Paris (AP) – Ariane has tears in her eyes and yet looks completely serene when she talks about her clinic after the November 2015 attacks.
“It was total dead silence. And there were injured people and stretchers and blood everywhere, ”the surgeon tells her psychotherapist Dr. Philippe Dayan days after the terror in Paris. “It was so bizarre. Somehow like a ballet. ”At some point the surgical gloves ran out. Since the Arte series “In Therapy” started with this patient consultation at the same time in France and Germany at the beginning of February, it has been causing a sensation. Thursday is part 11 to 15 of the 25-minute episodes. You can catch up quickly via the media library.
The response is particularly strong in the neighboring country. There, the videos put online have already been clicked 18 million times after the media library was launched at the end of January. A wave of success that Arte also describes as sensational. Therapy programs have long been nothing new in France. The daily newspaper “Le Parisien” explains the success of the series in 35 parts as collective therapy. Because she falls back on a drama that rocked France to the core: the attack on the Parisian concert hall Bataclan on November 13, 2015 with at least 89 dead.
In “In Therapy”, the psychotherapist Philippe Dayan receives five clients in his Paris practice. Each session corresponds to a sequence of up to 30 minutes. You attend the weekly analysis for more than seven weeks. The first begins three days after the Islamist attacks on November 16 with Ariane, who had to continuously operate on the injured after the massacre in Bataclan. You follow nobility. He is a police officer in a special unit that was on duty that Friday evening. He tells how he had to wade through blood and over corpses. Images that have never let go of him since then.
In addition to the two, there is a 16-year-old competitive swimmer with suicidal intentions and finally the couple Damien and Léonora in Philippe’s practice, who are deep in a relationship crisis. Even if none of the protagonists was directly injured in the murderous attacks, the attacks hit them all in some way. Also Philippe, whose apartment is only a few steps away from the place of terror. He hopes to find help from a therapist he knows, with whom he cut off years ago. There is war everywhere, Philippe explained the situation. All relationships in society are tense.
“In Therapy” is the French adaptation of one of the most exported Israeli series. It ran under the title “BeTipul” between 2005 and 2008. Since then it has been exported to numerous countries and adapted to the relevant context. It is the first series by the successful duo Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, which became internationally known with “Pretty Best Friends”. The directors have transferred the series to the French cultural area with a sure instinct and ease. From the individual fates they have drawn the picture of a fragile nation that experienced trauma with the attacks in 2015.
The whole thing is a perfect chamber play with outstanding actors like Reda Kateb (policeman), Mélanie Thierry (young surgeon), Carole Bouquet (supervisor) and Frédéric Pierrot (Dr. Dayan). It escapes voyeurism and brings up issues such as violence, racism, discrimination and sexual abuse.
In Jacques Lacan’s country, there is great interest in psychoanalysis. The French psychiatrist (1901-1981) reinterpreted the writings of Sigmund Freud. According to a survey published in January 2020 by the journal “Psychologies”, one in three people in France has already undergone therapy.
For Pascale Breugnot, who launched one of the first therapy programs with “Psy Show” in the 80s, the success is also due to the current crisis. Corona is suffocating us, she told the newspaper “Le Parisien”. This series, this dialogue with two or three characters in each episode, is a bit like looking for a way out that you can’t find on your own.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210217-99-473330 / 3
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