I went into Joshua Haiden's short film, Narben, completely blind, and I'm glad I did. Within minutes, I was like - yep. Been there, done that. Not so much on the patient side, though. I'm a very non-confrontational person and would probably die if I tried to speak with that much nakedness about my projections. But as a psychologist myself, I have been in that chair, in that "I know a lot about you, but you know nothing about me" position. Let me tell you, it doesn't feel nearly as comfortable as it might seem.
The psychologist in Narben works in a recognisably psychoanalytic way. In this type of therapy, we intentionally try to become a blank canvas. “Yes, place all your projections, your fears, whatever it is that my face, my way of speaking, my choice of clothes evoke in you.” In real life, we have to be careful with that. We are not entitled to walk around throwing our issues onto other people. But in therapy? Fair game.
Psychologists train for that. We train to bear the weight of sometimes becoming the object of hatred, irritation, or appearing to be insensitive arseholes when patients are met with silence. Or quite the contrary. Becoming the object of affection, of embodied perfection, of rounded common sense. If I'm being honest, the reality is usually a mix of both.
The ability to become a blank canvas depends on the psychologist's ability to set aside their own need to defend or justify themselves, prioritizing the patient's experience instead. Isn't it funny how silence can feel offensive? How the absence of information you have on the therapist might feel intimidating? We remain neutral not because we don't feel anything, but because we do. The canvas is actually really full and inhabited, it's just sitting on the side. Making room for another person's world.
I really appreciate how Narben is set up in such a way that we get to visually accompany Lina's stream of consciousness; her free associations scattered across everything she feels and sees. Nostalgia, affection, the desire to flee from her son, hatred towards her therapist but adoration as well, albeit displayed with disdain.
I especially adore when she expresses how deeply abnormal she feels, only to go on and say the most absurdly human feelings. People just hide it. She probably does too, the moment she steps outside of that clinic. I guess I believe that this feeling of inadequacy unifies us as human beings, you know? Deep inside we always think we're a little abnormal. Too sad. Too crazy. Too harmful.
The moment the therapist offered her shoes, I genuinely smiled; sometimes we do feel like doing that. Like, in a literal sense. Especially when your day has been awful and you have to work around a subject you know a little too well. The desire comes, but it goes. That's the work. The projection is important because it helps you understand which figures, which scars, your patient is recreating with you. Life is nuanced, people are umami.
After the shoe-offering, the scene cuts. We hear a door slam shut, and suddenly the lighting changes. It's cooler now, darker, as though clouds had drifted across the sun. When Lina was speaking before, the light was warm and there was soft music. For me, that made it clear when the therapeutic setting was in place. Her therapist was making sure that an atmosphere had been created so Lina could have her session. It is never just a room, it is never just a simple conversation. It's thought through.
When we see the therapist afterwards, alone in the room, we get to see her genuine reactions: flustered and lost in thought. We're allowed to see her as a person. She sits on the couch in front of her chair and we're reminded that the patient's shoes are her shoes as well. She's almost certainly someone's patient too. In this story, she just happens to be sitting on the other side.
In its 9 minutes and 15 seconds, just like a therapist normally does, Narben feels like it doesn't show it all, but it says enough.
In psychoanalysis, we have a concept that's called the “Good Enough”. It comes from Winnicott's theory of child development. He argued that, in order to help a child grow well in this chaotic world of ours, a caregiver has to be “good enough”.
What he meant was: you don't pick the baby up the exact moment they begin to cry. You let them learn to tolerate a small amount of frustration. Still, you will pick them up at some point and give them what it is they need. You provide love and genuine attention, so that they trust you, and as a consequence, trust themselves later on.
As therapists, within all the necessary boundaries of a professional relationship, we become caregivers in some way. We have to give: not too much, not too little. Just enough. And that is extraordinarily complex.
At the end, we see the therapist's wrist, with her scars and flower tattoo. When I first saw it, I had to go back because I felt as though I'd already seen it before, but in Lina. And it's true. Both of them are shown with the same scars, the same tattoo, the same wrist.
I wondered whether the intention was to suggest that the therapist was Lina. Perhaps a future version having a conversation with her younger self, encountering herself at an age when she was so frightened, so lost in her own world.
But in the end that's not the reading I chose in my own imagination.
I prefer the idea that they simply share scars. I feel as if it makes it even more precious when we recognise our own wounds in someone else. That most of us probably share remarkably similar pain with countless other people, yet somehow insist that it only happens to us. That we are the unlucky ones. I know that feels true, but normally, it isn't. No one who suffers is alone in their suffering, and no one who heals does it alone.
Behind a psychologist there are many other people who stand alongside them: their years in therapy, supervisors, theorists, philosophers, professors, and of course, patients. You're seeing a person who has experienced things you haven't, just as you have experienced things they haven't. Whoever you're hoping to find in your therapist won't be a person who knows more about you than you do. They aren't the ones who possess the truth about you. In fact, the work is precisely to resist that position.
Narben ends with another patient entering the room. She sits and observes the space, waiting for the therapist to return.
In my second watch I played pretend and imagined what the psychologist does when she disappears from the screen. I bet she's drinking a glass of water… wondering what she'll have for dinner tonight, wondering if she's a shitty professional. While she does that, I imagine her slowly fading out once more, and when she finally sits down on her chair, the light will be warm again. Yellowish. The therapist is back in session, ready to listen.