On the Couch

Gabriel Byrne has the perfect analyst’s voice, soft and inquisitive. He works his patients over with it, guiding and goading them into revealing the hidden truths of their troubles both to him and to themselves. The soft voice contrasts with the hard angles of his face, but are alike in that they are both totally neutral. His patients would be surprised if they knew what he really thought of them.

The new HBO show In Treatment examines not only the dynamics between a psychoanalyst and his patients, but what the constant stresses and pressures of being the voice of reason can do to a person. The show runs from Monday to Friday, chronicling Paul’s (Gabriel Byrne) sessions with different patients on the first four days of the week and culminating in his own session with his psychoanalyst Gina on Friday. Each episode is thirty minutes long.

Although In Treatment does not have the intimate sex scenes of Tell Me You Love Me, the other popular psychoanalyses show on HBO, the revealing confessions between patient and analyst can be just as effecting. Paul’s Monday patient is Laura, a romantically confused beautiful twenty something with a bad case of erotic transference (she is in love with her shrink). She has just left her long-time boyfriend and has impulsively had a fling with a guy at a bar. When Laura begins to tell Paul about following the guy back to the bathroom, her body language changes subtly; she tenses up, and makes bold eye contact with Paul. Melissa George who plays Laura does an excellent job of creating that sexual tension.

At times the writing of the show is contrived. The patient’s problems are annoyingly straightforward and far removed from the actual problems of real-life patients. But then again, all television shows are a little contrived, and the occasional glimpses of the manufactured storyline are made up for by the exceptional acting of the cast.

The Friday sessions between Paul and Gina are the most interesting of the series. These two have a complicated history including a falling out, and the tension from this is present in their session. Byrne drops his guard and unmutes himself. He reveals that he is losing his patience with his patients and having a professional crisis. He also admits that his work is interfering with his home life. Paul and Gina are expert analysts, and their professional rivalry as well as their past makes the meeting ugly. Paul says that Gina was right in the past when she said that the problem is they have no audience, and that he feels like he needs someone to tell, “Hey, did you see how I maneuvered that guy?” Gina responds, “What I meant was, we have no critics.”