Gifts In The Movies – Movie Vignettes and Analysis

 

Comment: In this section, food and drinks served by therapists to their clients are viewed as a form of gifts.

 

Antwone Fisher

Antwone Fisher, an African-American in the U.S. Navy, has trouble with his anger. An African-American psychiatrist, Dr. Jerome Davenport, helps him work through his extensive childhood trauma.

As he takes on the role of a surrogate father, the psychiatrist invites his patient to a family dinner at Thanksgiving.

For Antwone this invitation to a family dinner can be seen as a gift. It seems to be designed to serve as a modeling and/or a corrective emotional experience because he experiences a “normal” family, with all its strengths and weaknesses, for the first time in his life. It can be assumed that this was designed as a treatment intervention. Such an intervention might be questionable in other cases, because it could potentially interfere with the therapeutic relationship. As with any intervention, introducing a client to the therapist’s family or an invitation to a family dinner must take into consideration the context of the therapy, which includes client, setting, orientation, therapeutic relationship, and therapist factors.

In order to thank him for his Thanksgiving invitation, Antwone gives his therapist a touching poem that gives his emotional pain a powerful voice. Davenport shows his client that he is moved by this gift.

Giving this poem to his therapist is meaningful for both client and therapist. This gift has no material value, but it does have high symbolic value. Given Antwone’s background of trauma and neglect, it is therapeutically important that Davenport responds with authentic emotion to this present and accepts the gifts graciously. Undoubtedly, refusing to accept the gift would have been a humiliating and shaming experience to the patient. It might rupture the therapeutic relationship too.

 

Bliss

Maria and Joseph see Alfred for couples’ therapy, while Maria secretly consults a sex therapist, Dr. Baltazar Vincenza. The latter therapeutic relationship ends when Baltazar starts teaching Joseph “the ways of love.”

During their third session, Baltazar offers Joseph a cigar.

Giving this gift is a friendly gesture and appears to be an intervention that is designed to make Josef feel more at ease as he talks about issues around his body image and sexuality. Therefore it can be assumed that this intervention was done with the client’s welfare in mind. (The screenwriter might have enjoyed introducing the Freudian symbolism of a cigar into the plot shortly before Baltazar talks about orgasms and ejaculation.)

 

Dressed To Kill

After Kate Miller is brutally murdered, Dr. Elliot, her psychiatrist, and Detective Marino try to find her killer. Kate’s teenage son teams up with a prostitute, Liz Blake, who witnessed the murder, to do an investigation of their own.

Before they start a session, Elliot serves coffee to his patient and to himself.

If serving coffee at the home office was a planned intervention, possibly to establish a therapeutic alliance, it can be therapeutically valuable. In that case Elliott would have his client’s welfare in mind. As with any intervention, serving a client a drink or sharing food must take into consideration the context of therapy, which includes the client, setting, orientation, therapeutic relationship, and therapist factors.

 

K-Pax

Dr. Mark Powell is intrigued by his new patient, Prot, who claims to be an alien from the planet K-PAX.

During their last session, Dr. Powell gets a bottle of whiskey from his desk, saying to Prot, “I doubt Freud has ever tried this, but when someone goes away, we usually like to send them off with a little toast. Is Scotch ok or would you prefer something more fruity?” They drink Scotch together, toasting to a safe journey.

The “gift” of serving alcohol to a possibly delusional patient is in general therapeutically questionable and ill advised in most clinical situations. In this case, it appears as if the psychiatrist uses this extreme gesture as a last clinical chance to get Prot to let go of his delusion and reveal the truth about his past.

 

Prime

Rafi Gardet dates a younger man, David Bloomberg. After hearing about this relationship in their sessions for some time, her therapist, Dr. Lisa Metzger, finds out that Rafi’s boyfriend is her own son. After Metzger and Rafi discontinue therapy, and against his mother’s initial resistance, David brings his girlfriend home for a family dinner. She receives the initially involuntary “gift” of a meal from her previous therapist. Rafi brings a bottle of wine as a present.

Because the therapeutic relationship was terminated prior to this event, and therapist and ex-client are in sequential dual relationships hosting a dinner and accepting a small present are appropriate and ethical in the context of their new relationship. It is important to note that the 2002 APA Code of Ethics does consider or discuss sequential social (non-sexual) dual relationships, such as depicted in this movie. One can assume that unless the clinician terminated the relationship in order to pursue another exploitative relationship or promised such relationship, sequential dual relationships are generally ethical and acceptable.

 

What About Bob?

After one therapy session, Bob Wiley follows his psychiatrist, Dr. Leo Marvin, to his lakeside summer home in order to further discuss his problems. There, Bob befriends Marvin’s son Sigmund, daughter Anna, and wife Fay.

The psychiatrist’s family invites Bob for dinner at their summer home. Marvin resists, but gives in eventually. When it starts raining heavily after they finish the meal, Fay invites Bob to stay overnight and lends him Marvin’s pajamas. The psychiatrist resists again, but gives in eventually.

Looking at Marvin’s family’s hospitality toward this intrusive and insisting patient as a gift is likely to stretch the concept of gifts in therapy.

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