The Biggest Myth About Therapy that HBO's In Treatment Promotes

Oh, right. Paul Weston isn't a real therapist. He's just a character on the HBO series In Treatment. So, I suppose it's rather silly when my wife and I -- both psychologists -- react to stuff he does with exclamations like "Good interpretation, Paul!" or "Christ! He keeps missing the boat." No sillier, I suppose, than when the American Psychoanalytic Association once held a panel discussion about film and television depictions of psychoanalysis and had the actress who played a psychiatrist on The Sopranos, Lorraine Bracco, on the panel -- the implication being that Bracco would have something especially interesting to say about Tony Soprano's psychology or treatment. Analyzing the vicissitudes of a fictional shrink's clinical technique is sort of like analyzing David Caruso's police work on CSI Miami.

Psychotherapy, however, seems to be an enterprise that most people have some opinion about, how it works or doesn't, whether shrinks are especially screwed up or just ordinarily so, or whether their kids suffer a special burden. And caricatures and scandals abound (not just in the New Yorker) about endless psychoanalyses, "old-fashioned" therapists who won't answer personal questions, therapists who sleep with their patients or who fail to predict their horrendous acts of violence.

More...