The Frame has Changed: how couples tangle with domestic disturbance in your TV

A screening and exploration of the Showtime series Couples Therapy with Orna Guralnik, PsyD, and Kim Roberts, one of the directors of the show, in conversation with Lee Slome, PhD.

Friday Mar 12, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM PST

In this Second Friday program, we delve into the psychoanalytic treatment of couples as captured in the Showtime series Couples Therapy starring our presenter, Orna Guralnik. Utilizing documentary filmmaking, the show brings the audience into weekly therapy sessions in order to follow a diverse set of couples over time. What does it mean to have non-therapists edit a clinical session and broadcast it? What unconscious disruptions in the field are caused by such significant changes to the frame—payment, privacy, frequency—to name a few? How does having a camera in the waiting room and in the consulting room impact the therapeutic relationship? Does what we see in the television version of the couple accurately capture what is consciously and unconsciously happening in the therapy? In conversation with Lee Slome, Dr. Guralnik and Ms. Roberts will describe their experience of making the series and we will consider what conditions are necessary for couples to transform. Together, we will screen an episode (or segments of episodes) of the show to use as a stimulus for our discussion.