{"id":2193,"date":"2014-10-14T00:49:22","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T00:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iarpp.net\/?post_type=article&p=2193"},"modified":"2014-11-11T15:23:43","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T15:23:43","slug":"film-review","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/iarpp.net\/thesite\/article\/film-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sessions<\/b>
\nReviewed by Susan L. Orbach <\/b>(USA)
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

\"session_filmart_v2www\"<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

The Sessions is a film based on the life of Mark O\u2019Brien, a writer, poet, journalist, and quadriplegic.\u00a0 Ben Lewin, the director and screen writer, introduces us to Mark, a 38 year old man confined to an iron lung 80% or more of his day.\u00a0 The film challenges the preconception that Mark\u2019s disability means he cannot be sexual, desirable, or loved.\u00a0 In The Sessions, Mark is front and center, and for many of us seeing the unrelenting nature of his physical challenges taps into our own fears of becoming disabled, as well as vulnerabilities related to childhood longings for dependency.<\/p>\n

Mark\u2019s priest, Father Brendan, is most like a psychotherapist in this film.\u00a0\u00a0 He clearly is a tie to Mark\u2019s past as well as the hope for his future. Significant elements of Mark\u2019s past emerge: his polio and paralysis at age six, his parents\u2019 choice to keep him at home and not in a nursing home, and the death of his younger sister, along with the guilt and self-blame he feels around her loss.\u00a0 In addition, we learn that his parents never discussed sex and he was treated as if he had no genitals.\u00a0 Feeling the acceptance and respect the priest had for his feelings, wishes, and desires allows Mark to eventually ask for his approval to seek out a sex surrogate.<\/p>\n

Psychoanalyst Hans Loewald addressed the importance of the analyst as a new developmental object.\u00a0 Mark, ripe to transfer his childhood internalizations of his parents onto this priest, finds a surprising challenge to these expectations from the past.\u00a0 Father Brendan, as a developmental object, provides Mark with the hope that he can work through a core interference and inhibition in his path to integration of body and mind.\u00a0 Though he gets permission to be sexual from the priest, we see how difficult it is for Mark to act on this wish. The biggest obstacle for Mark in love isn\u2019t his immobility from the neck down.\u00a0 It is his self-hatred and fear of rejection.<\/p>\n

Through an object relations lens, we can see that his guilt, self-reproach, and sexual inhibitions maintain his internal connection to his parents.\u00a0 His parents loved him and rescued him but they likely did not see him as someone who could be a whole person and achieve a mature love either emotionally or physically.\u00a0 With his significant dependency needs, it feels tremendously threatening to develop and trust a sense of himself that differs so significantly from his parents\u2019 perception of him. If he rebels, he fears he could be alone, with no one at all to love or love him back.<\/p>\n

Eventually Mark and the sex surrogate, Cheryl, meet over the course of four sessions rather than the six sessions initially planned.\u00a0 Cheryl is the one to suggest that the meetings be curtailed. The patient and therapist fall in love and Cheryl believes that the two last sessions will make the inevitable ending of their relationship all the more painful.\u00a0 There is a question here: Who is she really trying to protect more, herself or Mark?<\/p>\n

Mark\u2019s experience of Cheryl as omniscient and omnipotent is heightened by their sexual relationship. He is unable to masturbate due to the inactivity of the majority of his muscles.\u00a0 Cheryl provides him sensual and orgasmic pleasure and helps him connect with his body.\u00a0 Following the end of the relationship he is left to struggle with himself in a new but nonetheless painful way. The hope is that he will not feel alone in the way he did before, but more that he can feel separate yet connected to others as a person with a mind and a body.<\/p>\n

Link: http:\/\/www.thesessionsmovie.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"orbachphoto1014www\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Susan L. Orbach<\/strong>, Ph.D.
\n26789 Woodward Ave.\u00a0 Suite 209
\nHuntington Woods, MI 48070
\nEmail Susan Orbach<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sessions, Reviewed by Susan L. 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