ABSTRACT
Filmmakers tend to present enactments as the norm in therapy. If the film maker were able to record a complete real life therapy session and to film the proceedings over time, even when great inroads into the therapy are made, the audience would be bored stiff and rightfully demand their money back. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is not the stuff of films without the active and imaginative intervention of filmmakers who take the psychotherapist's role to a realm beyond that of lived experience. Glen Gabbard describes the analytic frame as an envelope within which the treatment itself takes place. As Glen Gabbard observes, patients who see therapists on the screen are often encouraged to compare their own experiences of therapy and their therapist with those portrayed in cinema. Although there are shared principles in psychoanalytic work, there is also much diversity in approach, depending on the theoretical persuasion, the training, and the personality of the therapist.
