• Featuring Marshall Meyer, PhD candidate •
• Presented by Hopkins at Home •
Over the past twenty years, television has seen a sudden boom in series that use the therapy session as a storytelling device. Largely The Sorpanos' invention, therapy as a plot device has since spread like wildfire, so much so that there are now dozens if not hundreds of series that employ it, including some where entire episodes are built around an individual session (e.g., In Treatment). Once can even consider cringe-comedy mockumentaries and other formally innovative series, such as the moments in Fleabag in which the protagonist breaks the fourth wall and directly addresses the viewer in a confessional manner, as part of a larger therapy paradigm guided less by an interest in therapy itself than in a desire to amp up the intimacy between character and viewer.
This is no surprise, Marshall Meyer suggests, since the very form of television resembles therapy a great deal more than film. Both therapy and television occur serially, in the form of episodes or sessions, with significant gaps between each installment. Not only does this make the appearance of therapy in television more common than in film, but it is also more faithful to the messiness of the therapeutic process itself. And perhaps, exploring it can even tell us something about the potentially therapeutic quality of television and other new media.
Disclaimer: The perspectives and opinions expressed by the speaker(s) during this program are those of the speaker(s) and not, necessarily, those of Johns Hopkins University and the scheduling of any speaker at an alumni event or program does not constitute the University’s endorsement of the speaker’s perspectives and opinions.
