FINAL PAPER

PAPER TOPIC: I am providing the students with two options for their paper. First option is Analysis of Psychopathology in Popular Film, and the second, is Analysis of Psychopathology in a piece of literary work. Both, Literature and Popular media and films are a rich source of material addressing psychopathology and mental illness. You will be asked to view a relevant film or read a work of Literature. Then, I would like students to write a paper that addresses a number of relevant themes including the following:

A comprehensive description of psychopathology (symptoms) or particular Psychopathological dynamics (Oedipus complex, Existential Angst) depicted, including a formal DSM/ICD diagnosis of the protagonist or main character. This should include specific and relevant symptoms and biographical information that indicates how the person displays these dynamics or meets criteria for a particular mental disorder.
Identify a minimum of 3 SCENES either in the film or story that best the above points.
A reflection on the positive and negative messages that the film or story portray regarding the particular disorder or psychological dynamics.
Discussion of how well or poorly the movie or Literary work characterizes the particular form(s) of psychopathology depicted.
You will choose the movie or literary work you want to write the paper on, please don’t flood my inbox with questions regarding what movie or book to choose.. For film suggestions, please refer to the “Psychology and Films Links” section below in the syllabus. For literary works, there are plenty of choices, both classical and modern, and you may want to do a web-search for specifics. A very short list of authors I do like are as follows: Sophocles, St Augustine, Avicenna, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe, some of the Russian novelists are great (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekov), Robert Louis Stevenson, American novelists (Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, etc), many mystery novels from Agatha Christy or Arthur Conan Doyle, and many others. You may also choose a biography in lieu of a novel, but you need to check with me on that one.

The paper should be written using APA format ONLY, and it should be minimum 2,500 words long NOT counting title page and bibliography. The paper has to have a title page, followed by an Abstract in which summarizes the main idea of your paper. Then you should have an introduction followed by the main body of your paper where you cover numbers 1-4 above each section subtitled. Finally a Conclusion and a Bibliography. Therefore your paper outline should be as follows:

Title Page
Abstract
Introduction
Description of Psychopathology
Description of 3 scenes.
Characterization
Positive and Negative messages
Conclusion
Bibliography.
If you have never written an APA style paper I suggest you consult your Librarian for guidance or information on APA style or check in the Web as there are many resources for you there.

NOTE RE: PAPER: You are expected to turn the PAPER in by the due date depositing it in the appropriate section in the ASSIGNMENT DROPBOX FOLDER on the course website. Papers WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED after that deadline by 11:00 PM. Please label your document with your last name and the name of the assignment like this, FERNANDEZ_paper.doc. Format for papers must be in Microsoft word format. That means ONLY.doc OR .docx files . NO EXCEPTIONS! Please do not submit papers using .wps (wordperfect), some type of compressed MSWord file, wordpad, .pdf or ANY OTHER FILE FORMATS .

If you miss the deadline, as it always happens to some students, you will have 3 extra days to e-mail me your paper to my Blackboard e-mail. I will accept those papers with an automatic 30% reduction in your grade. Anything after the 3 days grace period will received a 0. Please understand, THERE ARE NO EXCUSES, NONE! You have several weeks to work on your papers and the week you have to turn it in it is basically free just to work on your paper. Plan accordingly, because when you write to me regarding all the adversities and problems you had, I will just refer you to this section.