Psychotherapy is serious business. It takes time and requires people to dig through the dross of their lives to find a truth they have buried so deep they hoped it would never be found. It’s not about figuring out who to blame for our problems. It’s about finding how to live given the problems we have developed over many years.
The HBO series In Treatment gives us a quick look into what might go on in a series of sessions with Dr. Paul Weston. The first season covered eight weeks of sessions with five sets of patients, one for each day of the week. Monday focused on Laura, who has been Paul’s patient for a year. What this session is really about is Laura’s sexual attraction to Paul (and vice versa). The issue of erotic transference is not uncommon in therapy. But in this case, it has become central to their relationship and may undermine all the work they have done.
On Tuesday, Paul meets with Alex, a naval pilot who comes to Paul to get clearance to fly again. He is dealing with many issues, including guilt over bombing a school in Iraq (although he is in denial about it affecting him.) He tries to stay in control of the sessions, but he’s really having a difficult time controlling his life.
Wednesday bring Sophie to Paul’s office. Sophie is an Olympic hopeful in gymnastics. Is the pressure to much for her? She rode her bike into the side of a car, breaking both arms. Was it on purpose?
Thursday Paul meets with a married couple, Jake and Amy, whose marriage is crumbling. When Amy becomes pregnant, she is no longer sure she wants to be a parent again. They are a very mismatched couple, but they feed on each other’s weaknesses. Can the marriage be saved? Should it be?
Friday night it’s Paul’s turn to be in treatment. He has sessions with his old mentor, Gina. Here he tries to make sense of the issues with his patience (especially the transference issue with Laura) and with the troubles in his own family life.
Each session has at its core the pains of life. In these sessions, we get a chance to see the depth of suffering that often comes into people’s lives. Paul’s job is not to take away the pain, but to help each person name the pain and develop a way to deal with it. He is not always successful. Happy endings don’t always happen. But Paul often tries to bring some bit of grace into the lives of these hurting people.
Nor is he always successful with his own pains. His relationship to his wife and children is just as strained as the relations of any of his patients. It’s easy to think that someone in Paul’s position would have his act together since he is able to cut to the meat of other people’s problems. Instead we see that he is just as wounded and just as unable to see how he can change himself as needed. One of the interesting things about seeing his sessions with Gina is how he retells the things that went on in his office. We know he is shading the truth.
Of course, therapy can sometimes go on for years. It takes time to develop the trust for a patient to open up, and still longer to reach the truth. The show takes a bit of license in having these storylines wrap up in nine weeks of half hour sessions. But such is the way the stories must be told to fit the medium.
For me this has been the most engrossing series of the year. The sessions are captivating viewing. In part because we have a sense of caring for them. Some of the patients we like; some we only tolerate. But we are drawn by compassion to try to understand them. Each session pulls us into the lives and troubles of these people. That they keep coming and keep searching themselves gives hope of a happy outcome. It doesn’t always happen, just as it doesn’t in real life.
Each of Monday through Thursday sessions comes to some sort of resolution at the end of season one. When the series returns next year, Paul and Gina will still be meeting on Friday nights, but we will see a new slate of patients in Paul’s office. More suffering, more failure, more grace. And hopefully the possibility of healing of the soul.
