Profs and Pints Online presents: “Fictional Figures on the Couch,” an exploration of psychology through literature and film, with Dean A. Haycock, neurobiologist, former instructor at Brown University, and author of Characters on the Couch.

[This talk will remain available in recorded form at the link given here for tickets and access.]

Fictional characters provide a rich source of psychological and psychiatric material for readers as well as mental health workers in training. They are even used in medical schools’ training programs to help train future psychiatrists. Among fictional works that have informed mental health fields, a short story by Nikolai Gogol published in 1835 has been praised by the British Medical Journal as “One of the oldest and most complete descriptions of schizophrenia.” The writings of Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson captured clinical depression.

Come learn about where literature and film have gotten human psychology right, as well as where they missed the mark, in this thought-provoking interactive talk by Dean Haycock, a researcher, instructor, and writer on the human brain who previously gave fascinating Profs and Pints Online talks on psychopathology and on dictators. He’ll discuss both accurate and misleading depictions of psychological traits and conditions in your favorite films and books, and leave you better able to distinguish between realistic and inaccurate representations of human behavior.

Among the questions he will tackle: How can we explain the contrast between the racist Atticus Finch in  Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman and the almost saintly defender of justice depicted in To Kill a Mockingbird? What traits make Marge, the lead investigator of the murderous events in film Fargo so exceptional? How does the mental disability depicted in the science fiction novel Flowers for Algernon compare with that in William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury? Is there anyone in the real world like Hannibal Lecter? Why is his “elite” psychopathic character so different from the far scarier and realistic character Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men?

You’ll end up with a deeper appreciation of your favorite works and, perhaps, a better understanding of the field of psychology and your own mind.

Profs & Pints Online: Fictional Figures on the Couch