Updated Psychoanalysis of New Girl (still being worked on)

Obviously not done but I made lots of edits and would love to know what you all think!

New Girl is a comedy sitcom airing on FOX from 2011-2018. It features 4 friends who live together in California in their loft apartment. I am going to be going into the psyche of each character and explain who they are and why. Mental disorders like ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) share a few common traits and between such stark and contrasting characters it can be interesting to see how these manifest in the characters. As of right now main character Jessica Day (Zooey Deschanel has ADHD and this shows in Jess’s character) is confirmed to have ADHD, Schmidt is confirmed to have OCD and anxiety, Nicholas Miller has not been confirmed in having any mental disabilities and shows some similar traits of ASD, Depression, and anxiety, and Winston Bishop has been confirmed to get Panic Attacks and shows signs of low self esteem (so does Schmidt) and anxiety as a result in this. So now let's get into some of the characters starting with Scmidt. Of all the characters Schmidt is the only one who is talked about in the show about having a disorder. As mentioned in S3 E21 Big News Schmidt takes an anxiety medication and as mentioned in S5 E6 Reagan. Reagan, a character with a medical background, makes an observation about how the house is kept so neat and looks like where a person with OCD may live, and while this is a silly remark it holds truth. OCD is defined as excessive thoughts that lead to compulsive behaviors, and can manifest itself in 4 main ways. The first is intrusive thoughts and ruminations, this is when a person will suffer from constant intrusive thoughts deep thinking about saud thoughts- even if unwanted. These are often violent, the thought of hurting yourself or another person, engaging in sexual acts, religious obsessions/ fear of ‘sinning’, and analyzing one’s relationship/s. It is interesting because it leads you to ask if Schmidt’s intense sexual desires stem from his intrusive thoughts. He often goes into how dark his sexual desires can be and shows off himself as experienced. This leads people to misunderstand him and some people as hypersexual and gross but may not realise how he may not have asked to be like this. This also can come from his low self esteem due to body image issues and bullying he has faced. And the Intrusive thinking leads to a compulsion to make the person prevent that thing from happening or at least feel secure. A rumination is just dwelling/thinking about a certain thing extremely deep that will probably end up with a dead end. This can be seen in S3 E16 Sister when Schmidt is at a Bar Mitzvah and goes on multiple tangents that seem to go nowhere. Tangents and ruminations are different but it is a good representation of how one's mind with OCD may think as they follow unproductive obsessively linked thought patterns. The second type of OCD shows itself in the form of checking, this is where a person with OCD, led with doubt, has to check on something in a repetitive manner to calm an obsession in their head. Schmidt does not express this too much but a pretty good example is when in S3 E21 Schmidt is locked out of a room when a friend wants to talk to her and Schmidt gets a possible intrusive thought/is impatient and leads him to knock on the door many many many times. Now this is not an amazing instance of checking because it was not fueled by an intrusive thought most likely but by a rational feeling of impatience and upset about things being done his way not happening. An example of checking would be Schmidt being worried about the well-being of him and his love interest, Cece, so in turn he will make sure to constantly check to see if all the doors on their new house are locked. These are only a couple of examples and there are many more subtle ones you just have to look around (I can include them somewhere if anyone would like). A subtle cue of this is when Schmidt is talking about an Email he is writing and he uses the term, “strongly worded” and shows the way he pays attention to his words he uses and is probably rereading and checking the email multiple times, he also checks his suit cuffs obsessively and repeatedly in S4 E12 Shark because someone told him they are uneven and he can not stop thinking about it and has a verbal freak out as a response. The third way OCD displays itself is contamination as well as ‘mental contamination’, and there is a difference between mental and non contamination. Contamination is a fear that derives from a fear of germs touching you from a person or object, that can cause one to feel extremely uncomfortable with the contact of germs. This is one of the main types of OCD people think about as well as the 4th which I will get into in a second. Schmidt very clearly has a fear of contamination as is seen many times in the show, he very often does his best efforts to avoid places he finds ridden with germs as well as obsessively cleaning his house and space and even innocuous places like the back of their dumpster all in efforts to keep these germs away. These ideas can come from lots of different parts of a person's life and psyche and it is explained somewhat that Schmidt was always told to keep things clean by his mother at an impressionable age and OCD ran through his family. Overall Schmidt as well as Max Greenfeild both have OCD it seems to me and those four main categories seem to be the most aligning parts to look for in Schmidt. Nick Miller is known all through the show as a ‘lazy drunk’ and is often the butt of the joke but there are many signs that lead me to believe he aligns somewhat with an undiagnosed lower functioning autistic adult. ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) shows itself very differently in each person as it is obviously a spectrum, but at root is a disorder about sensory processing and can lead Autistic people to feel very overstimulated and having to let go of that energy (stimming) or feel very understimulated and also have to either find energy or just not need/feel it at all. As observed by me Nick Miller is often seen to not understand jokes as well as tasting food for texture and not taste as well as having extreme facial expressions, saying seemingly rude things to NT people, and more and all of these are symptoms in line with sensory processing issues with those with Autism. Nick Miller not understanding jokes is a classic running gag in the show but is very common among members of the autistic community. The ability to read a person's tone and to understand the cues of a funny situation are a sensory problem as this is what allows people without sensory differences to understand all of these.