Gregory+House,+M.D.

= Gregory House =

Biography:
Gregory House was born on June 11, 1959 to John and Blythe House. John was a marine pilot while Blythe was a typical housewife. Due to his father's military career, House moved from place to place quite frequently in his childhood—Japan and Egypt being the most notable of these. John believed in discipline and order. As a result, whenever House did something wrong John would punish him in various ways, which included locking House out of their home and making his young son sleep in the yard, giving House ice baths, and sending House to bed without dinner when he was late. At the age of 12, House figured out that John was not his biological father, but was only able to prove his suspicions nearly forty years later after John's death.

House attended John Hopkins University for his undergraduate career and then the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor for medical school. The latter school is where he met his future boss Lisa Cuddy. He was eventually dismissed from the University of Michigan. He was also expelled from John Hopkins for cheating off his fellow classmate. But, eventually, he received his medical degree and became a world renowned diagnostician with a double specialty in nephrology and infectious disease. Despite his obvious genius and because of his stubborn, abrasive behavior, House was unable to hold onto a job for long. He was fire from four different hospitals before working at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

While playing golf one day, House had an aneurysm that clotted, which lead to an infarction in his right thigh. The infarction went undiagnosed for three days before House finally figured out what was wrong. The blockage of blood flow had lead to muscle cell death and, eventually, nerve damage. Stacy Warner, his girlfriend and medical proxy at the time, decided to approve a middle-ground surgery between amputation and a bypass while House was in a chemically induced coma. Due to the amount of dead muscle removed, House's ability to walk was compromised and because of this he walks with a cane and lives in constant pain. He also became addicted to Vicodin as a result.

Due to House's natural curiosity and his innate ability to pick up on details that other doctors overlook, House is incredibly successful in position as Head of the Department of Diagnostic Medicine at PPTH. He receives thousands of requests for consults from patients each year. One notable patient almost drowned while swimming across the Atlantic Ocean in order to get his medical care. However, House is more concerned with solving the medical mystery than curing his patient of the week. House has even been described as having a "Rubik's complex" by his best, and only, friend James Wilson. He's also talented in other areas of his life. House plays the piano, the guitar, and the harmonica. He speaks a variety of languages including English, Spanish, and Mandarin. He has had his share of problems though, which range from many near death experiences to spending time in a psychiatric facility.

Psychoanalytic Perspective:
== According to Freud, dreams are "pieces of and hints about the unconscious—that portion of the mind inaccessible to usual, conscious thought" (Friedman & Schustack, 2009, p. 64). Throughout the series, House has had a number of dreams (and quite a few hallucinations). One of the firs dreams that House has involves Edward Vogler, who was Chairman of the Board at the time. In the Season 1 episode "Babies & Bathwater", House dreams about telling Vogler that the latter man has cancer. While rubbing Vogler's shoulders, House tells him that he will order a "jumbo-sized coffin" just in case the experimental treatment does not work. Before this dream, House had been involved in several conflicts with Vogler because of House's refusal to be a conventional doctor (i.e. wear a lab coat, abide by hospital rules). The night before the dream, House was supposed to give a speech lauding a drug that Vogler's company had just developed. House did the opposite. Vogler represents the authority that House is constantly trying to fight against; the cancer is House's attempts to get rid of him or, alternatively, Vogler's diminishing power (since he leaves at the end of this particular episode). ==

== After House is shot twice by an unnamed gunman in the Season 2 finale "No Reason", House loses consciousness and has a very elaborate dream in which he treats a patient who initially presents with a swollen tongue, is cured of his chronic leg pain but loses his medical genius, and is lectured on his choices by the man who tried to kill him. The patient (whose symptoms start off manageable and get progressively worse), House himself (who provides himself on being objective, realistic, and analytical), and the gunman (who constantly tells House how he has failed in life) represent the different parts of House's mind. As the dream progresses the patient (the id) gets worse and worse despite the fact that House (the ego) tries to diagnose him. The gunman (the superego) represents House's conscience. Ultimately, in an attempt to fix the out of control patient, House ends up killing him instead. Another interpretation of this dream is that House's loss of his pain and, therefore, his need for his cane (a phallic symbol) but also the loss of his superior intellect (which he holds most dear) symbolizes his fear of losing his penis (which makes him who he is). ==

== From a psychoanalytic perspective, some of House's behavior can be credited to defense mechanisms. For example, when Detective Michael Tritter started his crusade to ruin House's life as payback for House sticking a thermometer in Tritter's rectum and leaving him in the hospital's clinic room, House refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation even after receiving warnings from Cuddy and Wilson and being arrested by Tritter for possession of narcotics. House behaved in the same way when Vogler took a dislike to him in Season 1. Displacement is another defense mechanism House uses. When Wilson tells House that he is leaving PPTH, House yells at Thirteen (one of his fellows) when she interrupts the conversation. Since he cannot vent his frustration at his real target (his fear that his friendship with Wilson is over), he angrily lashes out at the people around him. ==

== House's impulsivity and recklessness (sticking a knife in a wall socket, injecting possibly infected blood into himself, purposefully overdosing on insulin in order to stop his hallucinations, etc.) can be linked to an id that is not properly controlled by the ego or the superego. It can explain his narcissism and his general lack of concern for other people's feelings. It could also explain his (former) drug addiction. House is in chronic pain and so it logically follows that his id would want to reduce that pain. And so, he takes Vicodin to do just that even when he realizes the physical and mental damage that prolonged use of narcotics can have on him (the ego) and the negative view society has of drug addicts (the superego). Only when his grip on reality is completely lost at the end of Season 5 does House reconsider his attachment to his pills. ==

Cognitive/Socio-Cognitive Perspective:
== Due to his atheism, House tends to view all people who hold religious beliefs with disdain or skepticism. He also stereotypes people in general. He usually categorizes people (and more specifically his patients) as being lying idiots as his catch phrase "Everybody lies" exemplifies. ==

== The abuse House suffered at the hands of his father could have lead House to feel rejected by John. Stacy (the woman he loved) leaving him after his infarction could have left him with the same feeling. In response, whenever someone gets too close to him he pushes them away by acting coldly or indifferently towards them, which causes the people around him to dismiss the rare moments when he has a real emotional response or attribute those moments to disingenuous motives. For example, when Stacy decided to leave her husband Mark for House, House told her to stay with Mark because Mark was the better guy. He also did it because he knew eventually that she would get tired of him pushing her away and eventually she would leave him again; he didn't want to deal with that rejection. This matches up with the personality variable rejection sensitivity, which is defined as "the extent to which an individual is overly sensitive to cues that he or she is being rejected by another" (Friedman & Shustack, 2009, p. 230). ==

== From a cognitive perspective, House has a pessimistic explanatory style. Take for example House's reaction to Cuddy's decision to adopt a child. Instead of congratulating his boss and thinking of all the happiness this child could possibly bring her in the future, House instead makes bets with his team on when Cuddy will decide to change her mind about adopting, tells Cuddy that she would not be capable of raising a child, and is generally less than supportive. Even though Cuddy adopting a child is a happy event, House interpreted it in the most negative light possible—emphasizing the negatives, while completely ignoring the benefits. Also, after Kutner (another one of House's fellows) commits suicide, House blames himself for not seeing the impending signs. This is especially important considering that House prides himself on being able to see things in people that others miss and when he did not see Kutner's death coming he blamed it on his failing observational skills rather than Kutner's situation or mental state. The way House sees the world is one of the major reasons why he is so miserable. ==

== Albert Bandura's concept of self-efficacy ("the expectancy or belief about how competently one will be able to enact a behavior in a particular situation") also applies to House (Friedman & Schustack, 2009, p. 247). In regard to medicine, House has high self-efficacy. He is confident in his ability to diagnose his patients and works hard in order to do just that. The fact that the majority of his patients do end up living because of him must also help his feelings of self-efficacy. In contrast, House has very low self-efficacy in regard to his personal life. He only has one friend. His romantic relationships have been either brief (a fling he had with a married woman named Lydia who he meet while in a psychiatric facility) or with unavailable women (his affairs with Lydia and Stacy). These relationships ended on a bad note. For that reason, he has been reluctant to start new relationships (e.g. his difficulty admitting his feelings for his boss in Season 5, his belief that he is better off alone). ==

Discussion:
== Gregory House is a fascinating character. On the one hand, he is bitter, antisocial, cruel, narcissistic, disrespectful, and impulsive. Yet, on the other hand, he's funny, clever, sarcastic, incredibly smart, imaginative, and unconventional. He should not be a character that people sympathize with, but it is difficult not to considering the many trials he has faced throughout his life and the few moments when he shows that he really does care. ==

== His relationship with his father is particularly interesting considering how much it has shaped who House is. John valued conformity and timeliness, most likely due to his experiences in the military. As a way of rebelling against his father, House has made sure that he does the exact opposite of what John would do. Instead of being timely, he consistently shows up to work hours late. House also makes a point of rebelling against authority figures (most frequently, Cuddy) and going against the grain. Another significant influence on House's personality was the infarction. Although both Wilson and Cuddy have claimed that House had the same personality before the infarction, there is evidence that House has changed for the worse. The pain causes him to be depressed and angry, which causes him to lash out at those around him. This makes it less likely that people will want to be around him, which eventually leads to loneliness. He behaves like a jerk because, for the most part, that is who he is. However, it could also be a way of keeping people from getting too close because, in his pessimistic view, people will eventually hurt him intentionally or unintentionally. House places more value on the intellectual— on what he can empirically prove to be true— because it is one of the few parts of his life that work for him. ==

References:
Attanasio, P., Jacobs, K., Shore, D., Singer, B., Moran, T.L., Friend, R., et al. (Executive Producers). (2004-2010). //House// [Television series]. California: FOX.

Friedman, H.S., & Schustack, M.W. (2009). //Personality: Classic Theories and Modern Research//. Boston: Pearson A&B.