Serial Quackery

A funny thing happens mid-way through the 2012 Televisa telenovela UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR – the loved ones of the principal antagonist, Roselena (Laura Flores), after watching her grow more and more emotionally unstable, take her to be checked out by medical professionals, first to scan her brain for physical ailments, then, force her to see a psychiatrist, which she does for the remainder of the novela.  The not-so-good results are predictable: by the novela’s end, Roselena has completely lost all touch with reality.

It got me thinking: Is there a more thankless profession for a character on a melodrama than psychotherapist?  To drive a story, it is almost a prerequisite for the psychotherapist to be incompetent, the dramatic possibilities far riper in psychosis than restored mental balance.  Sure, there are triumph of the human spirit stories to be explored if the psychotherapist is able to assist a character heal emotionally and psychologically, become a responsible, contributing member of society after some mental or emotional trauma; but far, far more prolific are the patients disintegrating into dangerous psychopaths.

This serial quackery becomes especially tiresome on a soap opera, where the same doctor has to make mistake after mistake regarding patient after patient, year after year.  This was the case with Dr. Rae Cummings, a psychologist who appeared on all four ABC soap operas in the early 2000s, but most prominently on ONE LIFE TO LIVE, where every patient she treated wound up getting worse under her care, ultimately going on some violent rampage through town.  The joke on these shows is the psychologist is still treated with respect around town, a pillar of her profession, even after a handful of horrific gaffes and the loss of many innocent lives.

ONE LIFE TO LIVE would actually repeat the jokes of Llanview’s dreadful mental health care a few years later when Marty Saybrooke (Susan Haskell) became the resident soap psychiatrist.  Eventually, Marty herself also went on a violent psychotic rampage, stabbing one character and shoving another off a roof.  Of course, she was treated by another incompetent psychotherapist – a vicious cycle.