Celluloid Couches, Cinematic Clients

Very often, cinematic efforts to portray the treatment process in psychoanalysis or psychotherapy are idiosyncratic, misleading, distorted, or even pathological. Yet this collection is not nearly as interested in denouncing such portrayals as in examining those films that offer us the opportunity to explore themes and issues from a vantage point outside our usual reference frame. Rather than focusing on what screenwriters and directors got wrong, each contributor asks instead what might be learned from the movies about professional selves and the nature of the therapeutic endeavor.