Dear Phil and Joel,
I also thought the punch line at the end involving A.J.’s fainting was hilarious. Of course, another inaccuracy is that fainting is not actually a symptom of panic disorder even though Tony is fainting all over the place. It’s the FEAR of fainting that is more typical. Two of the writers, Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, also executive producers, spoke at an analytic meeting last year in L.A., where they were given an award. When we asked them about how they came up with such accurate depictions of psychotherapy in the series, they said that most of the writing team had been in psychotherapy themselves. They don’t actually use consultants for the therapy scenes (except for medication questions), but the accuracy appears to stem from good treatment experiences in their own lives.
