Good Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Film: Three Unorthodox Examples

Although presentations of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in film are often distorted, examples of good psychotherapeutic principles can be found in film in unorthodox settings. In The Sixth Sense and The Silence of the Lambs, the therapist must overcome his own resistance to listening to his patient in order to be effective. A psychologist must come to terms with his own death in order to understand and help his patient, and a cannibalistic psychiatrist must control his oral voyeurism to allow his "patient" to tell her story. Rashomon takes place in medieval Japan, but it fits a model of a 1-session psychotherapy of a guilt-ridden, acutely depressed man who benefits from both insight and reparative action.