The world of Seinfeld is full of terrible people doing terrible things to other terrible people, which is one of the main reasons we enjoy it so much, but a psychiatry professor from New Jersey has gone the extra mile, asking why these terrible people are so terrible to each-other, and structuring an entire course around it.
CBS News report that Dr. Anthony Tobia, of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University, is using the show to teach his students about psychiatric disorders. Third and fourth-year medical students in his courses are required to watch two episodes a week, then “gather to discuss the psychopathology demonstrated on each.”
“You have a very diverse group of personality traits that are maladaptive on the individual level,” he said of the show’s characters. “When you get these friends together the dynamic is such that it literally creates a plot: Jerry‘s obsessive compulsive traits combined with Kramer‘s schizoid traits, with Elaine‘s inability to forge meaningful relationships and with George being egocentric.”
One of Tobia’s students said that this method “gives you a more solid picture of the pathology rather than just giving you words,” as you’d find in a textbook. Putting aside any jokes about how satisfying it would be to watch TV shows instead of studying, this seems like a pretty solid teaching method, and serves as a reminder that the writing on Seinfeld was, indeed, tight as fuck.
The name of the course? Psy-feld. Everything about this is perfect.
