This essay assesses the personality of Dr Gregory House from the TV show House. I will assess his social skills using 2 approaches, namely the psychoanalytic approach and the trait approach. The Psychoanalytic approach pioneered by Freud and furthered by many others, talks about how one’s personality is shaped by factors they are not always conscious of. This can range from being obsessive, if the parents were too strict during childhood, to becoming self destructive if they were too lax. Attachment theory describes how a child-caregiver relationship affects the child’s success in future relationships (Sharples, 2019).We will discuss these ideas in further detail later in the essay.
The trait approach was a brain child of Gordon Allport. He defined 3 sets of traits, cardinal, central and secondary, in descending order of dominance. Later Henry Murray and Raymond Cattell both pioneered their own approaches, using methods like factor analysis(Sharples, 2019). The Trait approach I will use to analyze Dr house however, is the Five factor model. It describes personalities by identifying the 5 key factors in our personality and then attributing a degree of high/lowness for each of them (John, 2008). Both the psychoanalytic and trait approaches, with instances from the show and descriptions of his childhood, will help me explain this aspect of his personality.
First, a brief background on Dr Gregory house. Dr house is a highly intelligent diagnostician. His wit and absolute knowledge of the field is second to none. He is also both intuitive and deductive. His skills can be seen in an episode where he diagnoses a room full of patients in under a minute. His methods are usually unconventional and he tries his best to not meet the patients he is diagnosing. This bring us to how He is also anti-social as is seen through out the entire show.He has one close friend, Wilson, who in most ways is the polar opposite of him. Wilson is like the umbilical cord that keeps house in touch with humanity. House Is extremely narcissistic and shows a general disregard for other people. He is also obsessive and treats patients like puzzles, and can not stop until he “solves them”. One very important aspect of his personality is his distrust for everyone around him. We can see in numerous episodes, that he lives by his personal motto, “everyone lies”, even Wilson his closest friend.
Gregory house has described himself as a military brat in the show. His father, john was an army officer and a very strict father. His mother on the other hand was very loving and lax parent. The disparity in their parenting styles can be seen in House’s personality. House is very cynical and distrustful. Harsh punishments from an early age and a feeling of fear, in a supposed safe space, his home led to him developing this idea that he can trust no one. Erik Erikson’s theory of development also describes the issues of mistrust that develop during infancy (Sharples, 2019). Children not receiving enough care and attention have a tendency to be more hesitant towards future relationships.
Strict parenting by his father during the anal stage has made House anal-retentive, as we see his obsession to solve the puzzle in almost every episode. On the other hand, we can see signs of an anal-expulsive personality in his self destructive tendencies. This can be explained by the Lax parenting by his mother, in the absence of his father.
House’s strong dislike of his father has shaped his beliefs strongly. Trying to be as unlike his father he doesn’t respect authority, and has a very self destructive and impulsive personality. We can see his self destructive Vicodin use in the first season of the show. We can see his Id making his decisions as he is always looking for that immediate gratification. House rarely thinks about how his decisions affect others and rarely makes decisions based on his super ego. This makes House a very difficult person to be friends with.
One of the first things you notice on the show is the lengths House goes to, to avoid meeting his patients. This avoidant behavior is also seen in his personal relationships, or more aptly, the lack there of. House is a classic example of the Dismissive/avoidant attachment style. He never had a secure base to explore relationships because of his strained relationship with his father and the irregularity of his parents’ interactions with him. We can see the strain this has on all his relationships, Most clearly in his romantic relationship with Dr Cuddy. He was very nervous about the thought of her being too close to him. This led to him being extremely secretive and at times act like a pathological liar.
The 5 factor model, or “The big 5” is a trait theory that has been developed over many years. It identifies 5 core traits in all humans, namely, Openness/intellect, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (Sharples, 2019). Each individual presents a different degree of each trait. For example someone like House is very high in the openness trait and is very creative, as can be seen in his unconventional methods to treat ailments. These ailments are also always extremely complex and require house to be very imaginative with his solutions; He does this with relative ease. On the other hand House is very low on the conscientiousness scale. He is very disorganized and unfocused. He is also extremely impulsive as was mentioned above. Although he is a brilliant doctor, House can be a very unreliable friend, him forgetting his lunches with Wilson is a running gag on the show. House shows both introverted and extroverted traits. His low sociability makes it seem as if he is an introvert however his dominance and extreme narcissism show otherwise. A great example of this ambivalence is how he doesn’t like spending time with his residents and yet plays pranks on them because of his strong need for attention. This shows he lies somewhere in the middle of the range. House is calm in the face of some of the most stressful situations and he is able to think of unique solutions under immense pressure of time. These observations show us that he has a low score on neuroticism. The trait that most stands out in Dr House, though, is his exceptionally low Agreeableness. House is very distrustful, in fact one of his strongest beliefs is that everyone lies. He is extremely critical and and suspicious of what his patients tell him and even teaches his residents to take every the patients say with a grain of salt. His trust issues that developed during his early childhood were only aggravated as his suspicions came true that his father was not his biological dad.
An interesting observation we can make is how House’s score on the 5 factors correlates with the dark triad (Paulhus,2002). The dark triad consists of three personalities namely, Machiavellianism, sub-clinical narcissism and sub-clinical psychopathy. The three have been found to correlate negatively with conscientiousness and agreeableness. Narcissism and psychopathy also positively correlate with openness/intellect(Paulhus,2002). These personalities have been identified as independent yet overlapping with each other and We can see signs of them in House’s personality (Paulhus,2002). House shows symptoms of Machiavellianism and sub-clinical psychopathy in the lack of empathy in House’s peculiar bed side manner. He also has a need for pathological lying and secretiveness. House’s narcissism is well known throughout the show and is very clear in his conversations with the residents and patients. Although he shows symptoms of the triad he also has an ability to feel guilt, remorse, love and other strong emotions. We see this in episodes where his defence mechanisms break down and he is forced to confront the emotions he was trying to numb with Vicodin.
In conclusion, using psychoanalysis and the scores on the the five factor theory we see, House is a very intellectual and confident person with tendencies of narcissism. He also shows some symptoms of sub-clinical psychopathy and Machiavellianism. His personality makes it very hard for him to form close relationships, however, it might also be the key to his brilliance
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