Therapists on the brink: cinema's new wave of unravelling analysts

Recent cinema has increasingly portrayed therapists and psychiatrists as characters in crisis rather than stable helpers. Notable examples include Rose Byrne in "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" and Sosie Bacon in the 2022 horror "Smile," both playing mental health professionals undone by their own trauma. The trend echoes Freud's dictum that every psychoanalyst should themselves be analysed.

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From Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You to Jodie Foster in A Private Life, an onscreen parade of psychoanalysts are unravelling before us, tapping into our worst fears

There is an old adage that “every therapist needs a therapist”. Even while the treatment was still in its infancy, Sigmund Freud said all psychoanalysts should “submit” themselves to being analysed. Recent cinema has been acutely aware of that painfully unbreakable cycle. In the likes of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You , Mary Bronstein’s hallucinatory Rose Byrne vehicle in which she plays a therapist and floundering mother caught in a downward spiral, or 2022’s Smile , in which a psychiatrist (Sosie Bacon) is pursued by a malignant metaphor for her poor mental health, therapists are as much at the mercy of their traumas as anyone else.

Rather than being relegated to supporting character status, as they long have been in everything from Good Will Hunting (1997) to The Sopranos , film is finally giving therapists their moment on the couch. Within the space of a month in UK cinemas, two more trick cyclists are taking on lead roles. Backrooms sees Renate Reinsve totally unravel from a secure, calm and collected psychiatrist and self-help author (albeit one who lives alone and subsists on a diet of lacklustre ready meals) to a nervous wreck attempting to navigate the uncanny corridors of her own mind. Meanwhile in Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life , a Francophone Jodie Foster takes on the role of shrink turned sleuth, deciding to investigate the death of a former client without realising she is trying to make up for her shortcomings as a spouse and parent.