The First Five Weeks of Season 3 of The Sopranos

This spring, Slate will ask Dr. Melfi's real-life counterparts to examine developments on The Sopranos. Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., is a professor of psychoanalysis at the Menninger Clinic and co-author of Psychiatry and the Cinema. Philip A. Ringstrom, Ph.D., Psy.D., is an analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles and a full-time practitioner. Joel Whitebook, a practicing analyst in New York, is on the faculty of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Margaret Crastnopol, Ph.D., is on the faculty of the Northwest Center for Psychoanalysis and a practicing psychologist/psychoanalyst in Seattle. Click here to comment on Sunday night's episode.

Who are these people?

Dear Gang,

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Glen, we may just have to disagree about Jennifer's finding redemptive features amid Tony's sociopathy. I think your speculation about Jennifer's attraction as a female therapist fitting the profile is interesting insofar as you have seen similar in other situations. But you also know that despite your seminal and brilliant research on boundary violations by therapists of their patients (you literally wrote the book!), that generalization from group profiles to individual cases is risky if not downright spurious. Jennifer has been "hanging 10" on the slippery slope for three seasons now, and the closest she has ever come to slipping off it was when she slid off the toilet a couple of seasons back during the Cusomano dinner party while sneaking a peek at Tony's house.

And, Peggy, while I find laudatory your attempts at improving all the treatment arrangements of all the therapeutic matchings, I also keep hoping your expert advice is not remotely followed by the writers. I know we continue to disagree on this point. You think the therapy can be better represented, (possibly a better PR campaign for our work?), I keep thinking the cheesiness keeps it very interesting. Meanwhile, I love the psychoeducational aspect of your postings. Their relevance in the context of the scorched-earth policies of managed care is timely indeed.

Now on to some more thoughts I began last night, so you guys can have a shot at skewering me. I think part of the romance that Americans are having with The Sopranos is more than just reducible to D.B. Cooper fetishism (though surely, Glen, you are right that this plays here too). But I think it's more about an ongoing cultural leitmotif (post-Vietnam if we must carbon date it, though maybe as old as America herself), wherein we love to de-idealize the very institutions we count on idealizing. The Sopranos boldly erodes most of our institutional verities having thus far taken broadsides at psychiatry, religion, educational institutions, and yes, the family itself. Nothing is exempt; certainly nothing is sacred (OK, maybe Italian cooking). What a brilliant stroke of genius Sunday night that the rapist was "Employee of the Month." No form of idealization or commendation exempts anyone from the vicissitudes of their humanness, dark side and all. But what is also amazing about the show is that where most of the context of contemporary criticism often leaves us with nihilism, this show leaves us with something very compelling. What we are left with is the enduring power of relationships.

Part of the whole mob family appeal is its passionate relationship system. One that lives outside mainstream law and order when it must, but assimilates readily at church, at school, at the market, at the hairdresser's, even in the upscale neighborhood (making the latter safer if we are to take Dr. Cuzamano's word for it). The mob family seems appealing because it doesn't let its own members get pushed around by mainstream rules of law and order. It defines its own rules, and of course therein often creates some that are far worse. It can be pretty stifling to have to live by a paranoid-organized code of silence that threatens brutal sanction, if not annihilation, if violated. But stay within its rules and life can be bountiful, protected, and even fun. The boys have fun at Bada Bing. They have fun acting like clowns dressed up in the World War II gear they heisted in Season 2. How much fun they had was really captured when contrasted to Tony being "grounded" by his lawyer, who, insisting he maintain a low profile, left him whining on his cell phone that he couldn't come out and play.

As disturbing as many of the relationships that the show reveals are, it is all about them, and it underscores that they are all that are left when the old orders begin to crumble. Of course Jennifer needs her Roman Rottweiler protector. I think she may even wish to sic him on the perp. But why does she stop? I think it's more than a professional code of ethics, though admittedly maybe I'm the sap here. I think it's because she somehow gets it that if she exploits her relationship with Tony, turns him loose to do her dirty work, then she will be no better off than the rapist. She will have violated her relationship with Tony, both as therapist and fellow human. Did many of us wish for her to sic him? You bet, a simple majority of responses on "The Fray" bore that out. Jennifer's restraint is not simply some version of "two wrongs don't make a right." It's much more that the only thing that enables her to heal after what she went through is a relationship. Just knowing that Tony would be there for her as her Rottweiler may be enough, without any spoken word about what occurred. Without any need to exploit the reality of his revenge upon her perp. Of course, we analysts are not supposed to derive such relief from our patients, and if such a dyadic arrangement went unanalyzed, it would eventually bankrupt the treatment. But for now, it's too much to expect otherwise of Jennifer; she is simply human. She needs more than just her therapist's empathic words or her husband's and son's impotent threats, she needs to dream of the dog that would have his day at her bidding. To this time be her unconditional "best friend" even if only in her private reverie.

Phil

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