Is this related to the "here are my favorite books; appparently I never read anything outside of high school English" thing?

That's actually not the worst-case scenario--it could be born of a "I snoozed through high-school English and based my reports on Cliff's Notes, but there are certain works that I keep seeing referenced in the media, so why not use those, since they're obviously the gold standard?" thing. Therefore, psychology equals Freud (perhaps Jung if you want to establish that your character is learned enough to have two whole points of reference); classical music equals Beethoven; painting equals the Mona Lisa and Picasso; literature equals Shakespeare.