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Film therapists evolved from all-knowing 1950s experts to fallible, burned-out figures today.

The 1970s anti-psychiatry movement recast Hollywood's therapist as an agent of control.

Films later embraced Jung's "wounded healer," where a therapist's own pain becomes insight.

In these films, spanning the 1950s to the 2020s, we can see an evolution of the film therapist as an archetype. Fears, anxieties, and fantasies about how we view therapists, in relation to what is going on in our society and culture, project themselves onto the screen. From paternal, rational expert to the unreliable, traumatized therapist, we can see a total inversion of the therapist portrayal.

Three Faces of Eve (1957)

Dr. Curtis Luther (Lee J. Cobb) is portrayed as a paternal, rational authority figure. He uses fatherly tactics with Eve in a........

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