In therapy stages the intimacy of psychotherapy, and more precisely the intimacy of psychoanalysis. Magnified by a magnifying glass effect, the series brings together in an interview what sometimes happens in several sessions, or after a long wait. If in the ordinary, the psychic movements expressed, of patients as well as of the psychoanalyst, are more discreet, it is indeed these same feelings which can present themselves. The theatricalization of exchanges, if we accept the principle, does not harm. It immediately makes the emotions expressed by patients sensitive – during the first episodes shame, anger, desire or duty are mixed. The quality of the acting of the actors contributes to the feeling of attending a real session, makes it possible to feel its dynamics and sometimes the intensity. Conversely, it is rare that a therapist is also a teacher (Freud, Freud, Freud…), the impression left is a little that of an excess of footnotes in a novel. The encounter between patient and analyst takes place without a third party: it is naturally in camera. It implies the possibility of expressing, without risk of judgment, what is authentic in itself, with someone to hear it. This license, rarely granted in social games, turns out to be a strange and often constructive experience under the conditions of the analysis, as suggested. In therapy.
The first two episodes immediately hook private history to capital history, a History breaking in on November 13, 2015 in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. The dramatic events of this Friday evening affected a rather educated population, rather well-off and loving life. Behind the camera with the analyst, there is a sketched more than described cons-scene where young men shamelessly use the power to kill. The dialogues will let filter the abominable telephones ringing in the void, the awful smell of blood, the piling up of bodies, the silent dignity of the wounded, the fear of death and the courage of the survivors. Now it is not the unconscious of History that the series deals with, but the individual unconscious. History’s bloody and astonishing intrusion into individual history leads to the encounter of the affected surgeon and the traumatized police officer with the psychoanalyst.
What the series suggests is the interweaving of the intimate and the audience, each opening onto their own stage. What she also shows, through the experience of psychoanalysis, is the intelligence of humans and their thirst for life. What it evokes is the extraordinary diversity of reactions. What it allows us to think about is the reducing risk of objective approaches in which the vitality and complexity of the person cannot be expressed. What she invites is respect for others and reconsideration of psychotherapeutic practices, including psychoanalysis. It also shows the psychoanalyst, having used analysis for himself, exposed in knowledge to his own vulnerability, highlighted by the supervision sessions with another practitioner. The faults and feelings of the psychoanalyst, enigmatic for the patient, are revealed by the artifice of fiction. The whole series is thus a look, fortunately respectful, on the intimate, in an ordinarily impossible position: that of a third gaze at the heart of the psychoanalytic session.
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