Tag: counselling

Ive had a period of time off work and have been binge watching a lot of TV, hence another review from a therapy perspective.

Apple TV’s drama Disclaimer, directed by Alfonso Cuarón and starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, dives into a labyrinthine psychological landscape that plays upon memory, guilt, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive. Set against the backdrop of a suspenseful, noir-inspired world, the story follows Catherine Ravenscroft (played by Blanchett), a successful investigative journalist who faces disturbing revelations when a book eerily similar to her own life and past traumas unexpectedly appears. This series unfolds like a psychoanalytic session, forcing Catherine—and the viewer—to confront the buried emotional forces that shape our lives and haunt our dreams.

Beneath the surface of Disclaimer’s thriller elements lies a powerful undercurrent of Oedipal tension, a theme rooted in Sigmund Freud’s early insights into the deep, often unconscious, familial ties that define our psyches. In particular, Disclaimer taps into the painful but universal experience of the Oedipus complex: the lingering, unresolved attachments to our parents that influence, haunt, and perhaps even entrap us throughout our lives. As we follow Catherine’s journey, the series provides a potent exploration of what it means to wrestle with the forces of family, fate, and self-concept—an internal battle that resonates with any viewer familiar with the emotional dynamics of psychotherapy.

The Oedipal Themes of Disclaimer: A Repressed Story

Freud’s Oedipus complex speaks to a primal, usually unconscious desire in children to possess the parent of the opposite sex and view the same-sex parent as a rival. While the classic Freudian model often emphasizes young children’s early-life attachments, Disclaimer takes a more nuanced, adult approach to this concept, where the “Oedipal” struggle is not with parental figures directly but with figures who echo parental roles and wield haunting psychological influence.

Catherine, though a respected figure in her professional life, becomes childlike and vulnerable as she reads the mysterious book—experiencing it as a powerful mirroring of her past. Kevin Kline’s character embodies the role of a “ghostly parent” in the narrative, an enigmatic figure from Catherine’s past who seems to hold a disturbing power over her present. Their dynamic illustrates an adult version of the Oedipal confrontation: Catherine’s challenge is not simply to escape from this shadowy figure’s influence but to contend with how deeply she has internalized aspects of him in her own psyche.

In therapy, this process is often described as working through “introjections,” the unconscious psychological absorption of figures who influenced us. As Catherine reads the disturbing story and feels exposed by it, the series subtly explores how we might carry internal versions of our early attachments (parental or otherwise) that can shape us without our awareness. These internalized figures, like ghosts of our early lives, continue to govern our self-concepts, behaviors, and emotions, long after the actual relationships are gone.

Trauma, Guilt, and the Unconscious Mind

Disclaimer presents Catherine’s repressed past not merely as a series of “events” to recall but as emotional material that has structured her identity and her way of perceiving the world. She is an emblematic character for any of us who have had to compartmentalize painful memories to get on with life. Her work as a journalist, investigating secrets and mysteries in the outside world, can be seen as an outward displacement of her own unresolved internal secrets. This resonates deeply with psychotherapy, where what we choose to see—and, crucially, what we choose to avoid—often becomes a central theme.

As in Freud’s model of the unconscious, Catherine’s defenses are mobilized against painful memories and feelings that she has long denied. The arrival of the book challenges these defenses, forcing her into a confrontation with parts of herself she has repressed. In a sense, she is both the child longing for closeness and the “prohibited” figure bearing unresolved guilt, mirroring the guilt and anxiety often associated with Oedipal conflicts.

The series, like many therapeutic journeys, suggests that healing requires bringing these shadowy, split-off parts of ourselves into the light. For Catherine, it is not only about “solving the mystery” but about encountering her own vulnerability and reclaiming parts of her story that she has avoided, perhaps for years. Disclaimer poignantly portrays this as a painful but ultimately transformative process, not unlike the process of therapy, where we learn to integrate these repressed memories and emotions into a coherent sense of self.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Memory as Narrative

Memory is not simply factual in Disclaimer; it is fluid, interpretive, and, at times, unreliable. Catherine’s attempts to reconcile her recollection of events with what is presented in the mysterious book reflect the psychotherapeutic notion that memory is often shaped as much by what we want to believe as by what actually happened. The act of storytelling becomes both a tool of self-preservation and self-betrayal—an attempt to create a coherent narrative that, in protecting us, also traps us.

In Disclaimer, Catherine’s journey shows us that our stories can liberate us when they reflect an honest grappling with the full range of our emotions and experiences. However, when used defensively, these narratives risk hiding deeper truths, protecting us from pain but also perpetuating it. Her discomfort with the book reflects this painful duality. The mystery uncovers that the boundaries we create between ourselves and others, between truth and memory, are as vulnerable as any defense.

In therapy, we learn that part of growth and healing involves rewriting our life stories with awareness and honesty, even when it means facing uncomfortable truths. Like Catherine, we are all called to move beyond the stories we initially crafted to survive and risk creating new ones that accommodate the complexities of our inner worlds.

Conclusion: Disclaimer as a Mirror of Self

In Disclaimer, Catherine’s journey is as much about solving an external mystery as it is about facing her own psyche. The show becomes a mirror, holding up questions that any of us might encounter on a therapeutic journey: What shadows of our early attachments haunt us? What parts of our stories remain hidden, and at what cost? And are we willing to confront the full, messy reality of who we are, rather than the curated versions we present to the world?

Much like psychotherapy, Disclaimer offers no easy resolutions. Instead, it invites viewers to reflect on their own unconscious material—the hidden influences and the unresolved emotional conflicts that shape our lives from the shadows. The series, in its subtle unfolding, underscores a profound truth of the therapeutic process: growth often begins with discomfort, and healing often begins with a willingness to embrace the parts of ourselves we least want to acknowledge.

Disclaimer is ultimately a study in how, to free ourselves from the prison of the past, we must face not only what happened to us but how we internalized it, how we chose to remember it, and how we might begin to tell ourselves a different, truer story. It is an invitation to enter our own “unwritten books,” guided not by the need to evade our shadows, but by the courage to integrate them.