ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the first episode of The Sopranos, Tony Soprano (played by James Gandolfini) sits in a psychiatrist’s waiting room, doubtful about getting help for his panic attacks. For the informed audience, we think of the panic he experiences as a manifestation of his intrapsychic conflict between some sort of ethics and his propensity to murder people. But Tony is also obviously suffering from significant separation issues in relation to his borderline mother, Livia (played by Nancy Marchand), a cagey, manipulative matriarch, who projects her own thinly concealed rage into her son, spending many of her waking hours plotting to have him killed. In this environment, Tony can never resolve his rapprochement crisis. The ‘family’ – his family of origin and his work family – consumes his psychic space. Separation from either family would be seen as a crime – probably with fatal consequences.
