LIVRO The Sopranos and Psychoanalysis (Medicine in Television Series) (English Edition) PDF Oriol Estrada

Tony Soprano is nervous. He does not know where to sit when he enters the psychiatrist’s office. “I shouldn’t be here”, he has written all over his face. It all began during a family barbecue when he fainted in front of his two families (his blood relations and his in-laws). The diagnosis: a panic attack. His doctor and neighbor suggested he visit a psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi, who also conducts psychoanalysis. Despite fainting episodes being highly unusual in panic attacks, we have to concede to the creators of The Sopranos that it is probably one of the TV series that has best portrayed modern psychoanalysis. Proof of this is recognition by the American Psychoanalytic Association, which awarded a prize to Lorraine Bracco, the actress who plays Tony’s therapist, for having portrayed the most credible psychoanalyst appearing on film or television. The truth is, until then the image of the psychoanalyst had barely changed from what it was in the early twentieth century: a Sigmund Freud type smoking a pipe while a (hysterical) patient reclines on a divan, raving incessantly. Directors such as Woody Allen have not strayed very far from that more classical idea when portraying psychoanalysis on the big screen. So it is understandable that her “pop psychoanalyst” image was so out of step with the broader public (and despite her character, it remains so).