The human heart seeks both life and death. We chase both light and darkness. We yearn for love, and at times throw the love in our hands in a self-destructive manner. It seems that there has always been a barren night in people's hearts, left to that dark and lonely self . - Freud
Finally I wrote about Laura, the sexy goddess who made the consultant Paul get deeper and deeper.
There is a woman who is fatal to most men. They are beautiful, sexy, charming and affectionate. They know men's preferences very well, and their smiles and smiles are full of temptation, but they are fragile and sensitive, pitiful, and need men's care from time to time...
Men are not immune to such women, because their curiosity, hunting, imagination, conquest, and heroism can all be perfectly interpreted in such women, making them unable to stop...
Laura is such a woman, in the eyes of men she is a stunner, in the eyes of women she is a public enemy. It stands to reason that, as a psychologist who has experienced a lot of battles, Paul should have enough resistance to such charms, but Paul still fell, and for Laura to be able to abandon his wife and children, even his favorite career Can be thrown aside.
Why is the battle-hardened Paul so crazy?
There are seven key consultations for Laura in the whole film, each of which is a thrilling spark, and in the fierce collision of the two people, we can see various metaphors and psychological battles in psychotherapy.
Since Laura appeared in Paul's clinic in the first episode, we have discovered the wonderful chemistry between the two...
After crying that he had a conflict with his fiancé, Laura chose to go to a bar to get drunk, flirt with a strange man, and then went to the bathroom together, and at the end of the relationship, she chose to stop...
When she describes her flirting with a strange man, we can clearly feel the unnaturalness on Paul's face, which is full of curiosity, jealousy, worry, and suppressed anger, which is not quite like a psychologist. The reaction is more like the state of a lover.
And Laura saw all of this, so she would repeatedly ask Paul during the description, "What do you think?" "Do you think I'm disgusting?"...
But when she found that Paul was hiding behind his counselor's mask and pretending to be deaf, she couldn't bear it any longer, and she directly said what she had suppressed for nearly a year,
"Paul, I'm already in love with you! I've been in love with you since the first day I came to counseling a year ago, and the reason I refuse to have sex with that person is not because of my boyfriend, but because of you!"
Paul was obviously a little flustered, and used psychological counseling skills to demonstrate his inner panic.
Laura chased after the victory, "Don't act like a Buddha, I know if a man has feelings for me!"
Then Paul began to explain to Laura that he was not a realistic option for the other party. Regardless of professional ethics or practical considerations, when Laura left and asked Paul if he wanted her, Paul hesitated, but said clearly. "No".
Facing Paul's dodging and refusing to show her love, Laura directly told Paul that she had agreed to her boyfriend's proposal when she reappeared in the consultation room.
But Paul did not bless her, but analyzed her behavior pattern, leading her to just choose to escape, and trying to lead the topic to Laura's relationship with her father, but Laura was very excited and told Paul directly why she agreed Her boyfriend's proposal was because Paul rejected her!
In a more dramatic scene, towards the end of this consultation, when Laura asked to go to the bathroom, Paul told her that the toilet in the consultation room was not working, and when Laura turned to go to Paul's downstairs toilet (Paul's private living space) ), Paul refused directly.
This completely angered Laura, and Laura directly asked Paul if she was afraid of meeting Paul's wife (in fact, Laura subconsciously really expected to break the boundary and break into Paul's private life), after Paul did not respond directly. Laura launched a more violent attack,
"Do you know how I felt when I saw you for the first time? I saw the lifelessness behind your expert skin, and it was I who injected energy into you!" "There is a relationship between us!"
Paul did not respond directly, but left the suspense for the next time.
This time, Laura was 20 minutes late for consultation!
When Laura hurried in to explain to Paul, Paul began to talk to Laura about whether to end the treatment.
Paul admits that Laura's nearly a year of therapy has not been effective. He points out that Laura keeps trying to cross the boundaries of the counseling relationship, and has long since abandoned the idea of making him a counselor.
In the face of the proposal to end the consultation, Laura started a series of counterattacks, and in the counterattack, we saw Laura's insight comparable to that of a psychiatrist:
- She pointed out that Paul had been in the business for 20 years, and she could not be the only female patient who fell in love with Paul.
- She hopes that Paul can treat her, if Paul can't, it can only mean that Paul just fell in love with her.
- She directly asked Paul if there was already a sense of intimacy in the counseling relationship between the two? Paul admits it is.
Then she began to talk about Freud's theory that Paul often cited, we used to decide who we fell in love with, but that didn't mean her feelings for Paul were fake (in fact, this is called empathy in psychology) .
And the Paul she fell in love with was not the perfect image she imagined. She had long seen the restlessness and fragility in Paul's heart. She understood this fragility and felt that she was truly connected with Paul.
This statement was so wonderful that Paul had to be moved by it, and then began to tell his dusty past...
It turns out that Paul, like Laura, lost his mother at the age of 14. The mother committed suicide because of depression, but the father fell in love with his female patient, chose to cheat, and ran away from home.
He hated his father, but he hated his inability to do anything about his mother's situation. With this deep self-blame and desire to save, he chose to be a psychiatrist. He always felt that he could be a savior, and because of this The reason is that when he saw Laura, who was beautiful and sexy but vulnerable and helpless, he seemed to see his mother back then, and his inner love and salvation were completely activated.
Laura is also the mother who died of illness when she was 15 years old, and left behind a lonely, helpless and bewildered father. The father was too weak to take care of the needs of the 14-year-old Laura, so Laura deeply planted in his heart. A desire to change, she longed to make her father strong and truly able to protect herself.
Therefore, in love life, Laura is always attracted to those who have similar characteristics to her father and wants to change, but she chooses to escape when she sees their helplessness and mediocrity up close.
So when Paul proposed to consider ending the consulting relationship, Laura counterattacked and directly suggested that the next time would be the last time, which caught Paul a little off guard. And when encountering another patient of Paul, she chose to seduce to avenge Paul's "unfeeling".
During the last consultation, Laura finally revealed the secret that had been buried in her heart for a year. It turns out that when Laura's mother died and her father fell into depression, she longed for a strong adult male to protect her.
At this time, his father's friend David broke into her life. David is a successful lawyer, mature and wise, humorous, gentle and considerate, which meets all Laura's expectations of an ideal father, so Laura once wanted David to adopt her, but David In the end, the adoption request was not accepted.
Even more dramatic, David had a relationship with 15-year-old Laura. Although Laura emphasizes that it was her own fault for seducing David, which is why she hates herself so much.
But at this time, Paul clearly told Laura that she was just a 15-year-old girl who was at a low point in her life and longed for love and care, and David, as an adult man, succumbed to his own desires and did things that hurt her. This also led to Laura's distrust of men, she believed that men approached her for her body, and it was difficult for her to enter a long-term stable relationship.
At this time, the treatment really started to work. In the last consultation between the two parties, when Paul really put down the air of being an expert and started to get close to Laura's heart, Laura told the secret in his heart, and also let Paul completely understand why Laura was one Seeing him will continue to tempt him in various ways.
But knowing it is one thing, actually doing it is another. Although Paul, who has read countless people, knows very well what kind of ending he might experience with Laura if he doesn't pull back from the precipice, his career, family, reputation, children... all the things he once cherished may be lost, but he still can't restrain himself. Missing Laura, after ending the consulting relationship, he missed her like crazy, and finally found a chance to make a confession to Laura...
But Laura dodged a little in the face of Paul's confession. She didn't quite believe that Paul would love her so frankly, so she needed proof of love, and she needed some familiar ways, such as sex.
And Paul really longed for her embrace from the bottom of his heart. After a fierce ideological struggle, he finally came to Laura's room. After the two sides expressed their sincere love to each other, Laura took Paul to her bedroom. At this juncture, Paul had a panic attack and fled...
When he told his supervisor Gina about this embarrassing experience, Gina told him,
"You do the right thing, for yourself, for your patients, that's the noble part of you. The right decision is never made gracefully because it requires us to fight our own desires. Panic attacks are not foreign. It is you, and you should be held accountable for your actions and appreciated for making the right decisions.”
What's more interesting is that because of Paul's panic attack, Laura finally realized that she didn't really want to be with Paul, she was just used to seducing the man she liked through her body for a long time. Laura was also healed by Paul to a certain extent, albeit in such a thrilling way.
Laura's case is a textbook case of psychoanalysis. It also uses vivid cases to explain the concepts of transference and countertransference, and repetition of childhood patterns.
Transference and Countertransference
Laura's feelings for Paul are actually typical empathy. Her desire for an ideal father, and her teenage urge to transform him, all transferred to Paul, so she would say she fell in love with Paul the first time she saw him.
She saw Paul's inner depression and helplessness, just like her father, she was eager to awaken his father's vitality, she was unsuccessful in his father, but she felt that she could awaken Paul's vitality, through sexual temptation and emotional interaction. This pattern of hers repeats itself over and over again, including her seemingly weak and helpless boyfriend. Once the other party really starts to rely on her, she feels boring; so if her relationship with Paul is allowed to develop, it will eventually be a tragedy.
Paul's feelings for Laura are counter-transference. Laura is like his mother, lonely and helpless, vulnerable and pitiful. His desire to save is completely activated by Laura. For Laura, he wants to abandon professional ethics and completely give up everything of himself , just to save her. Just like the 14-year-old boy eager to save the depressed mother. But at the most critical moment, his inner noble part saved him, and also his patient Laura.
Repetition of childhood patterns
According to Freud, our childhood patterns determine our inner patterns, which ultimately affect our intimacy. The kind of person we fall in love with is inseparable from our family of origin. We all cannot escape the influence of the Oedipus complex, the person who attracts us is closely related to our own parents.
But whether this is true love or not requires us to have a deeper understanding of our own patterns. If our inner patterns are not healthy enough, like Laura, if we lack awareness, we may repeat childhood feelings in intimate relationships. Happy childhoods are more likely to repeat happiness, and unhappy childhoods are more likely to repeat unhappiness.
And Paul is also repeating his father's pattern. When his father, as a doctor, fell in love with his female patient and abandoned the family, Paul hated his father, but when he fell deeper and deeper into Laura until he appeared in Laura's bedroom, He suddenly finds himself turning into the father he hates...
In this sense, we all need to accomplish inner reconciliation. The more we hate someone, especially a close parent, partner, or child, the more we hate a part of ourselves, and we just project a part of ourselves onto the other person.
The foundation of reconciliation is to understand the complexity of human nature and to understand the fragility of human nature. Because we understand, we are compassionate. When we can truly accept ourselves, we can achieve true tolerance and love, and can truly open our hearts to embrace this colorful world!
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