The Longing Gaze: Cultural Voyeurism and the Therapist’s Dilemma

As therapists are meant to be the ones who know how to sit still. We talk about containment, presence, the sacred value of the here-and-now. But even we—guardians of the analytic frame—are not immune to the guilty pleasure of gazing at the unfamiliar. A slow scroll through Turkish hammams, a documentary on Siberian reindeer herders, the oddly calming sight of Japanese forest monks sweeping temple grounds. There it is again: cultural voyeurism.

But this isn’t just a phenomenon for the distracted or spiritually bored. It seeps into the consulting room, in subtler, more complex forms. Here, it often takes the shape of cultural countertransference—a therapist’s unconscious emotional response to the cultural identity, background, or narrative of the client. We may believe we are listening neutrally. In truth, we are sometimes watching, silently mapping our own fantasies, anxieties, and projections onto the cultural material our clients bring.

A client speaks of their arranged marriage, and we feel a flutter of concern—but is it empathy or quiet judgment? Another shares stories from their war-torn childhood, and we feel awe, even envy at the perceived depth and drama of their life—what does that say about our own? Or a client from a vastly different cultural background sits before us, and we notice a subtle leaning in—curious, captivated. But who, in that moment, are we truly attuning to?

Cultural voyeurism, when unexamined, can sneak in under the guise of ‘therapeutic curiosity’. We may tell ourselves we’re bearing witness, but at times we are consuming—intellectualising, aestheticising, or even exoticising a life we don’t fully understand. The danger isn’t just that we get the client wrong—it’s that we miss the chance to see ourselves clearly in the process.

Yet, ironically, this very tension can be generative. Cultural countertransference, when held in awareness, becomes not a contaminant but a clue. It can reveal where our own identities are underdeveloped, or where we hold assumptions so baked-in they masquerade as universal truth. It might even uncover our own latent longings—those quietly simmering desires for rootedness, spirituality, family, rebellion—that the client’s story stirs.

This is where therapy becomes not just a craft but a moral art. To do justice to our clients’ cultural worlds, we must do the ongoing work of recognising the lenses we’re looking through. We must notice where we become tourists in the consulting room—delighted, overwhelmed, suspicious or sentimental—and ask, always with gentleness: what is this stirring in me, and why now?

So cultural voyeurism isn’t something to banish in shame. Rather, it asks to be noticed, named, and metabolised. The fantasy of the “other” can, paradoxically, bring us closer to ourselves—if we’re brave enough to sit with the discomfort and the complexity. After all, isn’t that what therapy, at its best, has always done?

Further Exploration

For those interested in reflecting more deeply on the themes of cultural voyeurism and countertransference, here are a few evocative works that mirror and expand on these ideas:

🎬 Film

1. The Sheltering Sky (1990, dir. Bernardo Bertolucci)
A haunting and visually rich adaptation of Paul Bowles’ novel, exploring the spiritual disorientation of Western travellers in North Africa. A cautionary tale of romanticised otherness, where longing and loss become indistinguishable.

2. Baraka (1992)
A wordless, global odyssey that invites both awe and discomfort. Revered for its beauty, it also raises provocative questions about the act of watching itself: how we aestheticise cultures we don’t inhabit, and what we risk not seeing.

📖 Books

1. The White Album by Joan Didion
Didion observes a culture in collapse with icy clarity, often standing at the edge of her own experiences. Her essays are masterclasses in ironic detachment and offer a kind of clinical countertransference in literary form.

2. Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv
Aviv profiles individuals grappling with mental illness across different cultural frameworks, subtly illuminating how identity, diagnosis, and story are entangled. A powerful reminder of the therapist’s role in interpreting—and sometimes misinterpreting—difference.