EVENTSCOUPLESSYMPOSIUM Spring/Summer 2011
To L e f t : Co-Director of WC S P P C o u p l e s Psychotherap y Tr a i n i n g : Ruth Greer, PhD
WCSPP COUPLES PSYCHOTHERAPY TRAINING CURRICULUM Check it out by clicking here
T.V. MODERNFAMILY What “Modern Family” Says about Self-Analysis By Terry Klee In Steve Levitan’s and Christopher Lloyd’s most-watched creation of ABC’s televised “Modern Family,” we relax in story-lines that are probative of contemporary culture. Self-analysis plays in scenes as characters give confessional candor to an unseen person. (Say, you or the cameraman. You choose.) This mockumentary format makes us, the lounging viewers, laugh as we see the contrast between what the characters are really feeling and what they are willing to admit they were feeling in the scene. As psychoanalytic therapists,
>> .
these confessional interviews bemuse us with sensibilities of “does that happen at my office?” (It does.) But, then just the same, we can also feel comfort in the familiarity of such dialectic narratives. Unlike most popular hits, the show reaches directly into feelings. Characters are aware of their anxieties. The plots are less about how the characters act towards the world and more about how they experience life internally. But, there is still more. The show carries today’s family trees of divorce,
re-marriages, immigrants, adoption, gay dads, precocious adolescents, disappointing kids, and adults who never quite grew up. Yes, rich material for a lot of conflict and function. But, again, there is yet more. Characters also spend most of their time with their technology: phonecameras, phone-texts, spy-cams, iPads, baby monitors, YouTube videos, Facebook, karaoke gadgets, etc, etc. And, we the viewers witness (and study) the newfangled family’s modernity of techno-refractions. n
View Modern Family episodes online
>>
22