In an agonising scene in season three of HBO’s Succession, Roman Roy sends a dick pic to his father, Logan, rather than his on-off romantic interest, Gerri. Logan’s mobile dings, and we cringe as we realise Roman’s mistake. But, psychoanalysts would argue, it is not a mistake – rather it is an aggression caused by unconscious thoughts in a character with an unresolved Oedipus complex.
TV is replete with instances of Freudian psychoanalytical narrative motivating characters’ behaviour and journey: from Succession and The White Lotus to The Flight Attendant and Shrinking. The psychoanalyst’s theories percolate through so much of modern media that you wonder if the writers are unconsciously portraying the same concepts that Sigmund Freud articulated 100 years ago. Which is ironic, given that Freud himself refused to work on movies.
Psychoanalysis would propose that Roman’s Oedipus complex started during the “phallic stage” of development (three to six years of age), when boys develop hostility towards their fathers and fear that said fathers will castrate them. A successful resolution of the complex requires the boy to become like the father, adopting his main features and values. But Roman is no Logan, and, angry, he assaults him with the dick pic.
The evidence continues to pile up. In a season four episode, Roman obsessively watches a deep-fake video where Logan says that Roman has a “micro dick”. In the show’s finale, Roman acknowledges his lack of identification with his father: “Why isn’t it me?” he says, crying in his brother Kendall’s arms. Then Kendall tries to gouge Roman’s eyes while fighting. And guess who gouged his own eyes? Yes, Oedipus, when he discovered that he had killed his father and married his mother. (Of course, this is why Freud named the complex after him).
While Succession simply alludes to Freud, in The White Lotus, another HBO series, he is consciously cited. In season one, Paula reads Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams and Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, which talks about Freud. This subtext culminates in another cringe-inducing TV moment, as the resort’s previously accommodating manager, Armond, defecates in the suitcase of a hideous guest.
Why? Well, Freud would say Armond had not resolved the “anal stage” of development. Between 18 months and three years of age, children find pleasure in defecating. Potty training either does the trick or creates a problem: too harsh and children become too controlled and compliant; too liberal and children become chaotic and rebellious. Armond is the former, until he explodes and becomes the latter. (Season two did not have such a clear Freudian influence, but this has not stopped therapists from discussingDaphne’s emotionally avoidant personality, or Harper and Ethan’s couple dynamic.)
In HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, recovered alcoholic Cassie mentally converses with two versions of herself: scantily dressed “party-girl Cassie” who lures her into relapse, and professional-looking “serious Cassie” who scolds her for the wrong choices. Freud would call them the id and the superego: the pleasure impulse and the internal moral. Together with the ego (the IRL Cassie), they form the personality. As infants we are all id, and our id remains unreasonable throughout life, without learning from experience – which accurately describes Cassie. As we grow and mature, we develop our ego (consciously aware of reality and focused on rational problem-solving), and our superego – telling us what society wants and persecuting us with self-criticism.
To be precise, Cassie’s versions of herself also include a “young Cassie”, traumatised by her alcoholic father, and a pessimistic “depressed Cassie”. Freud did not define them, but in psychoanalytical psychotherapy they are the “inner child” full of guilt and the “emotional adult” who bears the sadness kept at bay by alcohol.
Meanwhile, in Apple TV+’s comedy-drama Shrinking, widowed psychotherapist Jimmy uses dubious therapeutic approaches with his clients, such as enmeshed relationships, patronising comments and forceful advice. He invites Sean, a young man prone to violent outbursts, to live with him; he forces Grace, who is in an abusive relationship, to leave her husband; and he visits Wally, who has OCD, at her home, where she tries to kiss him. As season one of Shrinking ended, it attracted praise from psychoanalysts, for its emphasis on sharing honest observations with clients, and criticism for its violations of psychotherapy’s ethical guidance.
However, Freud would say that what we are seeing in Shrinking is not reality but the representation of what Jimmy unconsciously feels towards his clients: his “countertransference”. Freud proposed countertransference as the emotional reaction of the therapist to their clients. While he thought it hindered therapy, more modern approaches – and my personal experience as a psychiatrist – suggest that this can be a helpful tool to understand people’s psychological worlds.
With Jimmy, we see countertransference in his actions rather than in his mind. “We know what they should do,” he says about his clients. “Don’t you ever wanna shake them?” Real therapists often feel they know what clients should do; in Shrinking, Jimmy makes clients do what he feels is right for them.
Psychoanalysis has loomed over TV for a while, but usually as an expedient to provide characters’ background: this is how we know about Tony Soprano’s manipulative and shaming mother. In today’s TV series, however, writers have new creative freedom (and a freshly receptive audience) to visit the darkest corners of their characters’ psychological lives, from the moral abyss in Breaking Bad to incest and violence in Game of Thrones. You can see it in the Upside Down worldin Stranger Things and the north beyond the Wall in Game of Thrones: symbols of the unconscious mind, where demons (either those of individuals or society) lurk undisturbed, before trespassing into our consciousness. But I would argue that TV series serve as a psychoanalysis of their characters. We get to know their darkest emotions through weekly sessions, we discover their present and their past, one revelation at a time, we observe the small changes in their behaviour, and we spend years in their company.
Freud’s legacy continues to be debated. Some of his most famous assumptions have been proved incorrect: for example, the idea that traumatic memories disappear from our consciousness and then surface again through hypnosis was controversial at the time, yet “repressed memories” remain a narrative trope in TV and movies. However, his intuition that unconscious processes are at the core of our minds has revolutionised, and continues to enlighten, our understanding: not only of why we do the things we do, but also of why the TV characters we love do what they do. Even if what they’re doing is sending their parents dick pics.
Carmine M Pariante is professor of biological psychiatry at Kings College London.
