Did you also notice that as she was telling him about her feelings that he started fiddling with his wedding ring? I was thinking, ugh, stop it! Then when he gave the line about the boundaries I thought to myself "That was sooooo the wrong thing to say!" He didn't give her any reassurance at all that her feelings for him are a common occurrence in therapy and that they can work through them together.
Good catch on the wedding ring!
His error is understandable though -- because he is human and so makes mistakes. I think it would have been better if he had been able to just let her talk -- because putting feelings into words is what it is all about. I think reassurance would have missed the mark also.
I do like that he is not written as perfect. Despite everything, the relationship is not destroyed. We can see how they both work through this.
I also didn't get the impression that the hairbrush was his. Laura took a hairpin out of the medicine cabinet also, and that made me believe that the brush and the hairpin were the therapist's wife's. Interesting how the interpretations of that could be different, and how that could change the story.
You could be right -- in either case it foreshadows the revelation of her feelings.
Wow, it didn't take long for them to do the female patient trying to seduce the therapist bit. It's all so tiring. I had a male psychiatrist say to me, "You're a pretty girl, what have you got to be sad about?" I had another male psychiatrist say, "Did you know I like you?" Then, he asked if I liked him. He came and sat next to me and took my hand in his. Later he invited me on a vacation with him. But, of course these things would never make it into a script. It's always the woman who wants her therapist. Gag.
They showed it because it is so common. Erotic transferences come with the territiory. I think women, or at least the women therapists I know, are more likely to draw maternal transferences. The dynamics involved are important clinical material.
Good therapists don't act out their feelings. Paul is pretty good.
How much of that is because the therapist wants to believe it's true, though? I took an MFT ethics class once and the different perceptions about behavior were interesting. We watched a session on a video and men tended to view the female clients' actions toward their male therapists as seductive, whereas females tended to view the female's actions as friendly. She smiled, so she must have wanted him. I think sometimes this stereotype is blown way out of proportion to what is reality. Another thing I noticed in that class is that therapists in training seemed to get quite a rush from the belief that a particular client wanted them. I think sometimes therapists see what they want to see.
I'm not saying it doesn't ever happen. I just think it's blown way, way out of proportion. Or maybe my therapists just weren't that hot.
A therapist doesn't have to be hot at all to draw an erotic transference. I took a course once from a Jungian analyst who was short and not at all attractive and every woman in the class adored him. I knew from some people who saw him for analysis that his patients often fell in love with him.
Therapy is an intimate relationship so it is easy to begin to have strong feelings of love and attraction for a therapist.
Trust me when I say it is very common and the therapist does not have to try to evoke it. Of course I am talking here about psychodynamic psychotherapy -- not cognitive behavioral therapy nor any kind that does not consider the relationship with the therapist as grist for the mill.
The situation is very different for MFTs.
So Cheryl - I'm curious as to why anyone would want to put themselves in that situation? I'm not trying to be argumentative here, I'm truly wondering why. It's a reason I would never ever enter into therapy (although I have done CBT which was fine), because I know I would fall in love with, or develop a maternal or paternal attachment to the therapist that would be totally one sided. I can't imagine that being a good situation to put oneself in.
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Oops, somehow my last name got in that comment. Can you delete that? Sorry, but I don't know how to email you. thanks.
I edited out your last name,Linda -- all is well.
Why would someone do that? Well, it isn't something anyone sets out to do. We all swim in a sea of projections -- images and feelings we have that we project onto other people. And when they come up in therapy, they offer an opportunity to understand why that is happening and how it is a part of our larger lives.
So Laura loves Paul. She doesn't really know him, as a person at all. What she knows is how she experiences him in the session, which combined with her fantasies about him, about how he would pay attention to her, and with the problems in her relationship with her boyfriend, lead her to feel that it is Pal that she loves, when it is her fantasy of Paul she is in love with.
So in the coming weeks, we hope Paul will help her look at where these feelings are coming from and what she wants n her life and what keeps her from having that.
I have had the experience of patients wishing I were their mother, wishing they could move in and live with me. That becomes fruitful material to find our way through their issues of longing and wanting love and care.
It is powerful stuff and good therapists stay on top of it through being in therapy themselves and by getting supervision from another therapist when things feel muddy.
This is just my opinion but I do believe the way the therapist relates to the patient has a whole lot to do with it. The flirty therapists in training were the ones who seemed to be having this problem. I have a friend who is a therapist, and her husband is also a therapist. He is an attractive person. I asked about his experience with female clients. He said that in all the years he has worked as a therapist he has had only one female client who stated she had feelings for him in that way. He is not a cognitive behavioral therapist. Why aren't the women just falling at his feet, since this is supposedly what women do?
I would have questions about the therapists who frequently experience this. As a woman I do not want this to be an assumption when I walk into a therapist's office. Thankfully I now see a female therapist so I don't have to deal with all of that crap.
My experience is that it isn't about attractiveness - which is a more superficial part of attraction - it is about an emotional relationship that has a peculiar intensity due to the very strict limits of the process and space.
I remember when I first started therapy I was so annoyed by questions that were asked me about the relationship and my feelings about my therapist - I saw them as some kind of trap or cliche. But over six years I have come to understand that the questions are valid - that the nature of the affection I have for my therapist and he for me (and my resistance to it) has a lot to go with the issues that drove me there in the first place. I know I wasn't able to begin to accept affection from anyone until I could a little bit accept it in therapy.
I think that the public perception of this experience is extremely colored by squeamishnesses about sex and emotion in general. The more you can demean something the easier it is to dismiss and marginalize and avoid the hard work of change.
Thanks for this review Cheryl - I wish I had HBO to see the original. I'm looking forward to seeing it through your eyes.
I think you nailed it, Juno. What the therapist looks like is a pretty small part of it. It is the relationship -- the intimacy of it, having that attention focused on one in a way that one rarely gets outside of therapy, the permission to talk about anything -- all of hose things combine to create the climate for all kinds of feelings to emerge.
I think the reason I find this so irritating is that I don't believe that most women go in and attempt to seduce their therapists. I'm not saying it never happens. When I heard that about this new show I knew they were going to present that stereotype of women, and as a female client I find it annoying. This has nothing to do with being uncomfortable with sex.
I understand what you are saying but falling in love with the therapist is far commoner than you want to believe and isn't about wanting to seduce the therapist in the way that you seem to believe. It is far more complex than that. In this case, it serves to show us something about Paul and how he, as pretty good therapist, handles the situation and lets us see how it gets worked through.
I hope you are watching other episodes -- they are available in streaming video at the HBO site if you are not an actual subscriber -- because the show is not just about this one patient. Have you seen any of the episodes?
Dr. Dombeck at Mental Health Net gave a review of this yesterday, I think I'll watch it, and it is free on the HBO network.
I loved many of my therapists, and some loved me, we grew on each other in a non-erotic but intense and combustible connection over time.
But the one erotic transference thingie I experienced was in psychodynamic treatment with a Dr. So and so, and while talking about my dreams one day, mentioned that I dreamt I was in love with someone named Steve, and I don't get it, I don't know anyone named Steve. I looked up, and he coughed, and I saw the twinkle in his eye and oh, uh...right. Dr. Steve! That was one of the most touching moments I've ever had in the room, it still cracks me up.
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