Eavesdropping: The Psychotherapist in Film and Television

201 Pages·2014·2.33 MB·English

by  Lucy Huskinson (editor), Terrie Waddell (editor)

EAVESDROPPING
What can depictions of psychotherapy on screen teach us about ourselves?
In E avesdropping, a selection of internationally recognized academics and professionals
involved in psychotherapy and fi lm consultancy investigate the curious dynamics that
occur when cinema and television attempts 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. Although several contributors conclude that actual psychotherapy, and the way
psychotherapists and their clients grapple with notions of fantasy and reality, would not
be terribly entertaining, E avesdropping 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, E avesdropping will be
essential and insightful reading for analytical psychologists, psychoanalysts, academics,
fi lmmakers, and students of depth psychology, literature, cinema and media.
Lucy Huskinson, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the School of Philosophy and Religion
at Bangor University, UK. She is coeditor in chief of the I nternational Journal of Jungian
Studies and author and editor of numerous books and articles, including Dreaming the
Myth Onwards: New Directions in Jungian Therapy and Thought (Routledge, 2009).
Terrie Waddell, PhD, is an associate professor of Media: Screen and Sound at La Trobe
University, Australia. She researches and publishes on the relationship between cinema
media, myth, literature, gender, popular culture, and analytical psychology. W ild/lives:
Trickster, Place and Liminality on Screen (Routledge, 2010) is her most recent monograph.
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EAVESDROPPING
The psychotherapist in fi lm
and television
Edited by Lucy Huskinson and Terrie Waddell
First published 2015
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Lucy Huskinson and Terrie Waddell
The right of the editors to be identifi ed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used
only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eavesdropping : the psychotherapist in fi lm and television / edited by Lucy Huskinson and Terrie
Waddell.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Psychoanalysis in motion pictures. 2. Psychoanalysis on television. I. Huskinson, Lucy, 1976- , editor.
II. Waddell, Terrie, editor.
PN1995.9.P783E38 2014
791.43’653–dc23
2014022914
ISBN: 978-0-415-81409-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-81410-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73952-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Cenveo Publisher Services
CONTENTS
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgments x
Introduction 1
Lucy Huskinson and Terrie Waddell
PART I
Erotic transference 13
1 The (mis)representation of psychoanalysis in fi lm 15
Andrea Sabbadini
2 Challenging Freud on the realities of erotic transference
with fi ctional case study: The Sopranos (1999–2007) and
In Treatment (2008–2010) 28
Lucy Huskinson
3 The real psychotherapist: an impossibility for fi lm 51
Elisabeth Hanscombe
vi Contents
PART II
The psychoanalytic approach 65
4 Equus : ecstasy, therapy, and the animal 67
Barbara Creed
5 ‘ A conversation between enlightened friends’: the mutual
reassurances of the arts and sciences in Freud (1984) 81
Mark Nicholls
6 Applying psychoanalysis to Hindi cinema 94
Dinesh Bhugra and Gurvinder Kalra
7 The bad psychoanalyst: watching the success of failure 107
Patricia Gherovici and Jamieson Webster
PART III
A contest of wills 127
8 Shrink-wrapped television: simulated therapy, disclosure,
and the lure of ‘plausible doubt’ 129
Terrie Waddell
9 Crossing the River Styx in a small boat 144
Helena Bassil-Morozow
10 R emarks on the functions of the psychiatrist in Hitchcock’s
Psycho and Bergman’s Persona 155
Donald Fredericksen
11 R omance or psychotherapy? 168
Irene Oestrich
Screen references 182
Index 185
CONTRIBUTORS
Helena Bassil-Morozow , PhD, is a cultural philosopher, fi lm scholar, and academic
writer, whose many publications on fi lm include the monographs, T im Burton: The
Monster and the Crowd (Routledge, 2010), The Trickster in Contemporary Film (Routledge,
2012), and T he Trickster and the System: Identity and Agency in Contemporary Society
(Routledge, 2014). Helena is currently working on another project to be published with
Routledge, Jungian Film Studies: The Essential Guide (coauthored with Luke Hockley).
Dinesh Bhugra , CBE, is Professor of Mental Health and Cultural Diversity at the
Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. He is also an honorary consultant at
the Maudsley Hospital. He is the editor of the I nternational Journal of Social Psychiatry ,
International Review of Psychiatry , and International Journal of Culture and Mental Health .
From 2008 to 2011, Professor Bhugra was president of the Royal College of
Psychiatrists. He is currently the chair of the Mental Health Foundation and president
of the World Psychiatric Association.
Barbara Creed , PhD, is Professor of Cinema Studies and head of the School of Culture
and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her acclaimed mono-
graph, T he Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 1993), has
been republished fi ve times. Her areas of research include feminist and psychoanalytic
theory, the cinema of human rights, and animal ethics and the media. She has recently
published Phallic Panic: Film, Horror & the Primal Uncanny (MUP, 2005) and D arwin’s
Screens: Evolutionary Aesthetics, Time and Sexual Display in the Cinema (MUP, 2009). Her
articles have been translated many times; she is on a number of international editorial
boards and acts as a reader for various international publishing houses and journals.
Donald Fredericksen, PhD, is a professor of fi lm in the Department of Performing
and Media Arts at Cornell University, a faculty fellow at Cornell’s Atkinsons Center
for a Sustainable Future, and a faculty affi liate in the religious studies and visual
viii Contributors
studies programs. He has written a monograph on Bergman’s P ersona and a series of
essays on fi lm theory and criticism grounded in the work of C. G. Jung and post-
Jungians. He practices psychotherapy part-time. He is the current chairman of the
executive committee of the International Association for Jungian Studies.
Patricia Gherovici, PhD, is a licensed supervising analyst in private practice and
director of the Philadelphia Lacan Study Group. She has contributed to numerous
journals and collections, most recently to Lacan and Addiction: An Anthology (Karnac,
2011). Her books include T he Puerto Rican Syndrome (Other Press, 2003), winner of
the Gradiva Award and the Boyer Prize, and P lease Select Your Gender: From the
Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism (Routledge, 2010).
Elisabeth Hanscombe, PhD, is a writer and psychoanalytic psychologist who com-
pleted her PhD in the Unit for Biography and Autobiography at La Trobe University,
Australia, on the topic ‘life writing and the desire for revenge’. She is interested in the
ways in which psychoanalytic object relations theory intersects with that of narrative
and the auto/biographical. She has published a number of short stories and essays in
the areas of autobiography, psychoanalysis, testimony, trauma, and creative nonfi ction
in Meanjin, Island, Tirra Lirra, and Q uadrant, as well as in the journals, L ife Writing and
Life Writing Annual: Biographical and Autobiographical Studies, as well as in psycho-
therapy journals and magazines throughout Australia and in the United States. She
was shortlisted for the Australian Book Review’s 2009 Calibre essay prize and has a
chapter in Stories of Complicated Grief: A Critical Anthology (NASW Press, 2013).
Lucy Huskinson, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the School of Philosophy and Religion
at Bangor University, UK. She is Co-editor-In-Chief of the I nternational Journal of
Jungian Studies and the author of N ietzsche and Jung (Routledge, 2004) and Introduction
to Nietzsche (SPCK, 2010). She is the editor and a contributor to Dreaming the Myth
Onwards: New Directions in Jungian Therapy and Thought (Routledge, 2009) and Spirit
Possession and Trance: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Continuum, 2010). She has also
authored numerous papers on psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, and philosophy.
Gurvinder Kalra is currently working as registrar with Northern Area Mental
Health Services (NAMHS) in Melbourne, Australia. He has extensively worked
in the area of ‘cinemeducation’ and has used cinema in his teachings at various
medical colleges in Mumbai where he served as a faculty member before moving
to Melbourne. He has widely presented and published in this area. He is currently
associate editor of the J ournal of Contemporary Medical Education .
Mark Nicholls, PhD, is a senior lecturer in cinema studies at the University of
Melbourne, Australia, where he has taught fi lm since 1993. He is the author of L ost
Objects of Desire: The Performances of Jeremy Irons (Berghahn Books, 2012), S corsese’s Men:
Melancholia and the Mob (Pluto and Indiana University Press, 2004), and has recently
published chapters and articles on Italian art and fi lm in the Cold War (T hird Text) ,
Contributors ix
Mad Men (R efractory) , Martin Scorsese ( Film Quarterly, Palgrave Macmillan, Blackwell
& Cambridge), Luchino Visconti (Q RFV) , and Shakespeare in fi lm (J FV) . Mark is a
fi lm journalist and worked for many years on ABC Radio and for T he Age newspaper,
for which he wrote a weekly fi lm column between 2007 and 2009. Mark has an
extensive list of stage credits as a playwright, performer, producer, and director.
Irene Oestrich is a Professor at the University of Aalborg, and the head psychologist
in the School for Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies, Mental Health Services in
Copenhagen, a clinical supervisor, and former leader of the Center for Cognitive
Therapy, Psychiatric Center Sankt Hans in Roskilde. She has been innovative in
cognitive treatment since 1974 and served as Chair of the Association for Cognitive
Behaviour Therapy and President of the European Association of Behavioural and
Cognitive Therapies. Irene is an active educator, supervisor and researcher, and is
regularly invited to contribute to national television programmes and media inter-
views. She is author of a number of books and articles.
Andrea Sabbadini, C. Psychol., is a fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society,
its former honorary secretary, and its current director of publications. He works in
private practice in London, is a senior lecturer at University College London, a
trustee of the Freud Museum, a member of the IPA Committee on Psychoanalysis
and Culture, the director of the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival, and the
chairman of a program of fi lms and discussions at the Institute of Contemporary
Arts (ICA). He is the founder/editor of P sychoanalysis and History and the fi lm sec-
tion editor of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He has published in the
major psychoanalytic journals, and has edited I l tempo in psicoanalisi (1979), E ven
Paranoids Have Enemies (Routledge, 1998), T he Couch and the Silver Screen (Routledge
2003), P rojected Shadows (Routledge, 2007), and P sychoanalytic Visions of Cinema
(a special issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2007).
Terrie Waddell, PhD, an associate professor of Media: Screen and Sound at La
Trobe University, Australia. She lectures and researches on the relationship between
screen media, myth, literature, gender, popular culture, and analytical psychology. As
well as numerous chapter and journal contributions, she has authored and edited the
following books: W ild/lives: Trickster, Place and Liminality on Screen (Routledge,
2010), M is/takes: Archetype, Myth and Identity in Screen Fiction (Routledge, 2006),
Lounge Critic: The Couch Theorist’s Companion (co-editor, The Australian Centre for
the Moving Image, 2004), and C ultural Expressions of Evil and Wickedness: Wrath,
Sex, Crime (editor, Rodopi, 2003).
Jamieson Webster, PhD, is in private practice in New York City. She teaches at
Eugene Lang College, New York University, and at The Institute for Psychoanalytic
Training and Research. She is a supervising psychologist with the clinical psychology
doctoral program of the City University of New York. She is the author of T he Life
and Death of Psychoanalysis: On Unconscious Desire and its Sublimation (Karnac, 2011).