Line #64 Main/DrPsychPatient


1	->''I don't want you to think of me as a psychiatrist, I want you to think of me as a mental patient who killed a psychiatrist before you got here.''
2	-->-- '''Creator/FrankieBoyle''', ''Series/MockTheWeek''
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4	Any time a character in a comedy visits a mental institution or hospital psych ward, odds are good that they'll speak with the first professional-looking person in a lab coat they come upon. And nearly as good that, having spoken to that person, they'll be approached by a ''real'' doctor, who'll chew out the "professional" for skipping their meds and stealing somebody's white coat. Surprise! The visiting character -- and audience -- have just been caught off-guard by this trope.
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6	Similar confusion can arise with mental patients who pose as nurses, security guards, teachers, police, clergy, or other figures of authority and/or respect. Usually a result of IJustWantToBeYou, in that the patient ''wants'' to emulate the authority-figure's status so much that they adopt that role, suppressing their own identity.
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8	Darker examples, in which a patient ''killed'' the doctor to assume his or her identity, appear in thrillers and horror stories. Such cases often start out as a straight-up deception, but may overlap with BecomingTheMask.
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10	Compare NapoleonDelusion, in which the patient is convinced they're someone else, but the fact that they're deluded isn't initially hidden from other characters or the audience. Contrast LostInCharacter, in which an otherwise-sane actor becomes caught up in living their assumed role. No relation other than the name to RunningTheAsylum, in which a fan takes over the writing of a series.
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12	This trope is sometimes played for suspense rather than laughs, so possible '''spoilers''' below:
13
14	!!Examples:
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16	[[foldercontrol]]
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18	[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
19	* ''Anime/AttackOnTitan'': During his stay in the Marley hospital, [[SecretIdentity Mr. Kruger]] meets one man who introduces himself as Dr. Yaeger. Initially, he comes across as quite collected and well-spoken. However, after unintentionally ([[AmbiguousSituation or intentionally]]) bringing up regrets about his family, Dr. Yaeger is sent into a fit of anguished screaming due to his PTSD, prompting the nurse to come and escort him to a safer place. This is a bit of a DownplayedTrope since Yaeger ''is'' an actual doctor, [[NotThatKindOfDoctor just a physician instead of a psychiatrist]], and is not permanently confined to the facility, merely going there on psychological evaluations.
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22	[[folder:Film]]
23	* ''Film/TheElevenOClock'' is a comic short film about a mental patient, under the delusion that he is a psychiatrist, who wanders into a real psychiatrist's office and takes it over.
24	* In ''Film/Teachers1984'', a delusional patient wanders into the school and is mistaken for the new American history instructor. He embraces the role and winds up teaching for most of the year, winning students' approval with his over-the-top costumed portrayals of historical figures.
25	* A similar example involving a psychiatric patient that thinks he is a lawyer, talking to his family in pretty good legalese until he's subdued, appears in ''Film/AirplaneIITheSequel''.
26	* In ''Film/TheCouchTrip'', Creator/DanAykroyd plays a mental patient who escapes and impersonates his psychiatrist at a conference while the psychiatrist is out of the country.
27	* In ''Film/TheATeam'', the EstablishingCharacterMoment of [[AcePilot Captain]] "[[CloudCuckoolander Howling Mad]]" Murdoch has [[TheBigGuy Baracus]] and [[LovableRogue Face]] mistake him for a doctor. He's already sewn a wound on Baracus' arm in the shape of a lightning bolt by the time the real doctor (and [[TheLeader Hannibal]]) comes along.
28	* In ''[[Film/NationalLampoon National Lampoon's Class Reunion]]'', serial killer Walter Baylor assumes the identity of a psychiatrist to infiltrate the reunion party and "warn" its attendees about the murderer on the loose. It's unclear if he's mimicking a specific doctor or not.
29	* In ''Film/ImACyborgButThatsOk'', the heroine wakes up in an hospital bed after a BungledSuicide. An elderly women welcomes her and wheels her around the asylum for a while. Then a doctor comes along and berates the woman who turns out be be just another patient.
30	* In ''Film/TheNinthConfiguration'', it's revealed that Colonel Kane was not the psychiatrist in charge of the ward for disturbed Vietnam Veterans, but rather a patient who was allowed to act out his delusions (by his brother, the actual psychiatrist on the ward) in the hope that it would be therapeutic both for him and the other patients.
31	* The Creator/RichardPryor film ''Film/CriticalCondition'' plays with this: Pryor's character is a hustler that successfully pulled off the InsanityDefense and thus is admitted in the psychiatric wing of a hospital, from which he later manages to escape by pretending to be a doctor... and the plot forces him to keep up the charade when the area that the hospital is in becomes ground zero for the landfall of a hurricane, [[ClosedCircle making transportation impossible]] and putting the patients (some of which became his friends) at risk.
32	* Inverted in ''Film/ShutterIsland'', in which the protagonist believes he, ''himself'', is a federal agent investigating sinister events at a psychiatric hospital, but is revealed to be a delusional patient.
33	* ''Film/TheDreamTeam'' opens with a man in a lab coat walking down the halls of a mental institution taking notes on a clipboard. It turns out that he's a patient, while in reality the psychiatrist treating him is dressed much more casually. Later in the film, he poses as a psychiatrist successfully so that he can get some bad guys temporarily committed on a psych hold.
34	* ''Film/{{Spellbound}}'' is one of the most famous examples, with Creator/GregoryPeck as Dr. Edwards, who initially presents as a psychiatrist and is later revealed to be a patient with delusions and severe amnesia.
35	* ''Film/StonehearstAsylum'' has the main character discover the entire staff of a mental hospital have been replaced by the patients, who took over the asylum. Some of them are actually much nicer than those they replaced. [[spoiler:The ending reveals he himself is a patient impersonating a psychiatrist too.]]
36	* In ''Film/{{Nuts}}'' (1987), Claudia Draper uses one to play a joke on her public defender, who doesn't realize it until the 'doctor' starts mumbling vaguely, gets up from the table and wanders off, revealing she's wearing InstitutionalApparel under her coat.
37	* ''Film/Asylum1972Horror'' both inverts this trope ''and'' plays it straight: Dr. Martin, the applicant to replace the titular hospital's chief doctor, is challenged by the acting head Lionel Rutherford to determine which of four interviewed patients is the ''previous'' head of the facility, Dr. B. Starr, who has suffered a breakdown and no longer remembers being a staff member. [[spoiler:The concluding twist has Max the attendant, who'd let Dr. Martin into the interview rooms, turn out to be Starr, having killed and assumed the identity of the real Max.]]
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40	[[folder:Literature]]
41	* In Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" the narrator discovers that the mental institution staff that he's been talking to are actually the mental patients who have taken over the asylum.
42	* The Literature/MaryRussell novel ''Island of the Mad'' has an odd and complicated example. [[spoiler:The very creepy doctor apparently in charge of the asylum on Poveglia is an insane patient -- but he's actually the one and only patient, as all the apparent patients are a commune of abused women getting away from their abusers. The doctor, although he's a legitimate doctor, is an insane relative of one of them, who is being cared for there while also being used as a figurehead for the outside world.]]
43	* Reiko from ''Literature/NorwegianWood'' is a patient at the Ami Hostel, whom the main protagonist Tooru initially mistakes for one of the doctors. However, she still acts as an almost doctor-like guide to the facility for both Tooru and his on-and-off LoveInterest, Naoko.
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46	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
47	* ''Series/TwentyOneJumpStreet'': Hanson and Penhall have to go visit a psychiatrist after they have been involved in [[ShotInTheAss a shooting]]. When they arrive in the doctor's office, a young woman starts a session with them, seemingly very professional--until a man, the ''real'' psychiatrist, walks in, apologizes for being late, and sends the woman away to her hospital room (it's also clear from his reaction, that this patient of his regularly does this).
48	* Ralph "the Birdman" on ''Series/StElsewhere'' once spent an episode claiming to be "Dr. Bullfinch" and making rounds in the hospital.
49	* ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'': Hamlet visits a psychiatrist, who turns out to be a fake pretending to be a psychiatrist. The fake is chased out by another psychiatrist, who it turns out is also a fake chased out by the "real" psychiatrist, etc. At one point one of the fakes claims it's a psychological test they're running on Hamlet.
50	* In ''Series/NewsRadio'', when Bill (Phil Hartman's character) gets institutionalised, one of his fellow inmates greets him, pretending to be a psychiatrist.
51	* ''Series/JonathanCreek'' "The Scented Room": Maddy is talking to a psychiatrist when a police officer bursts in saying that her psychiatrist is actually a mental patient with an obsession with listening to people's intimate sexual neuroses. But another psychiatrist comes in and tells her that the man is her patient and actually works for the North Thames Gas Board.
52	-->'''First Psychiatrist''': ''Unsettling when that happens, isn't it? Now, you were talking about some general sense of confusion in your personal life.''
53	* Played for drama in ''Series/IronFist2017'', when Danny Rand is forcibly admitted to a psych ward, the "doctor" who greets him when he awakes tries to persuade him to kill himself because "it's the only way to escape". When this fails, he attacks Rand himself only to be dragged away by orderlies.
54	* Played for drama in ''Series/{{Gotham}}''. Jim Gordon is working as security in Arkham Asylum, and it turns out that the villain of the week is [[spoiler: the nurse who had been helping him. Somehow no one in the staff recognised her in order to inform the head of security that she's not a nurse, but actually a patient]].
55	* The investigators of ''Series/{{CSI}}'' once spent most of an episode working with what they ''thought'' were a couple of FBI agents, only to learn that they were actually residents of a halfway house acting out those parts. One was deeply delusional, the other a habitual identity thief who was playing along to humor him.
56	* On ''Series/TheAlienist'', Kreizler is greeted at the D.C. military asylum by a fellow physician who recognizes him from a past seminar. He's partway through questioning the man when the ''real'' doctor arrives, and explains that the man Kreizler's been talking to is a field surgeon who hasn't been right in the head since Gettysburg obliged him to amputate a ''lot'' of unfortunate troops' limbs.
57	* In the fourth season of ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'', [[spoiler:John's therapist is actually the season BigBad Eurus Holmes, during one of her [[MightAsWellNotBeInPrisonAtAll "furloughs"]] from the secure hospital where she is meant to be the only patient.]]
58	* Brennan is duped by a psych patient in a ''{{Series/Bones}}'' episode while investigating a murder at the facility. She thinks he’s the first psychologist she’s actually liked and then finds out he’s a patient who believes he’s a doctor.
59	* A sketch on ''Series/ABitOfFryAndLaurie'' had two men in a psychiatrist's office, each of whom claims he is the psychiatrist and the other is his patient, trying to talk each other out of their supposed delusion. At the end, it's revealed that ''both'' of them are psych patients -- the real psychiatrist hasn't arrived yet.
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62	[[folder:Theater]]
63	* In ''Theatre/AccidentalDeathOfAnAnarchist'', the Maniac is being interrogated by Inspector Bertozzo in the police station. After he escapes from Bertozzo, he starts pretending to be the judge who is coming to investigate the death of the anarchist. Everyone believes this.
64	* In ''Theatre/AnyoneCanWhistle'', J. Bowden Hapgood successfully convinces the whole town that he's a doctor at the local mental institution known as the Cookie Jar. His true identity as one of its patients is only revealed to Fay in the second act.
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67	[[folder:Video Games]]
68	* "Director Hotti" from ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' is a mental patient at the Hotti Clinic who habitually steals the real Director Hotti's lab coat and pretends to be him. This usually fools people who haven't met the real director... at least until a nurse comes by to chew him out for his thievery and remind him to take his meds. His main reason for doing this is because he's a DirtyOldMan who is hoping that passing himself off as a doctor will let him "examine" some ladies. He shows up in later games as "Director Hickfield" of the Hickfield Clinic. It's not clear whether the Hotti Clinic kicked him out and forced him to find a different clinic, or if it's merely the same clinic with a change in management.
69	* In ''VideoGame/ShadowrunReturns'', the Ripper turns out to be a DeadlyDoctor [[spoiler:who was actually a patient of said (legitimate) doctor [[DeadPersonImpersonation who killed him and took his identity]].]]
70	* In ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'', Crispin (who actually impersonates an orderly, but otherwise counts) is actually a patient who managed to drive his orderly, Fred, into a breakdown and take over the asylum.
71	* In the bonus-game prequel to VideoGame/MysteryCaseFiles's ''Key to Ravenhearst'', Benedict is admitted to the asylum by a "security guard" whose strange behavior suggests this trope is in play. It's confirmed when, after meeting an equally-unconvincing "doctor" in the lobby, he finds the actual asylum staff BoundAndGagged and suspended from the ceiling upstairs.
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74	[[folder:Western Animation]]
75	* In ''{{WesternAnimation/Disenchantment}}'', Chazz seems to be one of these, freely admitting he's a lunatic who escaped from the asylum, yet frequently returns there to act as an orderly. He even tries to be the doctor for King Zog's sessions, though one of his superiors (or co-lunatics) quickly tells him off, saying "It's more shock therapy for you!"
76	--> '''Chazz''': "[[TooKinkyToTorture Ha! I like shock therapy]]!"
77	* In ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'', Rocko goes to the hospital and the first doctor he sees treats him rather roughly during his physical. After he leaves, a nurse goes in, sees the "doctor" and exclaims "Hey! I thought I strapped you to the bed!"
78	* In the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' short "Patient Porky", WesternAnimation/PorkyPig goes into a hospital for eating too much cake. A mental patient there pretends to be a doctor and puts him on the X-ray machine, showing a whole birthday cake (complete with candles) inside Porky's stomach. He then sends him to the OR to "operate" and get the cake out.
79	* In the ''WesternAnimation/IAmWeasel'' episode "He Said, He Said", the Red Guy plays a psychiatrist to Weasel and Baboon. A look at his license reveals that he crossed out "OTIC" in "PSYCHOTIC" and write in "IATRIST".
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82	[[folder:Real Life]]
83	* Dr. W.C. Minor was an accidental example. He was a frequent contributor to the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary ... and also happened to be an inmate at Broadmoor Hospital (having shot a man in a paranoid fit; his victim's widow apparently brought him books to aid his research). Because he was a former army surgeon (and therefore a doctor), Sir James Murray assumed that he was a doctor who worked at the asylum and didn't learn otherwise until he visited him after several years. Note that Murray decided to visit Minor at Broadmoor after discovering that he was a patient - the exaggerated version of the story where he didn't find out until he arrived at the hospital is an urban legend.
84	* RealLife inversion: In 1973, Stanford University psychologist Dr. David Rosenhan and seven of his collaborators [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment had themselves admitted to mental hospitals]] claiming to be hearing voices. All of the "patients" were admitted, none of them were discovered to be malingering, and they were detained for periods of seven to fifty-two days. Although the hospital staff never guessed the hoax, a number of other patients reportedly realised that the investigators were sane. Though independent investigations of the experiment conducted after Rosenhan's death have led to questions regarding both the validity and even the veracity of the experiment. At least some of the seven other people who supposedly took part in the experiment with Rosenhan don't appear to have actually existed and critics argue that Rosenhan lied about his experiences.
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Context Main / DrPsychPatient