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Psychotherapists are frequently portrayed in film as omniscient healers, seductive figures, boundary-violating anti-heroes, or ethically compromised saviours. These portrayals are not merely entertainment; they shape powerful cultural fantasies about psychotherapy that often enter the therapy room.

This webinar offers a critical examination of how therapists are represented in cinema and how these images influence client expectations, trainee therapists’ internal models of practice, and assumptions about therapeutic power and intimacy. Drawing on psychodynamic and relational perspectives, the session explores how cinematic depictions exaggerate authority, collapse boundaries, and dramatise erotic transference in ways that distort the realities of ethical psychotherapy.

The webinar will also examine the broader cultural myths that cinema circulates about psychotherapy—myths of cure, confession, mastery, and emotional omnipotence—and how these narratives subtly influence transference, countertransference, and professional identity. Through selected film examples and clinical reflection, participants will be invited to consider how therapists can recognise, contain, and work thoughtfully with these inherited images rather than unconsciously enact them. This webinar is designed to deepen clinicians’ cultural and relational awareness, sharpen ethical sensitivity, and support more reflective engagement with the powerful fantasies that accompany therapeutic work.