The notion of doctor-patient relationships have always captured my imagination, and not merely because of my propensity for depicting “creepy sexual attractions.” In our culture (and others), doctors of all kinds have historically been regarded as almost mystical in their abilities. Doctors represent a special type of authority figure – one who doesn’t force us to follow rules, but is rather concerned with our health, our well being, our sanity. Doctors pay special attention to what make our minds and bodies work, and keep working – and they’re our only hope when something inside us goes terribly wrong.
Still, I’d venture to say we feel more vulnerable in the presence of a psychologist than we do when wearing the famously undignified open-back hospital smock awaiting our “physical.” From the neck down our bodies are a source of primal pleasure and pain, but to break an arm is not to feel altered to our very core. With a broken arm I can still think, talk, reason, and feel: my “self” is essentially untouched.
Our minds, however, are US: our egos and fears, our desires and secrets. Our minds hold the key to what we do when we’re alone and unwatched in the privacy of our homes, and to what lands we travel in the privacy of our thoughts. To allow a stranger access to who we “really” are is the ultimate act of trust and submission; and to give her the power to influence our future is both comforting and dangerous. As we take solace in the fact that we’re not alone on our journey, we forget that we may be accompanied by a madman.
This is because at the end of the day, a psychotherapist – like a priest or policeman – is still a human being. While the framed certificates and degrees placed prominently on office walls assure us of a therapist’s credibility, it says nothing of their egos, fears, or secret desires.
In “The Psychotherapist” we meet a variety of characters, both entertaining and disturbing: the delusional televangelist (Evan Stone) who uses religion to rationalize sexual trysts with his gorgeous assistant (Sophie Dee); a pathological young man (Rocco Reed) who revels in an incestuous affair with his beautiful young sister (Chastity Lynn); and a sinister, sultry young man (Seth Gamble), who effortlessly arouses the improper desires of his much older therapist (played brilliantly by Vanilla Deville.)
As human beings we’re doomed to exist as tortured hybrids; engaged in an endless struggle between intellect and impulse; virtue and desire. Our animal needs must be met, yet are often carry a terrible, self-imposed price. In Hard Candy Films’ “The Psychotherapist” we examine the dark, lascivious place between what our conscious minds know we should do, and what our animal selves feel we must do.













