ABSTRACT
This chapter explores In Treatment as an exemplar of the uses made in television drama of the figure of psychotherapy. It offers some reflections on their significance for viewers on the living room couch as opposed to the one in the consulting room. In considering the fantasies circulating around the programme’s international consumption, as internal objects, media can function as significant resources at a cultural level. The structure and format of the show are significant in understanding the powerful fantasies it generates because these aspects of the programme work in tandem with its narrative content to engender fantasies particular to the distinct, culturally specific television flow in which any given broadcast takes place. There are also fantasies about the ordinariness of therapy in everyday life in the US and the distinctions in comparison with the British/European cultural context, where, while counselling is not considered out of place, for some, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis still bear a hint of strangeness.
