Phantom of the Opera

At Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, the psychopathology curriculum for PGY-1 and -2 residents is taught through reviewing various works in the horror genre. To meet our objective to enhance learning through creative discussion of psychopathology portrayed in film and literature, our course – Reviewing Mental Disorders with a Reverent Understanding of the Macabre (REDRUM&trade’) – is broken down into three modules:

  1. Necromancy (ghost stories and tales of demonic possession)
  2. The Most Infamous Classical Monsters
  3. The Most Horrifying Contemporary Monsters

This webpage is dedicated to Necromancy and discusses Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ghost story, The Phantom of the Opera, to introduce teaching points germane to the Depressive Disorders.

On October 27, 2016, the Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences Masters Educators’ Guild sponsored a Grand Rounds that was co-presented by Miss Julia Udine who had recently completed her Broadway tour as Phantom’s Christine Daae. The Grand Rounds was presented as a patient interview where faculty from the Department of Psychiatry prompted answers from Miss Udine who, in character, responded in song. Click here to view the video from our event that frames Elisabeth KA?bler-Ross’s original stage theory of grief within five selected scenes of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s epic musical.