KILLER SHRINKS STRIKE AGAIN!!

As some of you know, one of my pet peeves--as both a therapist and a writer--is the abundance of TV shows and films in which psychologists and psychiatrists are portrayed as villains. From Hannibal Lecter to your garden variety culprit on any TV crime show, male therapists are often shown as capable of everything from serial murders to sexual exploitation to brain-washing.

Last Sunday's episode of Foyle's War, on PBS' Masterpiece Theater Mystery, was no exception. Now let me be clear: I'm a huge fan of this series of World War II mysteries starring Michael Kitchen. (In fact, next week's episode is the series finale, after five years, and I'm very sorry to see it go.)

But in last Sunday's show, centered around dark deeds at a mental health clinic, all three of the male therapists at the clinic were guilty of something...one of theft and blackmail, another of sleeping with a disturbed patient's wife, and the third of murder. (The second shrink committed murder, too, but since the victim was the blackmailing, thieving first shrink, I don't think we were supposed to feel that badly about it.)

You see my point. In a first-rate, beautifully-scripted and acted series, there's yet another story in which the male shrinks are all killers, crooks and adulterers. As my old Italian grandmother used to say, "Oy!"

As I've written elsewhere, I know why male therapists are ideal villains...all that education, supposed empathy and concern for humanity, turned to the Dark Side. The ultimate paternal figure turned evil, running amok. Irresistible to screenwriters.

But, c'mon, people. Let's give this on-screen stereotype a rest. At least until the second season of HBO's In Treatment airs, wherein depressed shrink Gabriel Byrne, despite his all-too-human foibles, struggles to do the right thing.

End of rant.

Gabriel Byrne: He's No Hannibal Lecter!

A lot of my therapy patients watch the new HBO series, "In Treatment," and many wonder how accurate the portrayal of the therapist is. Paul, the therapist, is very well played by Gabriel Byrne.

But is he really representative of what therapists are like? Do most therapists have similar struggles in their personal lives?...with their relationships, their children, their sense of themselves?

The answer is simple: therapists are people, and people have issues. Therapists, like everyone else, handle some issues better than others. Therapists, like everyone else, are both insightful and clueless, sometimes in awareness and sometimes in denial, have good days and bad days. Nobody has the key to a stress-free, problem-free, issue-free existence.

In other words, no matter what the self-help gurus say, there's no cure for life.

So I guess I like that the therapist Byrne portrays is a flawed, conflicted person. Even when he does (and says) things that make me wince. Even when he's too intrusive with his patients, or too knowing. Hell, even when he seems like a selfish, self-pitying jerk.

Why? Because at least he's not depicted as diabolical, manipulative, and psychotic. Or, worse yet, homicidal.

Think about it: have you noticed how often male therapists are used as the villain nowadays on TV and film? Hollywood used to see male therapists as models of the patriarchal system: wise, nurturing, compassionate. Like Claude Rains in Now, Voyager. Gregory Peck in Captain Newman, M.D. Lee J. Cobb in The Three Faces of Eve.

So how the hell did we get from there to Hannibal Lecter?

Well, I happen to have some thoughts on the subject... If you're interested, you might want to listen to the Commentary I did for NPR's "All Things Considered." Here's the link:

Click here: NPR: A Male Therapist on Screen? Odds Are, He's a Heel.
Let me know what you think. --Dennis

Dennis Palumbo
15300 Ventura Blvd., Ste. 402
Sherman Oaks, CA. 91403

Phone and fax: 818-386-2070, Email: dpalumbo181@aol.com
Website: http://www.dennispalumbo.com/