Eavesdropping

The psychotherapist in film and television

Lucy Huskinson, Terrie Waddell, Lucy Huskinson, Terrie Waddell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317577034
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

What can depictions of psychotherapy on screen teach us about ourselves?

In Eavesdropping, a selection of contributions from internationally-based film consultants, practicing psychotherapists and interdisciplinary scholars investigate the curious dynamics that occur when films and television programmes attempt to portray the psychotherapist, and the complexities of psychotherapy, for popular audiences.

The book evaluates the potential mismatch between the onscreen psychotherapist, whose raison d'être is to entertain and engage global audiences, and the professional, real-life counterpart, who becomes intimately involved with the dramas of their patients. While several contributors conclude that actual psychotherapy, and the way psychotherapists and their clients grapple with notions of fantasy and reality, would make a rather poor show, Eavesdropping demonstrates the importance of psychotherapy and psychotherapists on-screen in assisting us to wrestle with the discomfort – and humour - of our lives.

Offering a unique insight into perceptions of psychotherapy, Eavesdropping will be essential and insightful reading for analytical psychologists, psychoanalysts, academics and students of depth psychology, film and television studies, media studies and literature, as well as filmmakers.

PART I Erotic transference

1 The (Mis)representation of Psychoanalysis in Film

Andrea Sabbadini

DOI: 10.4324/9781315739526-2

Not only do psychoanalysis and cinema famously share their 1895 origins with the publication of Freud and Breuer's Studies on Hysteria and the first film screenings in Paris by the Lumière brothers, but their histories are intertwined throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A rich literature on this relationship and its implications for both disciplines already exists, alongside a wealth of analytically informed film studies and reviews (Sabbadini 2012).

If we examine the ways in which these implications manifest themselves, we find that on one hand recounting the experience of going to the movies and the cognitive and emotional impact of films has always filled much time within psychoanalytic sessions. Analysands often make references to films, their dreams, and waking life fantasies that are coloured by what they have watched on the big or small screen, frequently identifying with movie stars or the characters they play in front of the camera.

On the other hand, since the early days of cinema, many films have found their inspiration from psychoanalytic ideas: their structure and language may reflect the unconscious studied in psychoanalysis. They may present characters with the kind of problems or psychopathologies familiar to analytic practitioners or may even attempt to represent the psychoanalytic profession itself. In relation to this last aspect, I will argue that such attempts to bring psychoanalysis to the screen have mostly failed; what we come across again and again, with a few exceptions, are misrepresentations rather than representations. I will try to support this statement by providing illustrations from films about psychoanalysis and suggesting possible reasons for this failure.

What we often then see in those films are analysts asking continuous questions of their patients, taking notes of their answers, giving them practical advice on what they should (or should not) do, and generally behaving in inappropriate ways toward them, which includes the breaching of all sorts of professional boundaries. More often than not, analysts in movies are referred to by the popular (but still offensive) term ‘shrinks’ and are portrayed as naïve, greedy, abusive, involved in all sorts of seedy activities, and sometimes more insane—presumably to comical effect—than their own patients. According to Schneider, any analyst in film is a Dr Dippy, a Dr Evil, or a Dr Wonderful (Schneider 1985). I am pleased to say that, as a psychoanalyst, I do not identify with any of these filmic stereotypes.

In other words, what many films on psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts show their viewers is but a parody of what psychoanalysis actually is and what psychoanalysts actually do. That is not to say that we analysts always take ourselves so seriously that we are incapable of ever being self-critical or even self-mocking, and that we do not enjoy such caricatures or contemplate that there may be a grain of truth behind them. Indeed, it is often psychoanalysts who tell the best jokes about themselves and their work. But it is also not unreasonable to expect cinema, television, and other media to make more of an effort to also represent us and our ‘impossible profession’ (as Freud himself described it) more accurately and fairly.

I shall start by outlining some of the reasons why such an expectation is so often frustrated. Most serious filmmakers will invest a considerable amount of time and energy into researching the context (geographical, social, cultural, professional. etc.) of the film they intend to make or, alternatively, they will hire experts in that particular field as special consultants; unless, of course, they already have extensive firsthand experience themselves. With a few notable exceptions, however, it seems that writers and directors engaged in making feature films about psychoanalysis have often failed to do their homework. As a result, they have ended up portraying our profession and its practitioners in a similar stereotypical, and unsympathetic, way to other media, such as the tabloid press—that is to say, with little understanding of their complex reality.

There are of course notable exceptions, as we will see later. For instance, Georg Wilhelm Pabst worked closely with two leading analysts of his day—Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs—to produce Secrets of a Soul (1926). Likewise, Nanni Moretti also used prominent psychoanalysts as consultants for The Son's Room (2001). An amusing interaction took place when I presented this film at the first European Psychoanalytic Film Festival in 2001. In the panel discussion that followed the screening, Moretti was challenged by a German member of the audience who asserted quite rightly that psychoanalysts in her country would never visit their patients in their homes, as Dr Sermonti (the film's protagonist, played by Moretti himself) does. Moretti replied that perhaps in Germany they do not, but in his film they do. The film's consultant, Italian psychoanalyst Stefano Bolognini, who was on the panel, later told me that he had advised Moretti not to have Dr Sermonti go on a home visit, but his suggestion had been ignored.

One problem for filmmakers engaging with the representation of psychoanalysis consists of the extremely ‘private’ character of the analytic relationship, which must feel quite mysterious to those who have not have had the chance to experience it—and I mean here to experience it on either side of the couch. Of course, many filmmakers have themselves been in analysis, especially in the Hollywood of the 1950s and 1960s, when psychoanalysis was still considered to be a fashionable and even glamorous activity, but also in more recent years where this kind of experience has affected the work of Federico Fellini, Woody Allen, and Bernardo Bertolucci, for example. Presumably, then, they should have had a good enough idea of what analysis felt like to give it a fair representation in their own films. But, ultimately, the subtle oscillations of emotional temperature, the shades of meaning in verbal interactions, and the almost unnoticeable and yet significant gestures taking place in the consulting room, combined with the reliving of memories from childhood and the complex intersections of transference and countertransference phenomena, have to a large extent proved to be almost impossible to reproduce in screenplays and performance. We would then be tempted to conclude that a profession for which these nuances (different from sudden dramatic occurrences) occupy such a central place is perhaps destined only to be played out with any accuracy in the real space between analytic practitioners and their patients, not in their fictional representation on film (nor, for similar reasons, in literature or drama).

Another problem leading to the inevitable misrepresentation of our profession concerns the unremarkable, mostly impersonal, or even banal features of the analytic environment itself (also known, ironically, by a term with cinematic connotations: ‘the setting’). Carpenters in films may be shown as having a workshop full of tools, perhaps with diegetic background music playing on a radio while they are drilling holes into a plank; they can injure themselves with a saw, have an argument with a customer, and in the end produce visible artefacts. But in their working space, psychoanalysts (and not even all of them) have only a couch; such defining objects as degree certificates on their walls, or notebooks on their knees, are to be found in most films and cartoons about analysis but not in most real consulting rooms.

Furthermore while, say, lawyers in a courtroom are surrounded by witnesses, judges, journalists, and a partisan and vociferous audience (in many films, if not in real life), when dealing with powerful scenarios, psychoanalysts work by themselves with only the company of their patients. Most of the time all that takes place during therapeutic sessions is the alternation of words and silences—something eminently unspectacular that does not easily lend itself to engaging spectacle. And if analysands, in an interpersonal context that I would describe as a one-sided dialogue or perhaps a monologue in the presence of the other, have a lot to talk about, their analysts usually say little; this must make it hard for actors to create tension when all they are asked to do is sit silently in a chair, reflecting on what is going on.

The pace is slow, and changes, if they occur at all, are subtle and only noticeable in the course of a lengthy process. Here we come across what may be considered one of the main causes of misrepresentation of our work. A 100-minute feature usually needs to compress as much plot, character development, description of setting, and comic or dramatic action as possible, without of course overwhelming or confusing viewers. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, takes place on an entirely different temporal register, one closer to what Freud described as the ‘timelessness’ of unconscious functioning: ‘The processes of the system Ucs. are timeless; i.e. they are not ordered temporally, are not altered by the passage of time; they have no reference to time at all’ (Freud 1915: 187). This feature can be observed, for instance, in the content of dreams.

Not unlike a film, a session will only last for a limited span of time, but the quality of time experienced in a consulting room is by its nature different from that experienced almost anywhere else, cinemas included. This creates unavoidable limitations to accurate filmic description of the analytic process. It may be noted here incidentally that the incompatibility of these different temporalities (the unconscious timelessness experienced in a session versus the compressed time of film) can be to some extent resolved in a television series, such as In Treatment (2008–2010), where each episode is only concerned with reproducing a single session so that there is less need for major events to take place within the episode, as long as at least some tension is maintained throughout to keep the attention of its viewers.

In other words, what may be interesting, intriguing, moving, or exciting when experienced in the intimacy of an analytic consulting room is often tedious when watched on a cinema screen. To compensate for this, filmmakers may try to inject something more dramatic into their scripts (often, not surprisingly, of a violent and/or sexual nature). By doing so, however, they end up distorting their portrait of our work into something barely recognizable as psychoanalysis, at least by those actually practicing it.

Following from this, it may be noted that psychoanalysis has always been described (correctly, if perhaps also superficially) as a ‘talking cure’—a definition suggested by its first patient, Anna O, (Breuer and Freud 1893–1895: 30) which I would complement by also describing it as a ‘listening cure.’ Unlike other forms of therapy (such as psychodrama, Gestalt therapy, bioenergetics, occupational, art, music, and dance therapies), the psychoanalytic edifice (its theory and its technique) is structured around a mostly verbal modality of communication. Cinema, on the other hand, is a primarily visual medium, and the impact it has on its audience (its ‘viewers’) is due to the images it presents, rather than words. This, of course, is not to minimize the importance of film components such as dialogue and music, but it should be obvious that interactions such as those occurring in psychoanalytic consulting rooms that are focused almost entirely on verbal exchanges (on the alternation of words and silences) do not lend themselves to easy representation within film without undergoing some radical distortion. This is another cause, I think, of the inevitable misrepresentation of our profession on the screen.

A more specific problem is due to a certain confusion, especially for Hollywood filmmakers and their audiences, among psychoanalysis, psychology, counselling, and psychiatry; all are perfectly valid therapeutic activities in the field of mental health, but each involve different contexts and practices. Such confusion is exemplified by the title itself of a key text on American movies, Psychiatry and the Cinema, by Glen and Krin Gabbard (1999: xix–xx). In their ‘Preface to the Second Edition’ the authors write:

Since the appearance of our first edition in 1987, psychiatry has continued to distance itself from psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Nevertheless, in the cinematic world, the emphasis remains on the talking cure…. Hence, we continue to use the term psychiatry in the broadest possible sense to encompass all mental health professionals, especially those who practice psychotherapy.

Such confusion is, at least in part, justified by the fact that until not long ago all American psychoanalysts were also psychiatrists. It is a small but significant detail that we find portraits of Freud displayed on psychiatrists’ office walls in major films about mental institutions, such as Anatole Litvak's The Snake Pit (1948), Nunnally Johnson's The Three Faces of Eve (1957), Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963), and a sub-genre of movies that also includes Miloš Forman's popular One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).

In Jan Svankmajer's surrealist, semi-animated farce, Surviving Life: A Psychoanalytic Comedy (2010), Freud's portrait is hung next to Jung's on the wall of analyst Dr Holubova's consulting room. The two portraits, one of Freud smoking his iconic cigar and the other of Jung smoking his pipe, become animated and we see them triumphantly smirk, or disappointingly frown, depending on the interpretations Dr Holubova gives her patient Eugene. Without uttering a single word, the two fathers of psychoanalysis comically engage here in the kind of childish controversies that have traditionally occupied those two analytic schools. We see Freud stick his tongue out at Jung when Dr Holubova explains to Eugene that dreams are the fulfilments of wishes, or we see Jung applaud when ‘Anima, the archetypal image of woman’ is mentioned. Eventually the two portraits punch and kick one another, their glasses are broken, and both pictures fall on the floor.

The works I will be talking about here are not documentaries about various aspects of the history of our profession, nor are they films whose characters are portrayed with an ‘analytic’ understanding of the complexity of their personalities, conflicting emotions, and unconscious motivations (Brody and Brearley 2003). Instead, as an illustration of some of the points presented earlier, I will refer to a few main fictional features that have attempted to represent the psychoanalytic profession itself by having psychoanalysts as their main characters, their patients, or as both: Secrets of a Soul [Geheimnisse einer Seele] (1926), Spellbound (Hitchcock), Freud: The Secret Passion (1962), Nineteen Nineteen (1985), and Deconstructing Harry (1997)¹.

The earliest examples of something approaching the presence of mental health professionals in film can be found in a 20-minute farce about inmates taking over an insane asylum until a character called Dr Dippy saves the day by offering everybody a picnic of pies (Dr Dippy's Sanitarium, 1906). In The Mystery of the Rocks of Kador [Le Mystére des Roches de Kador] (1912), ‘a celebrated foreign alienist physician’ saves the heroine Suzanne from madness by utilizing the ‘luminous vibrations of cinematographic images’ to induce in her a hypnotic state leading to psychotherapeutic suggestion (Bergstrom 1999: 15–20). And in the German Expressionist classic horror The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, [Das Kabinet der Dr Caligari], (1920), the psychiatrist turns out to be a dangerous psychopath.

However, the first major and still arguably most successful filmic representation of psychoanalysis is the already mentioned feature Secrets of a Soul (1926), directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst with leading German psychoanalysts Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs as consultants. Having been invited by Abraham to cooperate, Freud replied to him in no uncertain terms: ‘I do not believe that satisfactory plastic representation of our abstractions is at all possible’ (Abraham and Freud 1965: 546–7). Only a few months earl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Erotic transference
• Part II The psychoanalytic approach
• Part III A contest of wills
• Index