Amy Brown

When therapist–patient interactions appear on screen, how well do they mirror real-life sessions? What cultural, social, or technological factors shape those portrayals? And what do those portrayals reveal about societal attitudes toward mental health? This seminar will use “the reel”—film, television, and social-media vignettes—to illustrate “the real”—foundational clinical theories and core concepts. Students will bring curiosity, questions, and assumptions to class, as they apply critical-analysis tools to assigned readings. Each week will open with a learning module focused on two-to-three core materials—journal articles, textbook chapters, case vignettes, or clinical manuals—centered on a key clinical concept, such as alliance ruptures or all-or-nothing thinking. In the second weekly class, students will explore those concepts in short media excerpts via guided discussion, small-group dialogue, reflective exercises, and role-play. By the end of the semester, students will have developed the tools to examine personal assumptions about therapy, therapeutic boundaries, and the role of the therapist; effectively evaluate media portrayals of psychological care using advanced critical tools; apply clinical theory to fictionalized case material; and cultivate interdisciplinary insights. For conference projects, students will design a final project—film analysis, research paper, podcast, or multimedia journal—relating the course’s concepts with their interests and learning goals. This seminar is offered as an introductory course for students interested in exploring clinical psychology or deepening their storytelling practices.

How do varying childhood experiences impact children’s mental health and well-being? What happens when the course of development is affected by trauma or depression? This seminar will focus on challenges that arise in child and adolescent development, drawing upon approaches in clinical psychology, developmental psychology, and cultural psychology/clinical ethnography. We will analyze how particular psychological experiences and behaviors have been typically understood as abnormal or pathological and how they are intertwined with the experience of child development. We will also explore how these challenges are diagnosed, as well as critical commentaries on clinical diagnosis and treatment, in order to analyze the merits and drawbacks of the common approaches to these issues. Students will learn about the clinical categories of conditions such as ADHD, autism, depression, and anxiety, as compiled in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR), as well as how those disorders are assessed and treated in clinical and educational settings. We will look at case examples to illuminate the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, course, and treatment of such psychological conditions in childhood and adolescence. Through readings and course discussion, students will be invited to question the universal applicability of Western clinical approaches that rest on particular assumptions about normality, behavior, social relations, human rights, and health. We will also explore how diagnostic processes and psychological and psychiatric care are, at times, differentially applied in the United States according to the client’s race/ethnicity, class, and gender and how clinicians might effectively address such disparities in diagnosis and care. Students will complete conference projects related to the central themes of our course and may opt to work at the Early Childhood Center or a local community program that serves children or adolescents.