I remember reading the book by Oliver Sacks. One of the cases he examines in it reminded me of "Memento". I wonder if Christopher Nolan was inspired by that.

IMO, it would be as useful, and possibly moreso, to go to therapy oneself.

@Alex: I did some ad hoc training counseling in my days back at Yale Divinity School, but I have to say spending several years working with a therapist when I moved to L.A. (thank goodness for the WGA insurance plan back then that had excellent mental health coverage) was one of the best things that ever happened to me as a writer. Not only in understanding myself, but also in gaining much deeper insight into how people operate psychologically.

Perhaps the greatest gift from those years with my therapist was her training me to get curious about my own self. And I carried that with me into my writing. In fact, I find that to be one of the most fascinating aspects of writing, digging into characters, asking questions, probing and poking around in their back history and subconscious.

Which is a really long-winded way of saying, I agree with you!

I actually just went on a spending spree at barnes and noble with a similar goal in mind. Although I just graduated with a bs from Ucla, obviously I had some inclination to explore the biological side of character actions as well. Some books I bought: on human nature. The moral animal. (wright and wilson have some brilliant insights into evolutionary biology). Two different carl Jung compilations. An abnormal psychology casestudy textbook. A hero with a thousand faces. Campbell. Interesting to examine character issues from the psychological and evolutionary biological sides.

@Danny: Oh, man, you are talking my language. One book I am working up is based on the idea that stories are about a character's psychological journey. And while I use Joseph Campbell (who I studied all the way back in my days in college), I go back to someone who inspired him: Carl Jung. If you do a Google search of GITS with "Carl Jung," you will find plenty of posts in that area. It's terrifically exciting stuff because the way I see it, it provides writers a character-based approach to screenwriting, whereas so much of the theories currently out there are structure oriented. In this take, the structure arises from the character work. And congrats on your recent graduation from UCLA!

I enjoy thinking about both myself and my characters using the Enneagram system, a nine-point personality test that is notable for its fluidity (people can be at higher- or lower-functioning levels of a particular point, and they move through the different points depending on stress or relaxation) and its lack of causality (it is silent on whether the position of the stars at the moment of your birth or the worst efforts of your parents caused you to be how you are.)

Try the free practice test at Riso-Hudson on yourself or as one of your characters, and see what you think.

Oliver Sachs is so readable. I never get lost in the jargon and feel like I know his characters by the time I'm done. The Man who Thought His Wife Was a Hat is a classic.