The Psychology of Ted Lasso
A man determined to win over everyone is offered tea by his boss in their first meeting. He doesn't accept it graciously. He is not curious about what tea means to her or to the country he has just crossed an ocean to live inside. He judges it, hot brown water, and dismisses it. Yet he spends the next three seasons asking everyone around him to be curious, not judgmental.
Why would someone so invested in being liked reject the very first thing his new boss offered him, so decisively, so un-curiously?
The tea keeps coming back as a running gag. And it is completely lovely to watch the show for that, for the warmth and the feel-good vibes, and never think about the tea again. But some of us caught the inconsistency, the man preaching curiosity who wasn't curious, and wanted to sit with it. This site is for them.
Understanding Ted Lasso is a way of understanding ourselves, and the people we live alongside every day. This is a psychology professor's account of what she saw, connecting the moments that captured her curiosity to the frameworks she has taught for years.
The library
40 essays arranged as a single reading arc, from Ted's persona, the warmth he leads with, inward through the whole ensemble, echoing the sequence Jungian individuation takes.
Tread wherever you like.
Three ways into the library
A note on scope
This project digs into the psychology of seasons one, two, and three, the episodes I've lived with long enough to really have something to say about. If you're looking for takes on the newest season, they aren't here yet. Be curious, not judgmental, as a wise man kept insisting. I'm still watching, still thinking, and the library may well grow.