The King’s Speech And The Effects Of Psychoanalytic Therapy
Cinema and psychoanalysis have an endless relationship of encounters and disagreements. On the one hand, both seek to find the truth, although always half-heartedly, and on the other hand, while cinema dictates stories and creates avatars of desire, psychoanalysis rather points out the impossibility of a conclusive story, the search for the lost object and unavailable.
However, the value of cinema within psychoanalysis is indisputable, since in the manifest themes of the films it is possible to discover latent content, creating a parallel path for the recognition of the unconscious.
In this case, we will analyze the movie The king’s speech from a psychoanalytic perspective This work brings us more intimately closer to the historical figure King George VI of the United Kingdom. At first it seems that the film is directed towards a monarchical, historical and family context; However, the latent motive is to show the steps of a therapeutic process, the relief or reduction of the symptom and the path to cure. Through this analysis we will see some fundamental elements for the effectiveness of psychoanalytic therapy.
The king’s speech and its implications in psychoanalysis
The film shows the story of the Duke of York (Bertie) who is forced to be king after the death of his father and the abdication of the throne by his brother. The dilemma is that since his childhood Bertie suffers from a severe stutter that does not allow him to speak fluently and therefore harms his role as king in a complicated period of history. This leads him to desperately search for a solution to his problem and after much searching he arrives at the speech therapist/analyst Lionel, who will show him a deeper approach to his symptom.
At first, we see that the initial contact is made by the wife after a long unsuccessful search to solve her husband’s problem. Despair leads them to the door of Lionel, a therapist with a rather peculiar style However, in order to begin treatment, it is essential that Bertie’s motivation goes beyond simply pleasing his wife.
In the initial session, Bertie is very resistant and wants to be the person who directs the process by telling Lionel how they are going to work; However, Lionel quickly manages to establish the framework, starting from the phrase: “my castle, my rules”, establishing from the beginning that he will be the one who will set the parameters within the sessions. The frame is established when Lionel tells the king that they will meet in his office and not anywhere else, that during the appointment he cannot smoke and that the only way he is going to call him is Bertie and not like someone from royalty. In addition, Lionel establishes the number of sessions per week and the fees.
Therapeutic alliance
It is precisely the setting, and these constant variables, that will allow the therapeutic alliance between patient and analyst. The therapeutic alliance implies some kind of relationship, in which the healthy aspects of I of the patient form an association with the therapist who, like two opponents, fight against the patient’s neurotic elements
However, there are some elements of I of the patient who oppose the therapeutic process. On the one hand, the patient wishes to alleviate his neurotic suffering and his incapacity, but, on the other hand, he does not want to give up his neurosis since it represents his best adaptive attempt to resolve a psychic conflict.
The desire to maintain the neurosis is called resistance and can be both conscious and unconscious In Bertie’s case we see that, after the initial contact, he leaves the session very angry saying that Lionel’s work is a big scam. In this case, the therapeutic alliance is not only affected by the language disorder, but mainly by the lack of confidence that Bertie feels in the unconventional techniques used by his therapist and consequently, the transference processes are interrupted.
However, Lionel cunningly manages to decrease unconscious resistance through music, pausing Bertie’s thoughts and getting him to record a speech. When Bertie listens to the recording he returns to Lionel voluntarily and willing to begin a process with him, it can then be said that the treatment truly begins from this point when there is a real desire on the part of the patient.
The therapist in the place of supposed knowledge
At this moment, Bertie places Lionel, as Lacan would say, in the place of the Supposed to know, which is the element that allows treatment to begin. This Supposed to know It is what comes to complement that emptiness than the general symptom, what does this mean that is happening to me? And it puts the subject to work to find that answer. The patient comes to the consultation for a manifest reason, but within the psychoanalytic model it is believed that this reason contains a response to the symptom and it is precisely this that allows the transference to be established and for the analyst to reach the most intimate place of the subject, that is say to the place of the fault. However, we observe in the film that Lionel doesn’t rush the process; On the contrary, he respects Bertie’s autonomy and the treatment time
The autonomy It is a principle that refers to the fact that psychologists should not make or interfere in the decisions of their patients because they consider them free agents. Bertie returns to therapy, but tells Lionel that he only wants to work on the mechanics of speech and not personal nonsense. Logue does not agree with this because he believes that he will only alleviate the problem superficially, however, he respects his decision and begins a therapy based only on physical exercises. It is later in the film that we see that Bertie begins to trust Lionel more and thanks to this he is able to share something about his personal history with him
The discourse and the symptom
He non-speech It is considered a clinical obstacle, since it causes the closure of the unconscious and intervenes with transference processes. As Lacan would say, “the unconscious is structured like a language,” and that is why psychoanalysis moves in the field of linguistics, in the relationship between meaning and signifier and in the chain that is established from it. The symptom comes to hide an unknown truth and through discourse the subject says more than he knows and unconsciously organizes what was not symbolized at first. In addition, we observe the mind-body relationship, this arrangement also has a direct effect on stuttering.
At the end of the film, Bertie manages to give the final speech with a noticeable improvement. As we can see, the symptom does not disappear completely, but rather takes on a more adaptive form.
