Therapists in Fiction, with Aimee Walker

Psychotherapists and counsellors often feature in TV, film, and books. While there are all sorts of good story reasons to include them, they often do unrealistic things like sit in very nice offices and break boundaries with clients!

In this episode, I discuss therapists in fiction with Aimee Walker, a counsellor/psychotherapist turned romance editor. We chat about some recent bad examples – including the therapist in Dept. Q – and look at why writers might choose to include a therapist in their book or TV/film script.

You can find out more about Aimee Walker's fabulous coaching and editing business here: https://aimeewalkerproofreader.com/

Dept. Q: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27995114/

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy: https://www.bacp.co.uk/

NEW: Support this podcast on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheFreeLancerPodcast

Transcript

AH: Hello, and welcome, folks, to the Freelancer. This podcast discusses all things publishing through a social justice lens. My name is Andy Hodges. I'm a cultural anthropologist and fiction writer and editor, and I own a book editing business called the Narrative Craft. Make sure you subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode, and sign up for my fortnightly newsletter in the show notes if you want more regular updates.

Now this week, I have a really special guest. It's Aimee Walker, a book editor and coach who specializes in romance. Today's episode is all about therapists in fiction –  counselling and psychotherapists. So hi there, Amy. To start off, could you tell us a little bit about your coaching and editing business?

AW: I graduated in English literature way back in the early 2000s and wanted to go into publishing, but I live in Northern Ireland. And at the time, there was no route to publishing other than leaving and going to London, really. And I didn't want to do that. So I pivoted a bit and ended up having my kids and then going into counselling when they were young. I had a bit of postnatal depression, and I found that there was very little support, and thought that I would qualify and try and help other people like me.
 
And that was my route into counselling. I then ended up pivoting again and going into working with kids with special needs. But I always really still had the dream of publishing, you know, getting into publishing and working with books. That was my dream. So when my kids were a bit older and all in secondary school, one of them was ill, and I had to take time off work long term to look after him.
 
And I used that time to requalify. And I got all my editing and qualifications and just jumped right in. And once I got my proofreading qualifications, I started editing everything. I didn't have a niche for a while, I got into a group of writers who started to kind of pass me around to each other, if that makes sense.
 
And they were all romance. And it kind of stemmed from that, you know, a natural thing. It wasn't that I intended to go straight into romance. It just kinda found me. I love working with women.
 
I love working with female writers or LGBTQ+ writers. And so women's fiction and romance are my real love. And then after about a year or so of editing, I realized that my background was perfect for coaching. So I've been coaching writers now for about eight years as well.
 
And I love both still. 

AH: Yeah. I'm the same. I love both editing and coaching. So today's episode is all about therapists in fiction: counselling and psychotherapists.
 
 And I'm curious, first of all, how this counselling background informs your work in both romance and in coaching. 

AW: I think counselling has probably benefited every job that I've done. But I use those skills all the time for a lot of different reasons. When I was a counsellor, I did use different parts of theories, but I was always, I always favoured person-centred. And now I consider my work to be client-centred.
 
 So it's in a similar vein because no one size fits all with editing work or coaching or, any, you know, I believe that counselling works well that way, that that client centred way of working is right. And I love coaching, teaching, and mentoring. Counselling, I guess, stands behind that for me. Working closely with people is important to me. And so it's not an impersonal relationship that I have with my clients.
 
 I like to work with them closely and get them to reach their potential and improve their skills, increase their confidence. That's both with writers, and then more recently with editors who want to become coaches or want to improve their business. In editing itself, I think it helps me because I know, well, I guess I'm quite in tune to character. I find that the the most important. I'm very character-driven instead of plot-driven.
 
 And I guess the emotion and the relationships in fiction are important to me. And I'm quite good at picking out when an author needs to up the emotion or intensify it to make the the plot better. And I often find that the newer writers struggle with that the most, you know – finding the emotion doesn't come naturally to them, if that makes sense.
 
 AH: It does make sense. And that's something I know that I struggled with when I started doing creative writing as well. But part of me wondered whether that was a more typically masculine problem

AW: I think sometimes it's that they're so focused on getting the plot written. They're focused on the facts of the plot, if that makes sense. So they maybe skip the feeling part of it.
 
 I find that I do a lot of work on sex scenes, and I find that's the issue with those a lot of the time too – they're super mechanical. Being told, you know, what positions they're in or, you know, where they are and what clothes are coming off, but actually forgetting about what the characters are feeling at the time. I don't know if that really stems from counselling, but I think knowing people and knowing about emotions is definitely helpful for that. 

AH: Okay. It reminds me of two things I learned on the Curtis Brown Editing and Revising Your Novel course.
 
 This idea that "the magic is in the rewrite" and the draft is really very rough and ready. And the other point that I learned was that all good fiction is basically relationship fiction. 

AW: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

AH: Lots of my therapist friends bemoan how therapists are often represented badly in novels, TV show, and films. So I wondered, do you have a worst example of a fictional therapist, of all, or a bad example? 

AW: I think that to a certain extent, all industries probably bemoan how they're represented on film. Yeah. I know I don't like the way editing is portrayed in a lot of fiction. It's very glamorized and totally unrealistic.
 
But I guess the difference in how therapy comes across on screen is that it could potentially put someone who needs it off or give them an unrealistic expectation of what they're going to find in therapy. Partly, I think, because a lot of what we see on screen is American and maybe not even a necessarily realistic American portrayal of therapy. But American therapy is very, very different from from ours. 

We don't diagnose. We don't prescribe drugs. So if someone from the UK was to use an American fiction example on screen and think, oh, that's that, I'm gonna go to a counsellor and that's what they're gonna be like.
 
 It would be, maybe, disappointing or just not ideal, I guess. We know. And if you've had counselling yourself, you know that these fictional representations aren't realistic. But people who haven't had counselling before and they're maybe on the fence about having it – that's where the the problem lies, I guess.
 
AH: That's really important. I'd never thought about those US and UK differences before. One other thing that came comes to mind to me with fictional therapists is that, well, when you watch a soap opera, you see so much drama happen in one street, like, I don't know, Coronation Street, that almost certainly doesn't happen in a regular street. Right? And with therapy, like, fiction's all about, in one sense, creating drama, but therapeutic practice is often about removing drama from people's lives.
 
 So there's, like, a tension there, I think. 

AW: Yeah. Absolutely. I think one of the things too, is a difference between reality and fiction. I've been watching Department Q on Netflix recently, and this came to mind with this show as well. Apart from the fact that the main character has had a a traumatic experience; he's been being shot in the line of duty and is having mandatory counselling through work.

And I don't know if you did any of that type of counselling [both editors have trained as counsellors], but for me, that was it was a very, you know, you maybe got four or six sessions. When you work in those kind of situations, you share offices, and the offices are like these little box rooms with two chairs and a table. And you get a room depending on which room is free. So sometimes you're never in the same room twice. You see that client, you know, and you maybe sign a piece of paper to say that they've attended, which is more, I guess, a monetary thing than being mandatory.

But all this shows that the therapist has this gorgeous office lined with bookshelves and plants and all this, you know, with a penthouse and in a beautiful building and all of that. And then in this show, the therapist actually goes to his workplace to find him when he hasn't attended a session. That was shocking for me. It's the boundaries; the boundaries are broken all over the place. This is so not representative of what therapy is like.

AH: You would never have even dreamt of going to find a client if they hadn't shown up, amongst other things. But, yeah, that all seems to be quite common. I think that links back to, like, this constant breaking of boundaries that I see in TV series, especially with therapists. I think, I mean, that creates more drama, I guess, but it's not true to how professional therapists operate. They would quickly be in hot water with the associations.
 
 In the UK, there's the BACP, I think. A bit like the CIEP for editors. They, the therapists, are accountable to institutions as well, so they can't just turn up at the place of work of a client. Or their house even.
 
 AW: I guess, you know, artistic license, and it's a great show. I've really enjoyed the show. It's just one element of it that, with that experience, you kinda go, this would just never happen. And if it did, she wouldn't be a counsellor for very long.
 
 You know, it just, all sorts of boundaries are being broken all over the place. But I guess we kinda have to just say, well, it's fiction, and hope that no one is too influenced by that depiction of it. 

AH: Yeah. Are there, in your opinion, any positive examples of fictional therapists, therapists that do hold boundaries and behave in a professional way? 

AW: I think the most obvious one that comes to mind is the therapist in the Sopranos.
 
 I know it's, like, quite an old reference. I think she had such a difficult client to work with, and she always seemed to be ... you know, it's so long since I've watched it. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I do remember thinking at the time that she was really good at her job. More recently, I don't know if you've watched it, but I've been watching Shrinking.

AH: No, I've not seen that. 

AW: Harrison Ford as a therapist in America. Again, it's a comedy. Okay. So we've talked a little bit about therapists and fiction from a counselling and coaching perspective.
 
Now with our developmental editing hats on, why might writers or screenwriters choose to include a therapist or counsellor in their novel? And what useful story functions can such characters serve? 

AW: I think a therapy session is a really good way to get to know a character, to provide information about them, to show their flaws and their wounds and their vulnerability in a way that is natural and not, you know, tons of exposition or lots of flashbacks or, you know, that type of thing. In romance, particularly, you could use couples counselling, especially in a marriage-in-trouble trope, and it can be a good way to get the couple together.
 
The proximity is important, too, obviously, to get the issues that they have aired, and it can help increase the tension, can add conflict, but can also help to resolve it, at the same time. So it it can be a really useful tool if you do it well. I don't see it a huge amount, but I think people do find it difficult because, again, if you haven't had counselling before or, you know, if you're coming from a position of ignorance, really, and you've been using the the counsellor as a device to get that backstory across or to, you know, use dialogue rather than it being a natural, realistic, authentic portrayal of a session where actual insight happens and a person gains something from that. You know, characters should gain something from it, or it should at least add that layer of tension, or it has to serve another purpose other than just to get that backstory on the page, if that makes sense. It's it's not just, you know, a quick trick to just shove it there.
 
The session in there, and that'll be the way of them telling their story rather than actually using that for the benefit of the reader, and not just making the therapist a a sounding board. You know, have the therapist actually be a person and react in a natural way and ask the right questions and not just say "how do you feel about that?"  over and over again.
 
And so, I've seen some pretty poor examples of it in some of my client work, and I can generally help with that. But one of the things I would suggest is that the writer at least watch a real session somehow.  Or even better, go and have a session themselves so they can feel what it's like to be in that room and to be vulnerable and to have somebody reflect their feelings back to them and feel how powerful that can be. Rather than a really just two dimensional, wishy-washy sense of a session, which is what I tend to read in drafts.
 
AH: That makes a lot of sense. And it links to the wider points about authenticity and sensitivity reading, of doing careful research and if possible, experiencing some of those things first-hand. So are there any tips or advice that you'd give to romance or general writers who are including a therapist in their novel? Tips that you haven't mentioned already, of course.

AW: I think if you respect your reader and know that your reader will pick out these. So they won't be fooled if you aren't being authentic, or if you're not portraying something in an accurate but also interesting and engaging way, the reader will pick up on that. They'll not be fulfilled by your use of a a two-dimensional therapist to get your backstory across or whatever it is, whatever reason you're using it. So allow the therapist to provide insight, to be empathic, to be understanding, but also challenging. And understand that most people do leave therapy with a better understanding of themselves.

Yeah. And that's kinda the key to it. So the use of the therapist should enable the character to grow and be a good way of getting their character arc to develop in the way that you want it to. And remember that the emotion is the key to it, but also be careful not to fall into a cliche trap. Yeah.

Don't just go by what you've seen on TV. Do your research. Maybe even look into some theories because one of the things in the show, Shrinking, that I was talking about earlier, they're meant to be a CBT [cognitive behavioural therapy] practice. Mhmm. 

AH: But they're not?

AW: There's no CBT to be seen. I haven't seen anything even remotely like CBT on it. So if you if you're talking about a CBT therapist, they have very specific ways of working. 

AH: Yeah. Same as, you know, transactional analysis, like, and my type of counselling was very specific to a particular client.

AW: So do do a bit of research. You don't have to become a counsellor, you know? But having a basic knowledge of it will help you get an authentic representation of it. And, yes, you are allowed artistic license, and no one's gonna criticize you for that, but you do it with a level of basic understanding behind that.
 
That's my take. 

AH: Right. Okay. Yeah. That links to the more general points about it being better if you can learn a trope and subvert it rather than to just do a bad job of it, which is often what happens when you're starting out as a new writer, especially without experience in those areas. Okay. So that pretty much wraps up our discussion of therapists in fiction. Before I finish this episode, tell us where listeners can find you.

AW: I am on Instagram and LinkedIn as an Aimee Walker Editorial or AWE press. awepress.com is my website. My next coaching-skills class for editors with the CIEP is in October, and it's already half-full.
 
I have some mentoring sessions for editors who want to get set up in coaching with support. And I have a a deal for six sessions at the moment over the summer. And I also provide supervision sessions to coaches, especially new ones who kinda need better support through the process. So, yeah, you can find me, on my website for all that, and for editing and coaching for writers as well. 

AH: Okay. I'll put a link to your website in the show notes as well.
 
And for listeners who are unfamiliar, what is coaching supervision exactly?

AW: Counsellors have supervision. It's when a more experienced counsellor helps you to talk through your client work, make sure you're holding your boundaries, unlike all those TV shows that we mentioned. Yeah. To kinda make sure you're being ethical with your client, that you're doing the best for them, but that you're also protecting yourself. Yeah.
 

And I think new coaches can sometimes try and do everything for their clients, and maybe fall into a trap of giving too much, you know, time-wise. They maybe just need a little bit of support to say "okay. You've done what you can, maybe back off a little bit." And just to give them a little bit of confidence because the impostor syndrome, you know, especially when you're starting a new service and when it's face-to-face with clients. Yeah.
 
The impostor syndrome can be a bit overwhelming. So it's just an opportunity to increase their confidence a little bit, with a bit of support from someone who's been doing it for for a while. 

AH: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And I know for my own coaching practice, I've benefited a lot from having a transactional analysis [a coaching and counselling modality] supervisor.
 
And it's given me a lot more clarity on where boundaries are, between, say, coaching and consulting or coaching and counselling versus psychotherapy. Because it would be unethical for me as a coach to drop into a counselling or psychotherapy way of engaging. 

AW: Yeah. That's true. But I don't think, you know, [being supervised as a coach] is not common practice at the moment.

I don't think that many people are using it, but I find it useful for me through my coaching because I always found it useful as a counsellor, and it seemed a natural fit. So I think it's very useful, and I would recommend it to anyone who's starting out or who's been coaching for a while. I still find it useful now. Yeah. No.
 
 AH: I feel exactly the same. And you can claim it as a business expense too, which you can't for personal therapy.

AW: That's so true. Yeah. Yeah.
 
 AH: So okay. Well, thank you very much, Aimee, for being my guest on this podcast. 

AW: Thank you for having me. Thank you. 

AH: And that's pretty much it for this week and for season one.
 
 So thank you everybody for listening. If you've enjoyed season one, now is the time to let me know by writing a review. And thank you so much to everyone who's written a review of this podcast already. Now I'll be back in September with more guests, so there'll be a lot more guests in season two and a lot more episodes. And I'll also be covering fiction writing craft topics alongside the small business pain points and dilemmas that I've covered so far.
 
 So in a way, this final episode of season one is a taster for what you can expect more of in season two. Apart from that, don't forget to take a look at the show notes for all the useful links. Have a wonderful summer, and see you next time.