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Hidden Talents: Head Resident Paula Gardner Studies How TV Tells Women What's 'Normal'

Next on Geraldo--Head resident Paula Gardner's must-see TV includes daytime programs such as Oprah and Geraldo Rivera. For her doctoral dissertation, she's exploring how the language of psychiatry and psychiatric discourse about women filters down to the general public. TV shows such as Geraldo's (shown here) are one way such information is transmitted to the nation.

Paula Gardner, head resident at Buckland Hall, spends a lot of time viewing and videotaping daytime TV talk shows--such as Sally Jessy Raphael and Oprah--directed at female viewers. But the University of Massachusetts communications doctoral candidate isn't hooked on daytime TV; she's exploring how the language of psychiatry and psychiatric discourse about women filters down to the general public.

"Many shows are about deviant women: pierced, tattooed, overly sexualized, or involved in substance abuse. They get on the show, where Sally, the moms, and the audience, chastise them," says Gardner. "They'll make futile attempts at recovery." The real point of these shows, Gardner seems to be saying, is to transmit expected social norms to women.

Gardner already has an MA in media studies from The New School of Social Research; her thesis topic was on borderline personality disorders and other diagnoses assigned to women, mostly in the area of sexual abuse, and how the language of diagnosis looks at whether or not they behave in accordance with social norms. "Over time, certain behaviors become normatized and then not behaving accordingly becomes labeled as disordered," explains Gardner. For her doctoral dissertation, Gardner is looking at texts ranging from the official diagnostic reference, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (known as DSM IV), to media manifestations of the ideas contained in DSM.

"I'm still developing my methodology, but I use poststructuralist analysis. I'm looking at how experts' language, such as that of the DSM, enters the social sphere, becomes normative, and then becomes a part of social controls on society." To that end, the guests on Sally Jessy Raphael function as a laboratory of social norms.

Gardner believes that "the psychiatric discourse is understood to be knowledge, but in fact it's not. Psychiatric experts present the 'science of the mind' as if it were medical science, creating labels for diagnosis and treatment. Clinicians defend DSM IV, which is needed for record-keeping and insurance billing claims. Alternative forms of treatment, such as cognitive behavior therapy, conflict with the DSM model of psychiatry and are resisted by the 'experts.' "

Gardner's research is not case-study based. "It's really a certain kind of history," she says. "I'm also looking at memory as a metaphor to reconstruct the context in which presenting behaviors arise that can be labeled, classified, and then packaged by experts who call it knowledge."