A Field Guide to Cinetherapy: On Celluloid Psychoanalysis and Its Practitioners

Abstract

This paper addresses the strange bedfellowship between psychoanalysis and cinema since the century's turn. Its specific focus is the idiosyncratic psychoanalysis/psychotherapy “practised” in mainstream cinema and television. “Cinetherapists” have consistently fallen into one of three categories: Dr. Dippy, a focus of derision, weirder than his patients; Dr. Evil, Hollywood's psychiatric version of the mad, bad scientist; and the unfailingly benevolent, self-sacrificing Dr. Wonderful. The prevalence of these stereotypes has waxed and waned according to shifting cultural circumstances. The study concludes with reflections on the possible impact, deleterious or otherwise, of distorted filmic images of the “impossible profession.”