Dear Peggy, (and Glen and Joel),
Well, I am SOOO glad you see the redemptive side of Tony’s character intermixed within his sociopathy. Is it a revisitation of his innocence prior to his pre-adolescent trauma of witnessing a bit of “de-digitalization”? (Talk about your textbook castration anxiety!) Or is he, like so many people, a complex admixture of all the elements that make us human, with a lot more “outlaw culture” sanctioning his utilization of certain more unsavory “powers of persuasion.” In a dinner-table scene in the first season, one of Dr. Cusamano’s guests claims that many a corporate boardroom smacks of similarly coercive tactics as those of the mob. So, as reprehensible as he often seems, in another sense, Tony is just running a business and trying hard to be a good father to his family, albeit in ways that may not (and should not) suit us.
He is, after all, as you aver about us therapists, “simply more human than otherwise.” Ironically, however, he can’t always comfort himself with this realization. He pays the price of all forms of pedestalization in his life just as therapists and clergy do. Granting that all of these institutions–the church, the mob, the profession of mental-health providers–all contribute to fortifying certain idealizations, I think that the fascination that the audience has is in the normalcy of the fall from grace that is suggested by all who tumble from exalted positions on the pedestal. Isn’t that partly why so many shrinks watch this show? You don’t have to like Jennifer’s technique, or even that of HER therapist to still resonate with “we’re all more human than otherwise.” No therapist I know wouldn’t at least be tempted to peek out the bathroom window of his host to spy her patient’s manse.
There is something refreshing, something liberating, in all of this. This doesn’t warrant going hog wild, however; on the contrary. As Glen suggested, Jennifer’s resilient “No!” at that end of the last episode is as much stopping herself from going where she and a million viewers might wish for her to go: to merely drop the a hint about the rape and know that the perp would be readily dispatched. Her “No!” captures that quintessential moment where her humanity drags her back from the empowerment of enacting her revenge. She is on her way to realizing that her wish needn’t be enacted at all for her to still feel entitled to it. But there is no simple triumph portrayed here either (thank God!). Of course, she still has to keep her Rottweiler around, and with that we will have to see what effect that may have on their treatment relationship. But I keep thinking one implication it has is to fortify something that Jennifer has held to all along. That is, that there is something in Tony’s socioapathy that makes sense, as well as something about it for which he (and his family) have to pay an ungodly price. It is only when analysts have the integrity to dip into the fray of their patient’s mess, to smell it, taste it, be tempted by it, and then take it to another plane of consideration, that what we do ever amounts to a hill of beans.
Phil
