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Psychology in Dr. Frost

Dr. Frost Manhwa Freud Jung Adler Pavlov

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#1
paraquat

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I've seen this topic alluded to in a couple of other forum posts and comments, but I think it merits its own thread. My question is, just how accurate do you all think the portrayal of psychology is in Dr. Frost? If you look at the credits, the creator does have a few psychologists with whom he consults, presumably on the factual content in the manhwa.

 

From what I can remember of my psychology classes, the treatment of psychodynamic theory is pretty accurate. It's interesting, though, that Frost and the other members of the university psychology department all seem to work with the "old-school" approaches to psychology; that is, approaches that center around individualized talk therapy, using concepts originally developed in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century by some of the heavy hitters of the era: Freud, Jung, Adler, and so on.

 

While all of this material presented seems accurate enough, it's interesting that newer approaches are not mentioned. For example, the big thing in modern psychology relates to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) approaches, but this is never brought up at all, to my knowledge. There aren't even any humanist psychologists in the manhwa, even though humanistic psych is several decades old. Okay, I can't see Frost taking up the mantle of Carl Rogers, but maybe one of his colleagues might?

 

This makes me wonder about the reasons for these omissions. For example, culturally, South Korea may not have adopted CBT on the same large scale that the United States has, or perhaps psychiatric medications are not used to the same degree, which would explain the absence of anyone with a dual MD-PhD degree in the manhwa. Perhaps older approaches to psychology are still widely taught and used in South Korea (even the United States has several active journals devoted to psychodynamic theory). But that's just conjecture; maybe someone who lives in or has lived in South Korea could tell me whether these statements are accurate or not.

 

Alternately, I was thinking that the absence of other approaches might be an artistic decision on the part of the creator. I was racking my brain to come up with a way to work a CBT approach into a story, but I can't think of a way to make CBT exciting.

 

What do you all think? Does Dr. Frost give an accurate depiction of psychology to you? Is it faithful to how psychology is practiced in modern Korea? Or is there a great deal of artistic license taken, instead?


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#2
svines85

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Well, like you say, we see evidence of the author's research in the work..............it's apparent to me there's been quite a bit of effort put into this story. 

 

"Accuracy"? "Realism"?............well, all I remember and know of the fields of psychology/psychiatry is that almost all of it is very subjective stuff. Related fields just chocked full of differing opinions, theories and viewpoints even among the most learned in them. 

 

I personally take this story as a serious, well researched and put together work. After that it's all just a matter of suspension of disbelief, I'm not going to be too interested in any other facts or figures from the real world that interfere with my reading enjoyment. Seems kind of counter-productive. :)


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#3
SpyMonkey3D

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When you read the credit, you can see there is four "psychology advisor" for this manwha.

For the moment, i think it's pretty accurate, but you seems to know a lot more than me.



#4
Chrysline

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CBT, was used in one of the older cases! :D Its in the case "Ten Days in the Life of Shy Mr. Yeon"

CBT is explicitly mentioned in the case report here: http://vatoto.com/read/_/103802/dr-frost_ch28_by_the-company/13

 

 

Until we ask the author themselves, we can only speculate. Though I agree with a lot of the TS' points.

 

Haha, my guesses on possible explanations:

 

- AFAIK, university departments have certain politics or specialties. Its not limited to psychology too, our school's philosophy department prefers phenomenology, while one of our rival schools upholds scholasticism.

 

 It maybe that Frost and his colleagues focuses mainly on psycho-dynamic theory. Its also possible that the author and his advisers are more concerned w/ psycho-dynamic theory

 

- modern techniques might be undergoing a lot of development (to be considered fully developed), something like Dispositional Hope (by Snyder et al) or Grit (Duckworth et al), are decades or even a few years old. Perhaps the author doesn't want to the story to be outdated or inaccurate too soon.

 

- Maybe psycho-dynamic theory is also really entrenched in the practice and paradigms of psychology. Something like positive psychology only came out recently.

 

Psychology's paradigms like counseling are mainly focused on taking someone from a sick state -1  to a 0 "normal" state. [the DSMV is an entire manual on mental illnesses] Taking someone from an "average" 0 to an excellent "5" is recent. I hope helping someone excel or keep a strong mindset in, say, sports becomes a case in this manhwa. [Where are the manuals on mental strengths or the mindsets of success?]

 

- Perhaps its artistic license too! It maybe easier to create drama OR this is just the kind of storytelling the author likes :D


Edited by Chrysline, 13 August 2013 - 01:02 PM.


#5
PogoLamp

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I think it's somewhat accurate. There are some tweek here and there, but it has some psychology in it. And some of the references they made are true and accurate.



#6
Caliban

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Psychology is a LOT more complex and hard than what is shown in the manhwa, and these behavior reading that Frost does in the bar in the first chapters are not even part of real psychology practice, but then again this is a manhwa and it's supposed to be interesting rather than factual (and it actually is quite catchy at least for me) and what's more it is said many times that Frost is a genius and exceptionally gifted psychologist so I think there are not that much loopholes after all.
With that said - the author may just have decided on purpose to pay more attention to the "old school" methods for a number of reasons and i don't have a problem with that :P


Edited by Caliban, 15 October 2013 - 10:28 AM.


#7
on holiday

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Well, first of, I don't know anything about conselling practise in korea. Although, the psychological advisers of the author surely do. So, if the author wanted to show us a kind of documentary of bleeding edge conselling in korea, he could. Storywise, I like the choice he takes.

 

Psychology is a LOT more complex and hard than what is shown in the manhwa, and these behavior reading that Frost does in the bar in the first chapters are not even part of real psychology practice, but then again this is a manhwa and it's supposed to be interesting rather than factual (and it actually is quite catchy at least for me) and what's more it is said many times that Frost is a genius and exceptionally gifted psychologist so I think there are not that much loopholes after all.
With that said - the author may just have decided on purpose to pay more attention to the "old school" methods for a number of reasons and i don't have a problem with that :P

 

I strongly support Calibans statements. All the psychological approaches, theories and interventions used are accurate. Although Dr. Frost handles his cases in a fictional way, deviating more from usual conselling on the run of the cases. This is no actual critique, it's 'in character' to me.

 

In one of the last chapters, the authors explains about his choice of cases. My understanding is, that he choses for the benefit of the story. So the topics, pathing, story progress are focused on a long running series. Due to that, he has to keep the readers attention and curiosity in mind. In stead of presenting brand new concepts, he uses examples, that "psychologically" interested readers may already have heard of. This is done to a level, that even experts aren't turned away from the content.

 

- corrected some spelling mistakes -


Edited by on holiday, 16 October 2013 - 02:12 PM.