Timothy Stoner

IN TREATMENT: Telling a good story well

Posted on 08. Aug, 2009 by Tim Stoner in Blog, art

I’ve been watching the HBO series In Treatment and (oddly enough), this extremely well written, and even better acted, show about Paul, a very modern, materialist psychotherapist has made me think about the Devil. It kind of snuck up on me. I was imagining a story line that would address exorcism in a therapeutic context which led me to examine the ultimate emptiness of Paul’s therapy and his inner and outward life. This vacuity is illustrated by his inability to communicate with his children (they make their appearance primarily as names—an allusion to their unimportance) and his emotional vacancy and distance from his wife. The writing is excellent though unrelenting and graphic and pervasively sexual in nature. Sex is not behind everything as Freud propounded but it is nonetheless behind lots of our psychological issues—which the show is more than willing to illustrate. 

Several episodes leave Paul with his head in his hands. Therapy is frustrating, no doubt. In Treatment paints us no rosy picture of triumphalistic Freudian or Jungian therapeutic models vanquishing the insidious and crippling terrors of the inner mind. It is brutally honest at that point. And quite a few others, as well. It objectively illumines the self-destruction of selfishness in marriage, the psychological impacts of parental malfeasance along with the importance of responding rightly to them. While it places its focus on how the characters feel, it does not ignore the cruciality of choice.

But, what the show cannot divulge, and I doubt ever could, is the ultimate vanity of a materialist psychotherapy which treats people as machines, or animals, rather than amazingly complex, spiritual beings crafted by a Creator in His own image and likeness. This series founders on the rock of meaning. It leaves both clients and therapist essentially with their heads in their hands—or more obliquely walking out the door shoulders hunched and eyes and head down. Which is why Paul seeks therapy himself. I trust he will get some help from it, but towards the end of the First Season, (I am a latecomer to the series) it looks doubtful.

His stubborn streak of pride which coils through confused strata of personal and professional insecurities erect formidable walls. He needs counseling as badly as his clients but, what he cannot get is ultimate help about ultimate issues because what we and he all need is spiritual healing. Jesus said it, we are lost and trapped and we need to be found and saved. And the first step is to repent. I don’t expect Paul’s therapist will suggest that course of treatment.      

But, yet, the show is, for me, utterly compelling. It is brilliantly written and the acting is equal if not superior to it. It reminds me of why I’ve often thought that I should have pursued psychology rather than law when I had the chance. I am generally an excellent listener, though my wife would beg to differ. And I would have delighted in asking repeatedly: “How did that make you feel?” and charging $ 300.00 per hour while doing so. The characters are so well drawn that I have grown to love almost all of them. My favorite is Alex. He is a black, Top-Gun naval pilot, conflicted about his sexual identity and struggling with guilt over mistakenly killing 46 Iraqi children. He is a hyper-controlling, bright, macho guy, with serious father issues which he deflects brilliantly. Blair Underwood plays this arrogant, wounded, man-boy perfectly.      

Which all made me think about the Devil, not exclusively in the context of exorcism, but in the context of creativity. I should explain. Though perhaps I shouldn’t, I take for granted the conclusion that the Muse can be identified with the Holy Spirit. My view being that the Author of what is True, Good and Beautiful can be none other than the third person of the Trinity. Which, if true, means that we have the Muse resident within us as Christians, which then leads to a troubling question: “so why has our collective creative output in recent centuries, especially the 20^th, been so paltry?  As one rock musician in the 70’put it in a tongue-in-check lyric: “Why does the Devil have all the good music?” 

As a Christian I am obliged to believe in a real being called Satan. As a Christian I am also obliged to believe that he does get involved in the material world (directly, but mostly indirectly). This is an inescapable component of a Christian world view. While I believe that he may actually inspire some art forms, I am not compelled to conclude that he is the author of all bad art. For the most part I believe that he lets the Holy Spirit do the inspiration and then steps in through the back door to fiddle with the end-product. I am speaking here in ultimate terms. When causality is pressed to the limit to whom does it lead? What is good and true and beautiful is ultimately of God what is not is ultimately not, thus–in pedantic and old school terms–of the Devil.

The Devil is not a creative being, nor is he actually imitative, that is what we humans are called, or allowed, to be. I think he is more accurately described as a pervertive being. He takes what is beautiful, good or true spins it out in a long gold thread and then weaves a glittering strand into it of death, of dust, of decay: of the impure. He takes the aroma of the holy and mixes into the perfume just a smidgen of the foul. He is a master of taking the true and welding into it just enough of a lie so that it remains a superficially compelling, but ultimately destructive, untruth.

He sings a song and it kindles the heart, provokes a smile and calms the fears but it ends in a soothing anesthetic of self-delusion. The gorgeous and evocative, the stunning and creative, the transcendent and mystical, can also thrill and move the listener, or enthusiast–to worship, but it is an idolatrous worship of the creature rather than the Creator. And it all slides relentlessly towards death. 

He could even use stories about people in extremity of psychological pain and lead us to the conclusion that there is no ultimate meaning, or that meaning can be shrink-wrapped to the size of our little life experiences, He could use winsome characters to reinforce the lie that promiscuity is as natural (and inconsequential) as breathing and as delightful as enjoying a fine wine with cheese. He might even tells us these powerful stories that reinforces our conviction that there are no moral absolutes since there is no Moral Absolute Being to whom we must give an account at the end of our days.  

This is not to say that all art can be placed in airtight cubicles of “Good” or “Bad”, or that its provenance can be discretely identified as being from source G or D. For, the wonder of God’s sovereignty, to use another ancient term, is that He can trump D, and does so repeatedly. His master stroke, of course, was the cross which looked throughout to be entirely from the D source but then shatteringly, at the end, we see that, as incomprehensible as it may be to our little minds, all along it was the Father’s good pleasure to bruise the Son. In the words of Joseph to his 11 brothers, “Satan meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”

This could be written across thousands of movie markees. God making, in KJV terminology, “the wrath of man to praise Him.” I believe that when artists are doing art well, they are all, regardless of their philosophical or anti-religious intentions, servants of the glory. Truth blazes out despite themselves. That is the mysterious, irrepressible and irresistible energy of the Muse. And His hand is seen in the language and the despair and the longing of the characters In Treatment. I heard it in Alex’s confession in the First Season. To the question where does he want his therapy to lead he admits brokenly: “Somewhere where I feel less shitty about myself.” This is just another way of saying: “I am emotionally and spiritually bankrupt and I need to be saved from myself.” Alex is speaking for all of us. He is articulating the longing that only Jesus can fulfill. Of course, we need more than emotional re-wiring, but the door to salvation is cracked open by a humble confession of need. Sadly, that is the therapeutic model Paul is unable to offer his clients.       

The impact of this series has made me wonder again: so where are those even more compelling stories that confront the audience with the unpopular Truth and the provocatively offensive Reality? Where are the narratives that signify a reality that we are all of us moving inexorably toward? Who is writing plots that accurately describe our spiritual landscape without confusing and blending the holy in with the profane so that they leach unhelpfully into each other? Is there anyone painting scenes on a screen with brushtrokes that are truthful and beautiful, while also being good—to the core, even while depicting what is evil—to the core? If there is a God, ironic despair, or random un-meaning, does not win out. Holy, crucified Love does. Certainly there is a need for stories that shed an honest and compelling light on that.  

My belief is that such stories cannot be fully and persuasively told by those who have bought into a postmodernist world view, who, by definition, exclude absolutes and reject metanarratives (stories that are true and equally valid for everyone). As one writer put it, postmodernism is the story of how “the world lost its story.” If true, I happen to think there is no better time for Christians to craft theirs, but the emphasis needs to be placed on both the “Christian”–as in world view, and “craft”–as in work your bloody fingers to the bone and bleed out if necessary, to write it well—really well.   

I am heartened by the challenge of the recently deceased Catholic teacher and social critic John Henry Neuhaus: “If the Narrative is true, if Christ is Lord, it follows that no age can be post-Christian. We might better say that our world is not post-Christian but proto-Christian, awaiting, whether it realizes it or not, the story by which it might, as though for the first time, know itself. . . . And we should tell better stories that winsomely, even seductively, reintroduce the great Story; being confident, as Lewis was confident, that the pagans then and now, in the fine phrase of Edward Norman, got it ‘broadly right.’ We must help them to tell their story, for whether they know it or not their story is the story of God’s ways with his creatures, the story of salvation.” From, Ancient and PostModern Christianity, ed. Kenneth Tanner, “C.S. Lewis in the Public Square,” by John Henry Neuhaus, (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP, 2002) 273-274. 

My hope is that we embrace the challenge. My expectation is that the gauntlet has already been taken up and we shall soon see its good fruit.

Tags: beauty, Devil, Holy Spirit, In Treatment, inspiration, Satan, stories