Tag Archives: psychoanalysis

Mar 17

“Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian” (A Preview)

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Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian is that rare movie that apparently has a positive representation of a therapist, in this case a real person, George Devereux, an anthropologist and psychoanalyst who in 1951 wrote a book, Reality and Dream, on which writer/director Arnaud Desplechin based his script.

Also rare in filmdom: making day to day therapy sessions between two main characters the main story.

The Sessions with Jimmy P.

Mark Adams, Screen Daily: “The pair start to spend an hour together each day, with Devereux gently probing into Jimmy’s past and allowing him to gradually talk about his attitude towards women (and his mother and sister in particular), incidents of his past and what happened to him during the war. Jimmy still veers between mental blackouts and moments of lucidity, while at the same time the relationship provides Devereux with a solid project and a much-needed sense of place.”

Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com: “…Jimmy and his analyst…form a great movie friendship, unlike any you’ve seen. Its specialness is rooted equally in the men’s culturally specific yet emotionally similar experiences (they’re both sensitive, wryly funny cultural outsiders) and in the old-school Freudian ‘talking cure’ that they pursue together.”

The Patient, Jimmy Piccard (Benicio Del Toro)

He’s a Native American Blackfoot World War II veteran who sustained a head injury that’s been healed—or has it? This man’s experiencing a myriad of symptoms that include severe headaches, dizziness, hearing loss, temporary blindness, and recurring nightmares. It’s in the Topeka Military Hospital in Kansas in 1948 that Jimmy P. gets referred to Devereux due to his specialization in Native American culture.

Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter:

…Happily, breaking another tedious film cliché, he doesn’t resist his doctor in the least and analysis rolls on briskly. Yes, there’s a traumatic Oedipal moment when little Jimmy sees his recently widowed mother in bed with another man, and on another occasion he gets a thrashing after being caught playing in the hay with a little girl. Then there’s the war and the accident in which he suffered a severe head injury. But ultimately, his greatest trauma involves his own mistreatment of his mistress and the daughter she bore him. Once that guilt is peeled away, a whole other level opens up of repressed anger over the prejudice and discrimination he is subject to as a Native American – another source of his blinding headaches.

The Shrink, George Devereux (Mathieu Amalric)

Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter: “…(H)e’s the analyst everyone dreams of – penetrating, sympathetic, every word a direct hit. For once the dreary, cinematically overused drama of transference takes a back seat to pure intellectual detective work as he sets up a relaxed dialogue with his patient.”

Selected Reviews

Mark Adams, Screen Daily: “Each is escaping aspects of their past, and the relationship turns out to be therapeutic for both men. Jimmy comes to terms with the issues that lie at the core of his problems, while Devereux relaxes into the environment, and finds a brief bit of happiness when his is visited by his married lover Madeleine (a delightful performance by Gina McKee).”

Matt Patches, Hollywood Reporter: “A milestone case in the world of ethnographic psychoanalysis may not sound like fodder for great drama, but it’s all about who’s the ‘psycho’ and who’s conducting the ‘analysis.’ In the case of Jimmy P…(t)hese guys could read the phone book and make it interesting.”

Scott Foundas, Variety: “…(F)ew films have focused so intently on the minutiae of psychoanalysis as Desplechin does here — an uncompromising strategy that will undoubtedly distance some viewers while drawing others further in.”

The Movie Trailer

Jan 29

Movies As Therapy: One Therapist Who Uses This Tool

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Movies are as old as psychoanalysis. So if I were to put you or anyone else on a couch and say, ‘Tell me your favorite movies,’ it would be a way of psychoanalyzing you. 
Andrew Sarris, regarding movies as therapy

Although I’m not sure I follow the logic in the above statement, I do believe that long-time movie critic Andrew Sarris, who died last year at the age of 83, had a point about favorite movies reflecting one’s inner world.

In a 1998 interview with David Walsh, Sarris elaborated further on this theme: “Film has everything. I think it’s an emotional medium, above all. Anyone who depends on movies to educate himself, I think, is on the wrong track. What you derive from a film depends very much on what you bring to it. It allows you to focus emotionally on things you already know. It brings things to a point. Like music. Film is the art to which all other arts aspire. It produces the most sublime emotions.”

And because they do so well at bringing out various emotions, it’s true that movies can be useful as an adjunct to therapy. One therapist who actually specializes in movies as therapy is Dr. Birgit Wolz, who wrote E-Motion Picture Magic: A Movie Lover’s Guide to Healing and Transformation (2004).

She conceptualizes three types of cinema therapy:

  1. Evocative: when a client raises the topic of having seen a certain film, Wolz can look at what the characters or scenes evoke in him or her
  2. Prescriptive: based on a client’s presenting problems, a certain movie may be prescribed as a learning tool
  3. Cathartic: when a certain film enables a client with blocked emotions to laugh or cry or both

Her website offers a lot of good stuff, including guidelines for film-watchers and for therapists, special articles and links, movie reviews, and a list of films organized by the types of issues they represent.

Likewise, you can click on the Zur Institute website for a comprehensive list offered jointly by Wolz and psychologist Dr. Ofer Zur.

Oct 31

“High Anxiety”: Suspense and Silliness By Mel Brooks

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“High Anxiety”—as in intense fear-ridden anticipation? As in what many felt recently as the powerful storm Sandy approached? As in what many feel about the upcoming elections?

Or how about, as in an old movie? High Anxiety, a 1977 comedy directed by and starring Mel Brooks, parodies the genre of suspense films made by Alfred Hitchcock and takes place mainly in a mental hospital. Although back in the day it wasn’t highly rated by the critics, many viewers over the years have disagreed.

What we know at the start is that the head of a psychiatric facility has gone missing. Wikipedia describes the rest of the plot: “Brooks’ character, Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke, arrives as new administrator of The Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous to discover some suspicious happenings. When he’s framed for murder, Dr. Thorndyke must confront his own anxiety disorder, ‘high anxiety,’ in order to prove his innocence.”

What exactly is this high anxiety that afflicts the esteemed psychiatrist? Exactly how it sounds (in one interpretation)—he has a fear of heights.

Who frames him for murder? Dr. Montague, a psychiatrist played by Harvey Korman, who’s in cahoots with Nurse Diesel (Cloris Leachman).

I saw High Anxiety when it was playing in theaters, and what stays with me the most, you ask? Ryan Gilbey, New Statesman, seems to know my mind: “When High Anxiety was released, viewers were familiar enough with the babble and buzzwords of psychoanalysis to respond instinctively to the film’s wittiest sequence, when Brooks’s speech at a psychiatric conference has to be spontaneously modified so as not to impinge upon the innocence of two young children who have joined the audience. ‘Penis envy’ becomes ‘pee-pee envy’; the womb is temporarily rechristened ‘the woo-woo.'”

Pure silliness.

I won’t give it all away, but Dr. Thorndyke does eventually achieve insight regarding his high anxiety—and said insight is faux-psychoanalytically oriented, of course.

The trailer’s below:

Sep 12

Over-Labeling: David A. Levy Spoof Gives It a Label

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In the spirit of recognizing that things often defy easy categorization, I present an over-labeling (spoof) “diagnosis” proposed years ago by psychologist and professor David A. Levy in an article called “A Proposed Category for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM): Pervasive Labeling Disorder.”

The main symptoms and features of PLD are as follows: “(1) an uncontrollable impulse, drive, or temptation to invent labels and to apply them to other people, (2) a repetitive pattern of trying to fit people into preconceived categories, (3) an increasing sense of fear or inadequacy before committing the act, (4) an experience of overwhelming triumph or relief at the time of committing the act.”

Furthermore, “Persons with PLD operate under the fallacious belief that, by having named something, they have therefore explained it. Research indicates that many persons with PLD are exceptionally adept at seeing in other people the flaws they cannot see in themselves…”

And here’s the kicker: “…(M)any people have found a means to obtain reinforcement for this disorder in socially acceptable ways by becoming psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, astrologists, Scientologists, evangelists, cult leaders, authors of self-help books, politicians, and interview guests on radio and television shows.”

Usually people with PLD remain undiagnosed until they’ve reached “a position of social power.” Furthermore, “(r)ecovery from PLD rarely occurs once the person’s annual income exceeds six figures.”

Other David A. Levy Quotes

On a somewhat related idea to over-labeling, David A. Levy is also known to have said, “There are two types of people in this world — those who think that there are two types of people in this world, and those who don’t.”

And let’s not stop there. Here’s a collection of other quotes from Levy’s lectures on “Humor in Psychotherapy” (2007):

  • There are three things needed to eliminate human misery. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.
  • When a psychoanalyst takes on the role of a blank screen, all he really learns is how the patient responds to people who try to act like they’re a blank screen.
  • To the optimist, pessimists are neurotic; to the pessimist, optimists are deluded.
  • I used to fear that taking medication would change my personality; now I fear that it won’t.
  • To be neurotic is to spend one’s life perpetually replacing one worry with the next.
Aug 23

The World Capital of Psychotherapy May Be Argentina

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Is Argentina the world capital of psychotherapy? According to the New York Times:

The number of practicing psychologists in Argentina has been surging, to 196 per 100,000 people last year, according to a study by Modesto Alonso, a psychologist and researcher, from 145 per 100,000 in 2008.

That compares with about 27 psychologists per 100,000 people in the United States, according to the American Psychological Association.

And that’s just the psychologists, only one of several disciplines in which psychotherapists practice. In other words, what about clinical social workers, psychiatrists, mental health counselors, etc.?

Another (now unlinkable) source gives a broader breakdown. Stating that “Argentines are officially the most analyzed people in the world,” the report says there are 15 therapists for every 1000 residents.

Psychoanalysis has apparently found much popularity ever since Freud’s ideas emigrated there in the early 20th century. However, the other end of the spectrum—cognitive-behavioral therapy and other of the shorter-term approaches—is also represented in Argentina.

Apparently high fees don’t necessarily pose a big issue. From the NY Times article: “Andrés Raskovsky, president of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, recently asserted that psychoanalysis had little risk of extinction in Argentina since seeing a psychologist twice a week is still viewed as being affordable for much of the population.” When people can’t afford it, sliding scale fees and other types of arrangements are often offered; also, public insurance covers it for some.

One analyst interviewed about the wide acceptance and use of therapy in Argentina says that it’s basically about their people liking to talk—as well as liking having someone to listen.

Could it really be that simple? Probably not.

Maybe Argentinians are more in need of therapy than other folks? Unlikely. In one article last year (update 2018: source no longer available), two therapists who were both originally from the U.S. but now practice in Argentina observe that people have essentially the same types of problems there as anywhere. As stated by one, Steven Nissenbaum: “It doesn’t make a difference what the culture is – people are people. Problems include life transitions, relationships, family, health or addictions.”

Therapy is also big in their popular culture, with the TV show In Treatment, starring Gabriel Byrne as a shrink, currently being quite popular. In addition, on the “Broadway of Buenos Aires” you can now find a staging of “Freud’s Last Session,” last year’s winner of New York’s Off Broadway Alliance award. It’s about the conversations that take place when the seriously ailing Freud invites writer C.S. Lewis to his home in London.

Michael Tanenbaum describes the play for The Argentina Independent:

As the two men carry on their debate – Lewis equating psychoanalysis with intellectual religion and Freud swatting away God as an infantile fantasy – the conversation and circumstances take multiple turns in subject, intensity, and competitive edge, bringing the men together at a historically fateful moment…

God, love, sex, and the meaning of life may be suitable tag words for this play, but overwhelmingly it is a display of the walls we build up and break down in dialogue with ourselves and others.

Another hit play “Toc Toc,” about six characters with obsessive-compulsive disorder who meet in their psychiatrist’s waiting room, is also currently playing.

World capital of psychotherapy? Certainly in the running.