ABSTRACT
An earlier version of this chapter – now expanded in length and scope – which appeared originally in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, explores the influential television programme, In Treatment, starring Gabriel Byrne, and considers both the popularity and, also, the dangerousness, of such media depictions of mental health professionals. In this essay, Professor Brett Kahr investigates the ways in which such television programmes not only provide proof of the growing interest in psychological matters but, also, potentially threaten the gravitas of the mental health community by crafting highly dramatic and, often, very scathing portraits of the private lives of psychological workers, which often do not reflect either the accuracy or the authenticity of the worlds of most practitioners.
