As I have been working on a couple of long term projects, deep thoughts about therapy or the current state of mental health treatment have not been much in evidence for me. But I thought I would share a couple of instances of Jungian concepts that I have noticed lately.
1. My film series is on summer vacation until September. The last film we watched in May was Mumford, the story of two Mumfords - one a small town, the other a man. Mumford the town, is full of people with problems, from the shopaholic housewife ), the pharmacist with his pulp-fiction fantasies, and the anorexic teenager, but no one seems to give a second thought to who the man is the therapist. It's not until he befriends a sweetly daft computer billionaire and starts treating a chronically fatigued young woman that his past--or rather, lack of one--starts coming into play, for it turns out that Mumford is not exactly who he says he is. If you haven't seen the film, I highly recommend it as a gentle and wry look at what is a therapist. For Mumford is a trickster character, classifiable as neither good nor bad. He turns the whole idea of therapy and what a therapist is on its head.
When I showed the film, a couple of viewers, both retired mental health professionals, in the audience were upset that Mumford is not more harshly punished for what he did. I challenged them on this because Mumford is not shown to cause any harm and in fact all of his "patients" come to support him when he is brought to court. But they were concerned that a film like this with a character who is not severely punished would encourage therapists to act outside the boundaries and patients to accept that.
Mumford, like all good tricksters, makes us look at the rules we have made and consider what it is we are trying to control. I hope that those of you who have seen the film will comment and we can talk more about this. What are the rules about training and licensing trying to control? Who do they protect? What are the unintended consequences of these rules?
Next: Doctor Who