Me and my shrinks
By Dan Hill - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - 0 Comments
Dan Hill on the craziness of families, fame—and therapists
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW TOLSON
“Before we can get properly started, there’s something I really need to disclose.” This was my new therapist’s opening gambit in 1999. I leaned back, enjoying the role reversal: the shrink unloading a bombshell on his patient.
“Sure, doctor. What’s up?”
Dr. Tony (not his real name) breathed in dramatically and rolled his leather chair closer.“I’m extremely attracted to your wife,” he confessed, the words tumbling out in one fevered exhalation. “She’s the classiest, most charismatic woman I’ve come across in all my years as a therapist.”
At 53, Dr. Tony was seven years my senior, and appeared vaguely athletic, not unlike an ex-NHLer who’d downed a few too many beers. Exuding a jousting alpha-male presence that verged on self-parody, he was hardly a threat to my marriage. Still, the doctor’s confession left me discombobulated.
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Is a therapist allowed to do that?
By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 9 Comments
In the drama ‘In Treatment,’ Dr. Paul Weston seems to have a problem with boundaries
Early on in the half-hour HBO drama In Treatment, Dr. Paul Weston, a therapist portrayed with understated aplomb by the Irish actor Gabriel Byrne, is seen struggling to unclog the toilet in his home practice. Soon, Laura arrives, an alluring 30-year-old anesthesiologist who insists both that she is in love with him and that he secretly loves her. “I am not a realistic option,” Paul tells her, addressing an infatuation common to psychoanalysis called erotic transference. Suddenly, Laura stands. “I need to pee,” she says. “It’s blocked up,” replies Paul. Laura moves to the door to Paul’s home, domain of his wife and children. Paul grows uncomfortable. “I bet that didn’t come up in med school—a patient in love with the therapist asks to use a bathroom,” says Laura. “What should the therapist do?”Actually, the question rarely comes up. “This is why I have ambivalence about the show, it seems like there’s a career’s worth of ethical dilemmas in every season,” says Ryan Howes, an L.A. psychologist who groans each time an episode appears in his TiVo cue, so much does it feel like a continuation of his workday. “I find myself doing a lot of backseat driving.” Yet he’s hooked, as are many therapists, who hail the drama as the most accurate depiction of their work yet to hit movie and TV screens. At once cerebral and earthy—how often do TV plots turn on a toilet plunger?—as well as gloriously talky, In Treatment, now in its second season on HBO Canada, is as close to theatre as it is to the 50-minute sessions it so faithfully reproduces. And it’s at least as prone to hyperbole.
