Female Psychotherapists as Portrayed in Film, Fiction and Nonfiction

Over the past several years, I have been studying portrayals of female psychotherapists in film, fiction and popular nonfiction. To date, I have located 41 films, 21 novels and 7 popular nonfictional works that include a female therapist, or in which the observations of a female therapist play an important role. These sources are listed in Table I.

When I began to review this material, I evaluated these portrayals as role models and was very disappointed. My feelings on the matter were evident when I slipped and announced at a workshop that I was writing a paper on how female psychotherapists were betrayed (I had meant to say “portrayed”) in the media. With exceptions so rare as to be noteworthy, portrayals of female therapists are sexist, unprofessional, unethical and unbelievable. The question seems to be, why are female therapists so portrayed?

Irving Schneider (1983), who has written extensively on the history of psychiatry and film, describes three models of psychiatrist: Dr. Dippy, Dr. Evil, and Dr. Marvelous. Dr. Dippy is the manifestation of the belief that psychiatrists are as crazy as their patients. Dr. Evil is characterized by the ability to control minds, to bend them to his will, often for criminal purposes. Dr. Marvelous is humane, concerned, earnest, selfless, modest, intense but human, etc. Schneider sees these stereotypes as attempts to cope with the anxiety aroused by an authority figure who is perceived as having the power to read and control the human mind. Schneider's stereotypes apply to both male