From: James C. Mancuso mancusoj@CAPITAL.NET

When I tell people that I am a psychologist, I usually need to fend off
their immediate assumption that I play the role of some kind of "Junior
Doctor Freud."

It is too difficult to explain the difference between the playing of
that role and the role that I play as an academic psychologist.

If I am in the kind of company in which I can do so, I usually start 
by saying, "Please don't think of me as a 'Junior Psychoanalyst.' "

It troubles me no end to know that people would extend credibility to
anyone who would have an affair such as this at their professional meetings.

But, here we have another case of people treating fantasy as reality.
Even more sickly -- they are treating the ACTRESS who plays the part of a
fantasy character as though that person has some connection to reality!!!!  
And to give her an award!!!!  WOW.

Anyone wishing to contact the American Psychoanalytic Association can do
so by e-mailing to: << central.office@apsa.org >>
===================================================
THERAPISTS GO CRAZY FOR TONY SOPRANO'S

The New York Times
By Sarah Boxer
December 29, 2001

Standing before his colleagues at the American
Psychoanalytic Association's meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria
last weekend, a psychoanalyst named Glen O. Gabbard
declared a weakness: "I have had an intensive transference
to Dr. Melfi for a long time."

He was not the only one. The meeting hall was packed with
hundreds of psychoanalysts who had developed dangerously
warm feelings, tinged with envy, gratitude, pride,
confusion and plain old star-struckness, for Jennifer
Melfi, the psychotherapist played by Lorraine Bracco in the
HBO series "The Sopranos."

To deal with this group transference, Ms. Bracco was
invited to a special session of the psychoanalysts'
meeting, along with two of the Emmy Award-winning writers
of "The Sopranos," Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green, who
are also executive producers. Ms. Green's brother, Ronald
Green, a professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth School of
Medicine, was there, too. He advises the writers about what
drugs Dr. Melfi should prescribe for her anxious,
depressed, sociopathic patient, the mobster Tony Soprano.

Why do these psychoanalysts care so deeply about Dr. Melfi?
One reason is that their patients do. Every Monday,
patients who have just watched the latest installment of
"The Sopranos" on Sunday night are wondering the same kinds
of things: Should Dr. Melfi really be treating a killer
like Tony? Is my therapist really as good as Dr. Melfi?

Another reason for the psychoanalysts' fascination with Dr.
Melfi is their own traumatic history. Psychotherapists have
been burnt by television and the movies all too often.

Dr. Gabbard, the author of "Psychiatry and the Cinema,"
reeled off a list of disastrous on-screen therapists: the
oversexed Peter Sellers with his Prince Valiant haircut in
"What's New, Pussycat?," all the Freudian analysts in Woody
Allen's movies, the unstable Richard Dreyfuss in "What
About Bob?" and Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter, who
dealt with his patients' mental problems by frying and
eating their brains.

Women, Dr. Gabbard said, have been different but not much
better. From Ingrid Bergman in "Spellbound" to Barbra
Streisand in "The Prince of Tides," the message is the
same: These women have no lives of their own and will fall
for the first handsome neurotic they get on the couch,
whether it is Gregory Peck or Nick Nolte.

So when an actress comes along who is, as Dr. Gabbard put
it, "actually doing a credible job of psychoanalytic
therapy," is it any shock that real psychoanalysts adore
her? Is it any surprise that they try to make her one of
their own? Is it any wonder that they welcome her into
their society, as they did at the conference, by presenting
her and the writers with awards that look remarkably like
the diplomas they hang in their own offices?

"What, are they crazy?" Ms. Bracco reportedly exclaimed
when she found out that she was going to get an award from
the American Psychoanalytic Association. "I am so not Dr.
Melfi," she told the audience of analysts.

Yet to the analysts she is Dr. Melfi. And the meeting last
week was their chance to sort out their feelings about her.

A few clips were screened. One showed Dr. Melfi shortly
after she was raped in a parking garage. She tells her own
therapist about having a dream of a vicious dog attacking
the rapist and of her wish to have Tony Soprano kill him.

The other clip showed the long-legged Dr. Melfi skillfully
parrying Tony Soprano's attempt to kiss her. For a brief
moment, it seems as if she will fall for Tony the way Ms.
Streisand's character went for Mr. Nolte's. But then she
backs off. "It's unfortunate that we have to stop now," she
says. "It's important that we talk about it. Do you think
you could come back later this afternoon?"

Dr. Gabbard noted, "She tiptoes along the brink of the
abyss and never falls in." She pushes him away, but not
before cautiously encouraging the psychotherapeutic
transference, allowing Tony Soprano to fall for her. The
perfect analyst.

How is this possible without any psychoanalytic training?
Ms. Bracco explained: "Eight or nine years ago, I was in
crisis myself. I came out on the other side. I know what a
good psychotherapist is." Ms. Bracco, who studied at the
Actors Studio, the home of Method acting, also noted that
she has thought so much about Dr. Melfi's inner life and
childhood that she keeps a journal about her. "I've
imagined a life for her," she said. She is not happy in her
marriage. She is lonely. She went to Tufts University.

All this raises some questions. Is there really any
difference between acting like a good therapist and being a
good therapist? Where does acting stop and therapy begin?

When the sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer asked Ms. Bracco
from the audience, "When are you going to sleep with Tony?"
Ms. Bracco playfully tossed the question back, asking
whether Dr. Ruth was referring to her or her character.
Speaking for Dr. Melfi, she said: "I hope it doesn't
happen. Let him dream on. Let her dream on." As for real
life, she paused, "I'll call you." For added confusion, she
noted that the actor who plays Tony, James Gandolfini, once
during the off-season sent her a bouquet with a note, "I
miss your legs."