The trou­bling rise of cin­e­mat­ic therapyspeak

The more online among you may remem­ber a Tik­Tok that recent­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on social media, in which ther­a­pist Dr Ari­an­na Bran­doli­ni demon­strat­ed ​“how to break up with a friend” in a way that was so full of rehearsed emo­tion­less sen­tences that it could eas­i­ly be received as satire. It was as if Mar­tin McDonagh’s The Ban­shees of Inish­erin script had been writ­ten by a Human Resources rep­re­sen­ta­tive, with the robot­ics of her lan­guage detract­ing from what would actu­al­ly be a dev­as­tat­ing conversation.

Along­side videos like this that call for us to ​“re-eval­u­ate” our emo­tion­al lives as if they are tax years, Tik­Tok is becom­ing well known for oth­er snip­pets of dilut­ed ther­a­py, such as ther­a­pists and oth­ers from cre­ators explain­ing how var­i­ous per­son­al­i­ty traits are actu­al­ly symp­toms of neu­ro­di­ver­gence. While some videos have helped many on a path to late diag­no­sis, there are lim­its to what short clips can offer in the way of med­ical advice.

Despite its lim­its, the internet’s habit for self-diag­no­sis and symp­tomiz­ing has seeped out from our phones and now the ther­a­py speak we are inun­dat­ed with online is becom­ing com­mon­place in film. Ren­field, an action-com­e­dy spin on the Drac­u­la tale in which Ren­field (Nicholas Hoult) realis­es he is in a code­pen­dent rela­tion­ship with his boss Drac­u­la (Nic Cage) thanks to a sup­port group, is the most recent to have hopped on the well­ness trend. When the coun­sel­lor Mark (Bran­don Scott Jones) asks ​“What if you were to stop focus­ing on his needs, what would hap­pen?”, Ren­field responds: ​“He won’t grow to full pow­er!” This becomes his mantra to free him­self from the bonds of servi­tude to the vam­pir­ic count.

Renfield’s under­stand­ing of code­pen­den­cy and emo­tion­al growth starts off as a play­ful satire on the soci­etal obses­sion with self-help, but ends up in a mess of absolutes. Rebec­ca Quin­cy (Awk­wa­fi­na) reas­sures Ren­field that he doesn’t have to be the mon­ster he is labelled as, but they refuse to offer Drac­u­la the same redemp­tion. It feels as self-serv­ing as the online encour­age­ment to cut off friend­ships. One per­son is self-right­eous in their per­son­al devel­op­ment while the oth­er is bran­dished as inca­pable of change.

The diag­nos­tic tone has also infil­trat­ed hor­ror and dra­ma films. Last year Smile and The Son both attempt­ed por­tray­als of depres­sion and child­hood trau­ma, which amount­ed to noth­ing more than their diag­noses. In Smile when Rose (Sosie Bacon) wit­ness­es a trau­mat­ic inci­dent she is haunt­ed with visions and dis­cov­ers that any­one who expe­ri­ences with vio­lence is fat­ed to meet a hor­ri­ble death. Despite Rose try­ing to reck­on with her child­hood trau­ma in order to rid her­self of this curse, she is killed anyway.

In The Son, Peter (Hugh Jack­man) and Kate (Lau­ra Dern) try to help their son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) over­come clin­i­cal depres­sion. Peter’s many attempts to uplift the depressed boy – such as buy­ing him a suit or encour­ag­ing him to ​“climb back up” to gain his ​“strength and con­fi­dence” – feel more like the shal­low plat­i­tudes of com­mer­cialised wellness.

Both films claim to be explo­rations of psy­cho­log­i­cal issues, but their sim­plis­tic patho­log­i­cal por­tray­als of depres­sion makes the suf­fer­ers vio­lent deaths an inevitabil­i­ty. Often these films use this ter­mi­nol­o­gy to try to con­nect to con­tem­po­rary audi­ences that are well versed in psy­cho­log­i­cal lin­go thanks to being inun­dat­ed with it online. The result is sur­face lev­el read­ings that are just as tedious­ly reduc­tive as the men­tal health ​“epipha­nies” that fill our social media feeds.

Giv­en that acces­si­ble ther­a­py and diag­noses are hard to come by, it’s under­stand­able that we have turned to the inter­net for exper­tise. We are not pathol­o­giz­ing our lives, but sim­ply using the resources avail­able to us in an attempt to under­stand our own psy­chol­o­gy. Psy­chother­a­pist Livia Shep­herd explained that Tik­Tok and Instagram’s con­sis­tent­ly open address­ing of men­tal health has some pos­i­tive effects ​“in terms of peo­ple feel­ing less stig­ma­tised and more will­ing to access help”. Livia is glad peo­ple find com­mu­ni­ty through shared expe­ri­ence, but she notes it can be ​“detri­men­tal to pigeon­hole our­selves” and not explore beyond that. The ther­a­peu­tic ter­mi­nol­o­gy that clients pick up from media often over­sim­pli­fies and med­icalis­es the nuanced expe­ri­ence of indi­vid­u­als. In cas­es like these Livia finds her­self work­ing against these terms in the ses­sion, encour­ag­ing clients to view them­selves in a ​“more holis­tic way than a col­lec­tion of symptoms”.

Films that attempt rep­re­sen­ta­tions of men­tal health should aim to avoid the pit­falls of the internet’s sim­pli­fi­ca­tions. The ones that suc­ceed in their explo­rations of the mind refrain from psy­cho­log­i­cal ter­mi­nol­o­gy. Tak­ing a human­ist approach, cre­at­ing all encom­pass­ing words that reflect anx­i­eties, trau­mas and neu­ro­di­ver­gence. Every­thing Every­where All At Once (EEAO) nev­er labels itself an ADHD film but it is. Dur­ing Daniel Kwan’s research on ADHD while devel­op­ing the char­ac­ter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), he found him­self relat­ing to the symp­toms. It is a tes­ta­ment to the Daniels that EEAO is a beau­ti­ful­ly chaot­ic under­stand­ing of grap­pling with neu­ro­di­ver­gence in a neu­rotyp­i­cal world, and cru­cial­ly this real­i­ty is not resolved, as the film under­stands it can­not solve what takes a life­time of understanding.

While the major­i­ty of films that adopt this ther­a­pized trend do not cri­tique the prob­lems of this kind of lan­guage, there are some that have suc­ceed­ed in mock­ing it. The girls’ argu­ment in Bod­ies Bod­ies Bod­ies – in which each of them try­ing to under­mine the oth­er by pin­point­ing their priv­i­lege while one upping their mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion – could be lift­ed from a Twit­ter thread. Some of the com­ments the girls throw around are pro­found state­ments on race and class, even if they are lost in cacoph­o­ny. Bod­ies, Bod­ies, Bod­ies, writer Sarah Delappe under­stands that the lin­go it mocks is a reflec­tion of dilut­ed self-help and iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics born of the inter­net rather than ther­a­py itself. And yet film still lacks rep­re­sen­ta­tion of an indi­vid­ual in ther­a­py that isn’t severe­ly mocked for their attempt at bet­ter­ing themselves.

Cin­e­ma is respond­ing to a grow­ing trend of psy­cho-ther­a­py ter­mi­nol­o­gy becom­ing com­mon­place online, but few direc­tors appear to be treat­ing the sub­ject as any­thing more than a hot top­ic. This is made clear by the amount of com­plex­i­ty giv­en to the men­tal health issue being por­trayed. We love films for their abil­i­ty to make indi­vid­ual cir­cum­stances feel uni­ver­sal, but reduc­ing peo­ple to mere symp­toms makes for poor view­ing expe­ri­ences and fur­ther stig­ma­ti­sa­tion. Giv­en that fea­ture films have length and bud­gets to work with, they should endeav­our to go beyond the sim­pli­fied snip­pets of men­tal health and bet­ter­ment that social media videos offer us.