ABSTRACT
Most psychoanalysts on film or television are bad psychoanalysts. If most psychoanalysts on the screen are bad psychoanalysts, it does not mean that the image of psychoanalysis is tarnished. This chapter takes up the theme of the psychoanalyst, therapist, or psychiatrist and the patient falling in love, but it does so with a very particular twist, for in this case, falling in love means the end of sexual union. On the screen, the transformative power of patients over their therapists is impressive. The failed analyst on screen and the transgressions of analysis speak the truth in just the right way. To take this one step further, perhaps it is in the context of inducing a wish for psychoanalysis precisely through its failure that an artful psychoanalytic play can be felt. The bad image of psychoanalysis people see on the screen can be productive because it offers a subtle depiction of what takes place at the end of an analysis.
