Pam Buzzetta/Student LifeVisitors to Professor Richard Kurtz’s Abnormal Psychology class may see a mentally ill patient standing at the front of a lecture hall, straining under the scrutiny of hundreds of prying eyes.
These patients can describe their lives in great detail, from favorite animals to secret phobias, from lost loves to preferred breakfast cereals. Yet despite the specificity of their stories and the unwavering constancy of their verbal and physical tics, they are no more mentally imbalanced than the hundreds of students who examine them.
These performers are what Kurtz has dubbed “pseudopatients,” who are simply undergraduate students with an interest in psychology and a knack for acting. Every year, after he finishes teaching a semester of Abnormal Psychology in the spring, Kurtz asks students who did particularly well in the course if they would care to become pseudopatients.
If they accept, they must then spend the summer researching their assigned roles, using the knowledge they gained during class to create various characters with specific mental disorders. These are the characters that they will display for next year’s Abnormal Psychology class, who will in turn collectively diagnose the pseudopatients.
Kurtz said that the pseudopatients must become “like character[s] in a novel,” and must learn to lose themselves in their parts.
After the students spend several months “developing a deep cover,” Kurtz and his teaching assistant, Jennifer Burbridge, help them to smooth out the edges of their performances to become completely believable mental patients.
“The process is a lot of work for me and the TA because we have to train in a lot of depth,” said Kurtz.
Burbridge is, in fact, so heavily involved in the program that she is “as invested as the undergrads are” when it comes to developing the histories and personalities of the pseudopatients.
In addition to performing for the Abnormal Psychology class, the pseudopatients serve as test cases for Kurtz’s graduate students as well.
One of the graduate students does the interviewing, and both the graduate interviewer and the undergraduate pseudopatient get graded on their respective performances, said current pseudopatient Allan Serviansky.
“In addition, each pseudopatient goes in for a videotaped one-on-one session with a graduate student so that they can practice their interviewing and test administering skills,” he said.
The reason for this style of instruction sprouted from the fact that many of Kurtz’s students had scant amounts of time with real patients.
“Medical schools want experience,” said Kurtz, remarking that many students were seen as too “green.”
Kurtz said that this method gives his students “hands-on clinical experience, at an in-depth level.”
Burbridge explained that this style of interactive classroom diagnosis allows Kurtz’s students to ask themselves, “What does a mental disorder look, sound, and feel like?”
Kurtz said he got the idea several years ago, when one of his advanced doctoral students went to a hospital in an attempt to discover how mental patients were being treated. The student pretended to have a mental disorder, and after observing the treatment he received, developed what Kurtz called “profound observations about how mental patients were treated.”
The charade had been so convincing that the student was actually detained when he attempted to leave the hospital.
This blurring of reality and acting continues to occur with the pseudopatients. The characters are so realistic that once, as a test, Kurtz took videotapes of his pseudopatients and intermingled them with tapes of actual mental patients. He found that psychology professionals could not tell the difference.
“This program has been incredibly valuable to me. It has made me pursue abnormal psychology further and has even motivated me to do an honors thesis in abnormal psychology,” said Debra Rosenbaum, another current pseudopatient. “It is an amazing opportunity for students who are passionate about psychology to develop their interest and work one-on-one with one of the most incredible professors in one of the top psychology programs around the country.”
There are, however, limits to what the pseudopatients can accomplish. When asked to play completely psychotic characters, many of the actors cannot do it convincingly, because, as Kurtz explained, “it’s very difficult to get inside someone who has lost their mind.”
Fortunately, the pseudopatients aren’t required to portray roles as difficult as people with severe psychoses.
“I really enjoyed my characters because they were ‘normal’ characters with a twist-I didn’t portray any severely disturbed patients,” said Rosenbaum.
Abnormal Psychology in previous years has drawn over 300 students per semester, and only recently has the limit been drawn at 200.
Jeremy Tietjens, a sophomore in the course, feels that the popularity of the course is partly due to the fact that Kurtz “has a lot of experience and knows what he’s talking about… and he has a really strong background. He doesn’t just spurt out facts.”
Serviansky agrees with Tietjens, remarking that Abnormal Psychology “is the best class I have taken as an undergraduate.”
He explains that the class is hugely informative while being entertaining.
“The performances also make the class fun,” said Serviansky. “Ask any student in Abnormal Psychology what the best part of the class is. It is a fun, creative, and effective way of teaching.”