Law and Order: Criminal Intent

s2ep35 "See Me"

Starring: Vincent D'Onofrio

Detective drama.

Media Portrayals and Real Psychology

In this episode, Dr. Robert Goren examines the painting of a picture done by a person suffering from schizophrenia .

Excerpt 1: The painting, a portrait of a person, is said not the work of an individual suffering schizophrenia since the eyes in the painting are too normal. Since in the episode schizophrenia is said to be "in the eyes," paintings are thought to reflect this. Adding a dramatic twist is that Goren's mother in the show also suffers from schizophrenia.

Real Psychology: While research shows that we can identify a wide range of emotions just by looking at someone's eyes, schizophrenia itself is not a disorder of the eyes. Though the paintings of people who are struggling with severe schizophrenia sometimes look different from their premorbid (before the sickness appears) paintings, there is no reliable evidence that people with schizophrenia paint people with eyes any differently than painters who do not have schizophrenia.

- Write up by David M. Tom, Ph.D.

For More Information

If you'd like to see a wonderful example of how painting can change in individual cases with decline due to mental illness, visit The Huxley Institute's collection of paintings by Louis Wain or pick up Dale's book The Man Who Drew Cats (1992). Since Vincent Van Gogh also had schizophrenia, among other things, you may be able to see his deterioration over time as well. Maisel (2002) wrote a book on Van Gogh called The Van Gogh Blues

In 2006, Rao and Keshavan published a study called Can Psychiatrists Recognize Mental Illness in Paintings? in the American Journal of Psychiatry. It's not publicly available online, but if you go to a college library, you could find the journal on the shelves.

Rao and Keshavan found that psychiatrists weren't able to tell the differences among paintings that had been done by people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or no psychological disorder. If they knew that the artist had a mental illness, they could tell whether individual paintings had been done before or after illness onset without seeing any others. Laypersons, however, could only identify which paintings had been done before vs. after if they could compare "before" and "after" paintings.

Works Cited

Rao, Anjali; Keshavan, Matcheri S. “Can psychiatrists recognize mental illness in paintings?.” American Journal of Psychiatry, v. 163 issue 4, 2006, p. 599.

Works Cited by Rao and Keshavan (and therefore likely to contain similar information)

Anastasi, A., & Foley, J. (1941). A survey of the literature on artistic behavior in the abnormal, IV: experimental investigations. J Gen Psychol 1941; 25: 187-237

Dale, R. (1992). Louis Wain: The Man Who Drew Cats. London, Chris Beetles, 1992

Maisel, E. (2002). The Van Gogh Blues. Emmaus, Pa, Rodale Books, 2002