Larry David is Role Model for Schizophrenia Sufferers
From The New Yorker:
[Trainee clinical psychologist, David] Roberts began showing TV clips during therapy sessions [with schizophrenia patients]. Soon he had narrowed his selections down to one show: television's purest expression of social dysfunction, "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Roberts considers Larry David to be the perfect proxy for a schizophrenic person. "On his way into his dentist's office, he holds the door open for a woman, and, as a result, she's seen first," he said. "He stews, he fumes, he explodes. He's breaking the social rules that folks with schizophrenia often break. [...] It's a classic example of a major social cognitive error-jumping to conclusions - that schizophrenic patients are prone to."
So...
Roberts and his U.N.C. adviser, David Penn, began to formalize these findings, mapping out a teachable technique called Social Cognition and Interaction Training. They tested SCIT in four preliminary studies, and in post-training evaluations patients showed significant improvement in deciphering social situations.
Join 22301 readers
- No related posts.
3 comments
» Comments are now closed on this post «
That's great, and I can extend the example a little further. I ran a social skills training group for schizophrenia patients several years ago, and we frequently discussed how nearly every target behavior (e.g., eye contact, maintaining interpersonal distance) corresponded to a character in a particular episode (like the "close-talker," for instance). It was really helpful.
Not gonna work. There's an ocean of difference between Larry David's character in Curb and shizophrenics. That disease is organic anyway. Oh well. You can't stop trying.
I'm not officially diagnosed as schizophrenic but I am almost exactly like Larry David.
Anyway, I think most schizophrenics are socially inept simply because they spend a lot of time alone.