The Sopranos: Was Melfi A Good Therapist? (ft. Real Therapists)

of all the soprano characters dr jennifer melfi is the most unique melvie is tony's psychiatrist throughout the six seasons of the show through their weekly sessions we not only get a look into tony's psyche and the trauma that makes him who he is but also gets some of the best scenes in the series while all the other characters on the show are connected to tony through his family or his criminal life melfi is unique in that she has no part of that world her relationship to tony is professional she is his doctor and he is her patient she maintains a respectful distance so that she never loses her objectivity in treating tony or does she throughout the show we see melfi cross ethical boundaries many times sometimes this is forced on her by the fact that she's treating a mobster other times her own personal feelings for tony get in the way of treating him and the way their relationship comes to an end leaves many people wondering was she even a good therapist at all so let's take a look at dr melfi as a character and see how good of a therapist she really was we're first introduced to melfi in the very first scene of the pilot episode tony is sent by his family doctor to melfi after he collapses during a barbecue with no physical symptoms his doctor thinks it might have been a panic attack and sends him to a psychiatrist to see if she can help him tony being an old-school mafioso finds it difficult to open up to a shrink let alone a woman look it's impossible for me to talk to a psychiatrist he's deeply embarrassed by his panic attacks thinking that it makes him look weak he also fears that if any of his associates ever found out he was in therapy they might think he was revealing secrets and have him killed over the course of the first season he begins to open up to her about the things that bother him in his life they build a rapport and slowly start to get at the heart of his problems namely his toxic relationship with his mother livia however this is cut short when junior discovers that tony is seeing a shrink this among other conflicts between the two leads junior to arranging a hit against tony the hit fails but worried that junior might go after her tony tells melfi that she needs to leave town melfi is obviously distressed that she's now in danger because of tony while hiding out one of her patients commits suicide because she wasn't able to be reached when the conflict ends tony approaches her about starting therapy again however melfi now wants nothing to do with tony get out of my life tony tries to go on without therapy but finds that he needs someone to talk to about his problems he tries to talk to people like hesh but most of the time they just end up bored by his constant complaining meanwhile melfi starts to feel guilty about abandoning tony she worries that without therapy tony's panic attacks might get him killed she invites him back and they continue their sessions slowly however melfi begins to be changed by her time with tony she becomes more aggressive and confrontational just like him she also begins drinking vodka before their sessions as she's terrified of what he might tell her however despite her repulsion she cannot bring herself to end the therapy though tony tries to quit many times with his own accord she keeps him around her own therapist elliot worries that she's becoming too attached to tony and is getting a vicarious thrill out of treating a mobster he warns her that the therapy is supposed to be for him not for her i think seeing him again will be very therapeutic for me it's not supposed to be therapeutic for you this is your therapy here their relationship is pushed to the limit in the episode employee of the month while walking to her car late at night melfi is attacked and raped in a parking garage the man is caught but due to a technicality is let go by the police melfi is enraged by the lack of justice and thinks about telling tony who would of course have the guy killed during one of their sessions she breaks down in front of tony and almost tells them the truth however she stops herself at the last minute realizing that telling him would compromise their professional relationship and leave her indebted to him their therapy continues throughout the final season however in the penultimate episode melfi learns about a psychological study that says that sociopaths cannot be helped from talk therapy and instead actually use it to practice their emotions and become better liars melfi is at first angered by the suggestion that her work for the past seven years has been for nothing however after reading the study she comes to believe that tony cannot change as well the final straw is when he tears a page out of one of her magazines without asking realizing that tony is still the same selfish criminal he was when they started their sessions she ends their relationship we're making progress it's been seven years do you want some names the last time we see her she closes the door on tony the exact opposite of the first shot we saw her in back in the pilot many fans were of course upset by the lack of resolution in their story for six seasons we'd watched tony and melfi interact in therapy throughout their sessions we not only learned about tony as a character but also melfi we got to know her family her traumas and her growth as a character in her own right and to see all of that end so abruptly seemed out of place the idea of the study in melfi dropping tony came out of a psychological conference that david chase attended chase asked one of the psychologists there what she thought about the therapy on the show and the psychologist responded that it was only enabling tony to be a better criminal chase then decided that melfi would drop tony as a patient at the end of the series lorraine bronco the actress that played melfi recently revealed on talking sopranos that she was unhappy with the way their story ended she felt that melky cared about tony and wished that the ending of their relationship would have been more meaningful however chase believed that this was a more realistic depiction of therapy than he had ever seen he insisted that therapy had a few moments of progress but is mostly an endless process that eventually ends when one parties had enough chase himself went through therapy and the character of melfi was actually based on his own therapist and his experiences with her knowing this it's interesting to look at melfi and think about what david chase was trying to say about therapy in general it's clear that he's both fascinated with therapy and deeply critical of it and many of tony's thoughts about therapy might well have been chases sometimes what happens in here is like taking a [ __ ] yes okay although i preferred to think of it more like childbirth trust it's like taking the [ __ ] it's also clear from the show that tony is not a better person than when he started the series in fact he's only gotten worse as it went on and if tony hasn't changed what does that say about melfi as a therapist well before we rush to judgment about melfi let's examine what her impact really was the reason tony begins therapy in the first place is because of his panic attacks over the course of the series the rate at which he has panic attacks decreases and the last one occurs in season 5. in fact he has no panic attacks in the last season of the show if we look just at this melfi has done her job tony said he wanted to stop having the attacks and melfi was able to help him get there by addressing the root cause of his condition however there are some other issues with melfi's professionalism chief among these problems is her attachment to tony throughout the series her family and her own therapist urge her to drop tony as a patient for her own good she herself even thinks about doing so whenever he gets violent towards her or when she's just frightened of the things he'll tell her however for most of the series she refuses to out of concern pride attraction fear and everything besides professional ethics however when she does break things off with tony it feels abrupt and abrasive tony like many of the viewers felt she abandoned him when he was at his most vulnerable and did so with a lack of grace as a doctor i think what you're doing is immoral does the way she ended it and any of her other behavior make her a bad therapist well though i do consider myself something of an expert on the sopranos i'm definitely not an expert on therapy or mental health while i can safely talk about melfi as a character i don't want to make blank statements about psychiatry in general without the knowledge to back it up so to that end i've consulted with two actual professionals dr allison is a licensed clinical psychologist and philip karahassen is a counselor in the uk both have youtube channels where they talk about therapy and they were both gracious enough to help me out with this video dr allison is a big fan of the show and of dr melfi i love dr melfi so much i think the way that she is so patient i think she's very um yeah she just picks up on little things i think she does a wonderful job building rapport and developing a relationship with somebody who for many reasons is very challenging to do that with i think you kind of see her you know you can see her sometimes put her foot on the gas and then kind of take it off and i think just the way that she does that is really beautiful and so i loved her character i also think she is not unendingly compassionate you can tell she's got boundaries you can tell there there are things that really you know that she reacts to and so i also like that the show kind of shows her having a backbone but also kind of using her own reactions as therapeutic interventions with tony so you know it's it's all style every psychologist every therapist has their own style but i love love love her character and i actually think she's a pretty dang good uh doctor for him one of the key takeaways i got from my conversation with her is the fact that all therapists are different there isn't one correct style of therapy so it wouldn't be fair to compare her to any other therapist out there in particular though i wanted to know how she felt about a therapist dumping their client as that was the thing that bothered the viewers the most about melfi and so when i watch this scene i don't i think i i support her decision to kind of acknowledge like i can no longer help you and i think that's important that therapists if if they're at that point communicate that when i watch this scene though i'm like oh dang girl you waited too long i think she just waited she she sat on these feelings probably for too long and i think she was probably trying to convince herself i can do this i don't want to abandon him you know something good is happening and because i think in this scene you can see her emotions are a little bit more intense than they normally are it's a little too raw you know as as therapists it is you know depending on your therapeutic style it is really normal for people to for therapists to use their own emotion in session but we have to be so intentional about how we do that and when i watch this clip i'm like oh yep she waited too long because it's just a little too raw all of that was good but dr allison like myself is a huge fan of the show and her opinion of melfi is of course biased by knowing the story and all the characters so i also consulted with philip who has only ever seen the first episode which he did a blind review of on his channel he nailed his analysis of tony from this one viewing which made me so excited to hear his thoughts on melfi this was his opinion when i showed him the clip of melfi ending their relationship in regards to kicking tony out based on the fact of you know him essentially pretending you have you're never going to know why people do what they do and even in understanding those criminals in that study which i don't know if it exists or not as i said but um even in that study you've got to ask that that criminal or that person you're seeing why are you doing this not your your waste of time piss off it's a sense of what you're doing here is is this actually landing home and those sorts of questions are a bit more provocative overall these consoles help me learn a lot about therapy and psychology in general however at the end of this video i'm still not sure how to judge melfi which i think is kind of the point of the show tony is a character who defies categorization he's one of the most complicated characters in television history and just like him melfi is someone you can't just place into a box marked good or bad she like all of us had her moments of both and how we view her says more about ourselves than it does about her so i can't definitively say if melfi is a good therapist or not and yes i know that's kind of a cop-out answer for a video titled is melphia a good therapist but hey the show didn't give us a definitive resolution so why should i you know how to quit this [ __ ] therapy maybe it's this maybe it's that maybe it's a fungal thanks again to dr allison and phillip both took time out of their busy schedules to help me with this video i've linked both of their channels in the description and you should definitely check them out not only for their mental health videos but also for some awesome pop culture reactions as well and as always stay tuned for more sopranos videos coming soon who do you think you are not commenting on this video frankie valley is some kind of big shot russell shawn heart of markness logan clean john rayna jesse sterling andrew stewart ops gracing media dazz j kitt conan higgins sam cedarlin don lucania celery man and jenna marie johnson [Music]

Channel: Pure Kino

Views: 272,246

Keywords: pure kino, kino, sopranos, sopranos melfi, sopranos tony melfi, sopranos ending, sopranos death, jennifer melfi, sopranos psychiatry, sopranos super bowl, sopranos theme song, sopranos intro, sopranos commercial, sopranos finale, sopranos melfi attacked, melfi revenge, melfi dinner, melfi dream, melfi assault, melfi carmela, melfi aj, melfi elliot, melfi restaurant

Id: RZoKOPRk9pw

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 03 2022