood and gradually dig up the reason why you go about shouting "Fire" in crowded theatres. They find it's because somebody took away your all day sucker when you were six."

* In the ''Series/MurdochMysteries'' episode "Murdochophobia", Murdoch reveals that he has a previously unmentioned fear of butterflies. By the end of the episode he realises that this is because he associates them with his mother's death, and he seems reasonably comfortable in a room filled with them.
* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] in ''Series/{{Victorious}}''. Throughout the show, Robbie treats his ventriloquist dummy [[CompanionCube Rex]] like a real person, even having conversations with him when no one's around. In an episode where Rex gets broken, Jade suggests they use the opportunity to trick Robbie into thinking Rex is dead, believing it will solve his mental problems. Tori backs out at the last minute and convinces Robbie that his puppet is still alive, so the audience never gets see if this will work. However, there's a later episode where Robbie sells Rex. Robbie simply buys another puppet, which he treats the same way, suggesting that his psychological issues are more complex and that getting rid of Rex wouldn't have solved anything.

* ''VideoGame/DieAnstalt'' is a Flash game based entirely on this trope; every toy so far has one, singular psychological issue and once you get them to face it and accept it, they are cured. The process of treating each of the insane plush toys is incredibly complex and risky, though, and a mis-treatment can cause them to completely revert to their original state, so at least the game subverts EpiphanyTherapy. That said, the RidiculouslyCuteCritter and KickTheDog factor alone makes the headaches worth it.

** It's explored further in ''VideoGame/Persona4Arena'', as the heroes doubt doubt themselves and continue to wrestle with their old issues. [[spoiler:This is the basis of the Malevolent Entity's plan to steal their personas]]. They ultimately decide that they will likely never be able to resolve their issues completely, but they'll continue to work against them with the help of their friends.

* In ''Webcomic/{{Megatokyo}}'', Piro and particularly Kimiko are subject to a whole host of deep and troublesome issues (Kimiko's boss directly identifies Kimiko as the 'neurotic, messed up kind of actor') but none of them have any real source or solution. Largo and Erika on the other hand tie many of their issues to a single event, one which both of them prove extremely melodramatic about. Largo hangs all the neuroses that he cares about on the Endgames incident. He was probably still an obsessive, hard-drinking, and generally unstable guy before that, because he seems to think that's fine and normal. Erika, on the other hand, sees her big incident not as the cause of all her problems, but as the moment of her epiphany, when she realised just how screwed up her life had become. It proceeded to get even more screwed up from there, of course.

** In another one, Ned Flanders has a huge string of bad luck culminating in his family's house being destroyed by a hurricane. Eventually he snaps and yells at the whole town, after everybody had turned out and done a poor job of rebuilding his house. He checks himself into a mental hospital where we learn that Ned never learned to express anger. This is apparently because he was a hellion as a child, and his parents were beatniks who never disciplined him. He got over that by being spanked continuously for a year by a therapist. That same therapist comes back and gets Ned to admit that he hates his parents, and Ned is immediately "cured." Hard to be completely sure if it's supposed to be a subversion, a parody, or what. However, considering Ned then says, with a cheery grin and an eye tick, that he'll run anyone who really pisses him off over with his car, and that this is ''{{The Simpsons}}'', you'd get good odds on a parody.

* Either neatly subverted or simply averted in ''Literature/SailorNothing''. At first, it looks like Himei is the way she is because she has to fight monsters. Then she goes on to explain she's been doing this for ''five years''. The war has gone nowhere, all that happens is that innocents get hurt, and it even gives examples of some of the worse fights, highlights of which include getting boiling fat poured on you, being attacked by a fireman (complete with axe) and being at the tender mercies of an evil ten year-old with a sharp pencil.

* UsefulNotes/SigmundFreud is often [[{{Flanderization}} flanderized]] by some for advocating that once you unearthed someone's big ol' trauma, they were cured. In actual fact he repeated argued the opposite. He noted that psychology in the individual has multiple aspects, there's the ego formation, the oedipus complex, the development of the sexual drive, then repression and substitutions, but in a later state there is "the return of the repressed" and "the repetition-compulsion complex" which actively prevents people from fully removing or tackling their issues, and which might actually not be entirely a bad thing since it was likely that this neurosis actually led to other positive qualities that person may have, and that a better way is self-awareness and attaining a level of control rather than entirely removing it. Notably Freud criticized UsefulNotes/CarlJung for arguing that humanity has multiple issues and multiple paths but merely catalogued these issues and argued that knowing this will solve problems.

* Averted in ''Theatre/{{Equus}}''. Adam's problems are a result of various issues that were building up over his entire life, and he would probably have continued to be a fairly normal (if withdrawn) boy if they had been spotted earlier, or if there hadn't been a fairly specific series of triggers. The psychiatrist uses the metaphor of a group of metal pins lying scattered with no shape or structure, until a magnet is applied to one part and then suddenly all these previously harmless experiences and thoughts snap together and form links to various outcomes.

** Ranma also averts this, his issues stem from [[spoiler:the systematic abuse from his father giving him a strict set of what a man should be, and his own morals and honor that his immoral parent didn't stamp out(probably since his wife would kill him and it makes Ranma easier to control), but more specifically in the fanfic, it comes from everyone blaming his foot in mouth coments for Akane's anger, leading even him to blame himself, no matter how far he goes to avoid anger her. Combined with how much he actually loves her, the fact that defending himself, which he is quite capable of, only makes her look at him with hate that finds worse than the injuries, this all leads to him becoming highly submissve, depressed, and unemotional as he feels that all of it is his fault for failing the one he loves, and thinking of himself as a failure as a man for all of this coming from a woman on top of the more emotional failings.]]

* Mel Brooks' character in the movie ''Film/HighAnxiety'', arguably a parody of this sort of thing. Arguably taken to the most unrealistically bizarre extreme possible. After spending the entire movie freaking out due to constantly being put into situations that involve extreme heights it turns out [[spoiler:his fear was not of heights but of... parents. Cue a flashback to Mel Brooks dressed like a baby superimposed behind two arguing parents, which is apparently the cause for everything. He then immediately gets over his fear of heights with no trouble whatsoever]].
* Surprisingly averted in the movie ''Film/AnalyzeThis''. In a wacky comedy about a mobster's analyst, you'd expect there to be one big issue that would, when revealed, leave the mobster miraculously cured. Instead, there is one major trauma -- which, when touched upon, opens up a heaving wall of repressed guilt and grief, and renders the mobster an emotional wreck for weeks. After he pulls himself together he and his analyst agree that, while he's had a breakthrough, he's far from cured and needs a lot more therapy.

* Creator/AlanMoore (of ''The Killing Joke'', above) actually dislikes this trope or more precisely the way this trope is applied in comics to merely motivate and explain character actions and plot, which in his view makes the character automatons who are reducible to their neurosis, and so not capable of agency and change and he sought to avert this as much as possible in his superhero fiction:
** Alan Moore regretted that ''The Killing Joke'' became misunderstood for this, and considers it an unsuccessful work, because his application of psychological problems on larger-than-life comic book characters never really worked since the nature of the character and its function was that any complex origin ultimately becomes a single issue excuse for characterization. In the case of Joker, one-bad-day becomes his rationale for doing horrible things to people because horrible people did horrible things to him, but for him to be a complex villain Joker must be capable of some amount of change, which doesn't exist as a meaningful choice for him given the nature of the medium and the Batman-Joker rivalry.
** He averts this most notably in ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' which initially had superhero stock characters with, on the surface, fairly superficial traits and motivations, but the comics gradually explore their inner life and bring to light hidden parts of their past and in doing so reveals that none of them are truly consistent, not even to their chosen identities and sense of being and all of them are capable of change: [[spoiler:TheCynic Comedian breaks down in tears and dies a lonely old man regretting some of his bad actions, Dr. Manhattan who has grown aloof from humanity gives the HumansAreSpecial aesop, Rorscharch poses as a tough guy but dies in tears]].
** All of his stories, such as ''ComicBook/SwampThing'' is all about giving people a complex sense of identity and inner life, who despite their basic motivations, such as a plant based elemental who initially thought he was human, meaningfully trying to articulate new reasons to like humanity and nature, as well as fall in love with a human being, despite his understanding that humans can be disappointing.

Remember, TropesAreNotBad. If psychological healing were played with 100% complexity, certain mediums couldn't manage to deliver it in time. Movies, for example, have time limits of about 2-3 hours maximum, and it would be impossible to cram that much detail into the story without risking the EightDeadlyWords. Likewise, having a single issue by itself does not mean that a character is one-dimensional, if a story uses a single issue as a means and not an end, it's on solid ground. Going too far in the other direction, i.e. giving the character multiple issues risks beggaring disbelief in the audience that an individual with that much baggage could actually be functional, and simply making everything about a character an "issue" is just as trivializing and misapplying psychology as single-issues can be at their most banal.

* In the ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'' fic, ''The Bitter End'', Akane's rage disorder is depicted as stemming from [[spoiler:Akane's "inability" to fight off Death and save her mother. (Note that Akane was barely older than a toddler when her mother died)]]. An obsession exacerbated by Ranma's seeming ability to overcome any opponent.

* Half the cast of ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' fit this trope pretty well. Not so much in the "one trauma" thing- that is there, but they are usually well aware of it. Rather, in the DefeatMeansFriendship way, in that their trauma tends to inform their philosophy of life and fighting, which is why Naruto (or whoever they are facing) can't defeat or understand them. Its more like they are shocked that people can have as bad or worse lives than they had, but ''not'' be a psychological trainwreck.
** Though the big one, Sasuke, averts it. He's had to confront his issues repeatedly over the course of the series but, while he made progress a few times, they still continued to haunt and drive him, plus each time he looked like he was getting better something came along that screwed it all up; currently he's crazier than ever, and thats ''after'' dealing with the source of his troubles (albeit in a fight to the death). In Part 1 Kakashi actually warned him that he wouldn't be able to play this trope straight, since he'd seen too many people like Sasuke who let revenge consume their lives, even after they had achieved it, because their issues by then had grown beyond the initial trauma.
** Naruto, as well, since though he had, as he put it, been "saved" from his depressingly lonely childhood and the neurosis that went with it early on in the story, it was only the worst of it that was over, and he spent much of the rest of the story gradually overcoming them, as well as constantly running into situations that brought back his painful memories.
** {{Downplayed}} with Gaara. DefeatEqualsFriendship and sanity is in play after his fights with Sasuke and Naruto brought his issue to the fore, but while he's cured surprisingly easily of being a deranged and psychotic SerialKiller, and is now closer to his family and has friends, he is still emotionally withdrawn and obviously has some progress to make.
* The ''VisualNovel/LittleBusters'' anime ended up explaining Riki's narcolepsy this way - in the final episode, Riki realises that he falls asleep like that as a response to any bad things happening so that he can run away from them rather than confront them directly. In the visual novel, this wasn't so, as Riki's narcolepsy was just a condition he happened to have that affected some but not most areas of his life, like in reality. Though at least, as he's shown waking up at school in one of the final scenes, the anime may not have intended to claim that coming to terms with the event 'cured' him.

** Batman's life, obsession, and psyche hinges on the night his parents were killed in front of him and his desire to overcompensate and overcome the helplessness of being a small vulnerable child brutally seeing his protectors mowed down in the blink of an eye. Later events (the death of the second Robin, nearly shooting Alexander Luthor, being cast through time by a mad god) merely add nuance to his behavior, although as time goes on, people note that Batman's general paranoia, his ControlFreak secretive tendencies (which he unleashes not only on villains but his allies and friends: the Batfamily, Justice League) and his inability to really mature and be a man (i.e. form a meaningful relationship and [[DatingCatwoman not be attracted to]] villainesses), as well as the fact that he ''dresses up as a giant Bat'' and takes his legend and CultOfPersonality seriously, means that there are parts to him that aren't entirely conditioned or based on what happened to his parents.
** A [[ComicBook/ThePunisherMAX Punisher One Shot story]] complicates this. Most people believe everything Frank Castle does is due to his family's death, while journalists, authors, psychologists and other researchers look into his history and pin it on Vietnam. In actuality The Punisher didn't spring from any one event, his issues built cumulatively and not just from traumatic events either. Reading "The Tyger" in a poetry group inspired a [[NightmareFetishist fascination]] with the greatest killers in the animal kingdom.
** ''Franchise/SpiderMan's'' obsession with being a superhero stems entirely from his guilt over letting a robber get away who wound up killing his father-figure Uncle Ben. He consistently reminds himself that ''the one time'' he ignored his "responsibility" it cost him his father figure and resolves to use his powers to help others even if it costs him socially. More realistically than Batman, the comics and the live-action films repeatedly show that this by itself doesn't entirely transform Peter overnight, since he can't feasibly devote himself full time to being a super-hero, and that he often has to negotiate different parts of his social and professional duties, often trapped in a [[ConflictingLoyalty cornellian dilemma]].

* The title character of the rock opera ''Theatre/{{Tommy}}'' is thrown into a borderline catatonic state by the childhood trauma of watching in a mirror as his mother's second husband kills his biological father.. After years of unsuccessful attempts to treat his condition, his mother loses her temper and smashes the mirror he's staring into -- and he's ''instantly cured''.