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WarJay77
(Troper Knight)
6th Feb, 2024 09:45:08 AM
There's Psycho Psychologist
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
PhyrexianAjani95
Since: Apr, 2023
6th Feb, 2024 09:46:01 AM
That works for the last example, but not necessarily the first two; Dr. Hank from Night in the Woods and the Lighthouse from True Detective are just incompetent.
E: Actually Psycho Psychologist is used on NitW's page so I guess it fits.
Edited by PhyrexianAjani95
Veanne
Since: Jul, 2012
6th Feb, 2024 10:07:21 AM
See also The Shrink
Not quite Bedlam House but also definitely not There Are No Therapists or All Therapists Are Muggles. In Night in the Woods, protagonist Mae Borowski is seeing a rural doctor (not even an accredited therapist, from what we're told) whose sole recourse for treatment is to tell her to journal her thoughts, rather than get her treatment for clear signs of dissociation and trauma brought on by both it and the mental illness in her family (her mother is implied to have some form of personality disorder, her father is a recovering alcoholic).
There's another example in True Detective season 4, where a character with a history of mental illness, up to and including suicidal thoughts and hallucinations (though there's a Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane element here) is just allowed to walk out of the institute she's being housed at, no questions asked.
Might also apply to scenarios where the therapist is actively attempting to gaslight or take advantage of their patient. The podcast The Mayfair Watchers Society (based on the works of Trevor Henderson, doesn't seem to have its own work page on the site) has an episode titled "The Apparition of Maria", where at the end it's revealed that the therapist essentially was turned evil by a past experience and was corrupting his patient into being the vessel for a similar presence.