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The Psychology of Joss Whedon

An Unauthorized Exploration of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly

Edited by Joy Davidson, PhD

First there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer; then its spin-off Angel; then the cult hit Firefly; and its follow-up film, Serenity. They all had two things in common: their creator, Joss
Whedon … and their surprising psychological depth.

Revisit the
worlds of Joss Whedon … with trained psychologists at your side. What
are the psychological effects of constantly fighting for your life? Why
is neuroscience the Whedonverse’s most terrifying villain? How can
watching Joss’s shows help you take on your own psychological issues?

Read Excerpts

Introduction: The Psychology of Joss Whedon
Joy Davidson
Mal's Morals
Robert Kurzban, Ph.D.
"Darn Your Sinister Attraction!"
Carol Poole
Free Will in a Deterministic Whedonverse
Thomas Flamson
The Adaptive, the Maladaptive, and the Mal-Adaptive
Nicholas R. Eaton, Robert F. Krueger
An Analysis of Slayer Longevity
Nancy S. Weinfield, Tracy R. Gleason
How Buffy Learned to Confront Her Fears
Brian Rabian, Michael Wolff
Terror Management Aboard Serenity
Wind Goodfriend, Ph.D.
Existentialism Meets Feminism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
C. Albert Bardi, Sherry Hamby
Dealing with the F-Word
Misty K. Hook, Ph.D.
"Stripping" River Tam's Amygdala
Bradley J. Daniels
Buffy the Vampire Dater
Karthik Panchanathan, Siamak Tundra Naficy
More Than Entertainment
Stephanie R. deLus©, Ph.D.
Buffy's Search for Meaning
Mikhail Lyubansky, Ph.D.
Psychology Bad
Ed Connor
"There's My Boy..."
Joy Davidson

On Our Blog

2013 Holiday Gift Guide: Joss Whedon

Posted November 26th

All we want for Christmas is for our favorite Joss Whedon shows to stop getting cancelled.

Clearly Santa isn’t listening. Here are our suggestions for consoling all of your still-broken-hearted Browncoats.

The Psychology of Joss Whedon [shameless self-promotion]. Revisit the worlds of Joss Whedon with trained psychologists at your side in this unauthorized exploration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. Looking for...

Is neuroscience still the bad guy in Dollhouse? (Duh.)

Posted November 10th

When we posted Ed Connor’s essay “Psychology Bad” (from The Psychology of Joss Whedon) last week, I couldn’t help being impressed how prescient Ed’s essay was. He labeled neuroscience as the bad guy in Firefly and Serenity, and identified it as a major theme in Joss Whedon’s work–before Dollhouse was even a glimmer in Joss’s or Eliza Duskhu’s eye.

Here’s Ed extending the ideas in his essay to Dollhouse:

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My major thesis in this essay was that River dramatizes what it means for us to be simultaneously neural and human. Neural,...