In Therapy With Bojack Horseman: A (mis)Representation of Therapeutic Relationships on Television

Payal Khatore

Blog Post 1

Mental health issues rarely receive media attention and when popular movies and television shows do choose to focus on them, the portrayals are extremely problematic. People suffering from mental health issues are usually seen as side characters, often portrayed in stereotypical ways. In lieu of this, a show like Bojack Horseman can be seen as a significant step in destigmatisation of mental illness in television shows. In an article for Bustle, highlighting the show’s nuanced depiction of mental illness, Courtney Enlow writes, “It's important because it shows people with mental illness as complex, relatable humans (and horses, and cats, and birds, and dogs) — and that makes a difference.” She also discusses the importance of having a protagonist (along with most other characters), suffering from mental health issues in a realistic way, despite it being a comedy show. While the show deserves to be applauded for this portrayal, a recent episode made me question whether the same appreciation can be extended to its portrayal of therapists. 

As students of psychology, a major focus is the relationship between the therapist and client which is based on confidentiality, professionalism and consent. However, very few media depictions have succeeded in doing justice to this relationship. In fact, a very popular depiction of therapists involves showing them as having mental health issues themselves, as if to bring them down from a perceived moral high ground. This misconception about therapists believing themselves to be superior than their client is often propagated through television shows and this leads to an effort to ‘humanise’ them using humour as a tool. An example of this is the character of Ian Duncan in the television show Community. A talented and insightful psychologist, his recurring alcoholism and personal issues often get in the way of his professional performance. However, despite this show’s exceptional quality, it is not as recent as Bojack Horseman and while that cannot be seen as an excuse, it provides some temporal context.

Episode 7 of Season 5 is brought to us from the perspective of Diane’s therapist Dr. Indira, who is helping her get through her divorce. The opening scene shows Dr. Indira and her wife helping one another feel better about their professional setbacks. The former felt like she was terrible at her job but hesitated in disclosing the reason as it would require her to violate the confidentiality clause. But her wife convinces her to strip the story of any identifying characteristics and Dr. Indira goes on to describe her experiences with Diane and Bojack. We constantly get to see her criticise herself and where she went wrong as a a therapist. For example, when Diane was not prepared to confront Bojack and could not find a way to avoid him, Dr. Indira asked her to tell him that her therapist forbade her to talk to him. At this point Dr. Indira tells her wife, “That’s where I went wrong, I inserted myself into her story.” We see that she was right when Bojack ends up going to her office to confront her and when asked to sit, refuses saying that therapists are “manipulative leeches”. However, we are shown that he ends up talking for forty five minutes and Dr. Indira asks him if that was cathartic for him and if he would like to return the next day. However, while it might seem clear to us that she meant for him to be her client, he calls her his “best friend” and we see him replace Diane with her. While we could have seen this as transference from a psychotherapeutic point of view, the fact that Bojack was unaware that they were in a therapeutic relationship is problematic to begin with. Informed consent is a major aspect of a therapeutic relationship and perhaps what distinguishes the rest of a therapist’s relationships from that with her client. One does not just get roped into therapy unknowingly and it has to be a conscious decision. While this misrepresentation might add to the humour, it does end up propagating yet another stereotype about therapy. Again, Dr. Indira does wonder if she should have told him that what they were doing was therapy, and that does count for something as we have been informed that she is aware of the professional mistakes made by her. But she justifies this by saying that a therapist’s job is to listen and Bojack needed someone to listen.

Eventually, due to a slip-up while telling the story, Dr. Indira accidentally reveals a person’s identity but that does not receive much attention as she reveals how she lost both Diane and Bojack as ‘clients’, if we can refer to the latter as that. Diane walks in on Bojack talking to Dr. Indira as a ‘friend’ and feels betrayed. She says that the office does not seem like a “safe space” anymore and gives Dr. Indira an ultimatum: the choice between her and Bojack. At that point, Dr. Indira tells her that her and Diane have reached the end of their therapeutic relationship and asks her to use the “tools” given to her via therapy to live her life. We see Diane looking taken aback and shocked and she even lashes out at both of them before leaving. When Dr. Indira tells Bojack that he has taken the first step by admitting he needs help, his response i, “Did I?”. He tells her that he has made enough progress and that she is great at her job hastily before rushing out of the door. She concludes her story by expressing her disappointment over losing two clients in a day, and her wife comforts her by saying that she must have helped them in ways she will never know.

As expected, Bojack Horseman did offer a unique view on therapists. In some ways, by looking at a flawed therapist’s story, we can imagine what an actual therapist might be like. However, the larger point seems to be that even therapists are human beings and in practise, they might not be able to live up to their professional expectations. Of course one does not expect therapists to be supra-human, but basic expectations like getting informed consent from the client before actually considering them to be a ‘client’, not revealing the identities of people involved, and following the protocol for termination of therapy are reasonable. Again, since this show is not supposed to be accurate, one cannot hold it accountable and perhaps it can be seen as representative of the actual condition of therapists and the quality of therapy available to a lot of people. But even that becomes problematic as people with mental health issues might become averse to getting professional help owing to such representations, especially when they come from a source that a lot of people can relate to. Moreover, it makes one ask whether therapy in practise always follows the trajectory defined in theory? Is the ideal never lived upto? Is a healthy therapeutic relationship so difficult to achieve that it receives such rare representation? If not, then where are these representations emerging from and what must one make of this pattern of misrepresentation?


References:
https://www.bustle.com/p/how-bojack-horseman-depicts-depression-more-honestly-than-any-show-on-tv-80926