Behind Closed Doors

It's OK – nothing to do with Peter Andre and his unfortunate single. But two interests I've been following through this week – time permitting. Firstly 'In Treatment', the HBO series starring Gabriel Byrne and Dianne Wiest as beleaguered therapists. Byrne (Paul Weston) is the central character and most of the weekly episodes present a somewhat truncated but authentic sounding session between various clients and himself. Fridays see Weston in therapy himself as he consults Gina (Wiest) who has a part supervisory, part therapist role in his always challenging professional and increasingly fractured personal life.

I'm way behind with the series. I recorded a lot towards the end of last year and have only recently caught up. Sky Arts is replaying episodes rather than showing the latest season, but that's ok. I'll probably stick with it now. Why is it so compelling though? I think twofold reasons. The first is that as humans we are naturally inquisitive, nosey to the point of gossip, about other people's lives, especially when in difficulty, especially their 'private lives'. This series allows us to follow the events and emotional responses to a variety of humans facing individual but also universal human situations. So we get, each with their individual session, a couple locked in what seems like irresolvable conflict, an abused, anorexic teenager, an amorous young female client, a screwed up military guy (taken advantage of by amorous female client), and Paul himself, whose marriage is desperately fractured. All these clients have narratives and backstories which could themselves be a subject for a show. As it is we overhear them in confession.

And it's more than this, too: the therapeutic space, which has to a large extent taken up the role of the 'confessional' in that clients can own up to and lay down the burden of their guilt and anxieties, is a private, secret, magical space where healing and reconciliation is reputed to take place. It, like the confessional, is bound by confidentiality, by strict ethical considerations. These can be abused of course (Paul is tempted on occasion). But the therapist by profession must seek to bring his or her client to some sort of illumination about the world from which they have emerged or which they have constructed about themselves. Because it is such a private space, and because it is a space in which something can 'happen', we want to be privy to its contents, and to see behind closed doors. This series addresses that need and although some of the conversations seem clumsy and inferences flagged up unnecessarily heavily, it is still a compelling and I think quite authentic depiction of psychoanalytic discourse. I suspect that not all therapists will offer the moment of 'theoretical insight' we see here quite so frequently. But the intense quality of listening offered by these TV therapists is impressive, and would be a privilege to experience.

Secondly, a different set of closed doors. I read with interest in the Evening Standard K- brought home on Thursday about a forthcoming film ('No Greater Love') set in the Carmelite Convent in Notting Hill. The Carmelites are a strictly enclosed religious order with fully professed members rarely if ever leaving their community house, and communicating with members of the outside world through a parlour grille. It took ten years of persuasion and negotiation for this documentary film to be given the go ahead. I will see it with some awe and some curiosity too when it's released in April. I saw the 2006 film documentary 'Into Great Silence' on the (male monastic) Carthusian Order so know there are precedents, but the Carmelites have always been of particular resonance to me (St Therese entered the Lisieux Carmel at the age of 15, dying there nine years later). Documentary maker Michael Whyte has captured moments of 'whimsy' (perhaps just of pragmatism and life) along the lines of a nun ordering groceries online – but the real interest of the film will be in finding out what rewards the nuns feel they have experienced for such a life of commitment and apparent deprivation. Another kind of intense listening must take place (though who is listening and who speaking during the great hours of prayer?). As Prioress Sister Mary explains, in such a life, 'You're brought face to face with yourself – that's the hardest thing'. And indeed it must be. Precious few distractions and only an intense listening silence which another nun describes as 'something that's full of life'. No therapist then – just silence and the self and the secret listening of the cosmos. Perhaps there are connections between the two sets of closed doors and the offer of small and large screen to reveal, while retaining respect.