New HBO Show: "In Treatment"
Anyone else seen this show in its second season, I believe?
I've only seen about the first eight episodes of the first season, but I'm really digging it so far. One of the most accurate portrayals of the therapeutic process that I've seen on TV, dealing with all of the nuances of transference, countertransference, resistance to therapy by the client, and other therapist and client issues that come up. In an era where there's a lot of confusion, mistrust, and puzzlement about what exactly goes on in a therapeutic alliance, this show sheds a lot of light on the reality of it. Most importantly it emphasizes that not everything is rainbows, gumdrops, and lollipops within the sessions as well as the fact that the therapist is indeed human and subject to all sorts of conflicts, feelings, and issues.
Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning.
To quote the NY Times:
"...If it is possible to find pleasure in other people’s psychic pain - and obviously it is - there is no better place for it than in the therapy sessions that begin on Sunday night. This season of “In Treatment” in particular seems uncannily suited to the times: Paul’s patients include an unfulfilled litigator at a fancy Manhattan law firm and the anxious chief executive of a scandal-ridden corporation.
When first introduced, “In Treatment” looked like an unlikely bet. The scripts were taken, nearly word for word, from a successful Israeli series, “Be’ Tipul.” Almost every scene was set in a therapy session - Paul’s with a patient, and Paul’s session with his confidant and former supervisor Gina (Dianne Wiest) - essentially a chain of two-person, one-act plays without action, sets or pop-music cues.
Despite a few awkward cultural adjustments, the transposition from Tel Aviv to suburban Maryland worked, partly thanks to the seductive power of the therapeutic process - psychotherapy: the home game. Classic theories of repression, transference and countertransference were artfully compressed into verbal jousts between doctor and patient. Characters’ inner workings were signaled with an ill-chosen word, an offhand gesture or a prolonged silence. And when Paul went to Gina with his own troubles (and ethical transgressions), he left his benevolent authority behind and morphed into a typical patient - defensive, self-pitying and blinkered. And Gina, in turn, proved to have baggage of her own.
The first season was riveting partly because it was so flattering; the viewer was the real supervisor in the room..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/arts/television/03trea.html?hpw
If you don't have cable, seek out other means to acquire an episode or two and check it out. It's well worth it if you're at all interested in the closest as possible to the "real world" of what psychotherapy is all about.