ABSTRACT
Wilson's question to House in the last episode of Series 5 encapsulates a key aspect of House's character and is the central thematic facet of what I will explore in this chapter.
At home with the mechanics of modern medical health care, and undoubtedly functioning brilliantly as a diagnostician within this framework, House remains curiously unschooled, indeed almost inept, in the world of emotion (Both Sides Now, 5: 24). Indeed, his boss, Cuddy, tells him in this episode that people who get close to him get emotionally battered. I will dwell on this episode longer because it marks a turning point in House's televisual journey. The primary patient in this episode appears at ®rst sight to have a split between right and left brain functioning. This dysfunction allows House the opportunity to decry the right brain in a most unmitigated way. House insists that he is a man of the left brain, i.e. valuing cognition, thinking and intellect, those very qualities privileged in current Western society. By his and society's insisting on the advantages of these qualities, the right brain is inevitably cast into shadow. The right-brain world concerns basic survival by means of emotion and intuition; it is primarily non-verbal. Indeed in this episode, House ®nds the right brain to be pure encumbrance (despite the fact, as I explore later, that a good argument could be made for his being an intuitive, right-brain character!). In an ironic twist at the end of Series 5, we see the doors of a psychiatric hospital, a huge old-style institution, close in on House. He has committed himself as a voluntary patient after realizing the depth of his hallucinations and his need for help in freeing himself of them. The viewer is left to wonder how he will manage in this uncanny role of being a patient after so many years.
