Common Sense Media Review
By Melissa Camacho
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Real therapy sessions address intense issues; language.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 15+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
Videos and Photos
Couples Therapy
Parent and Kid Reviews
What's the Story?
COUPLES THERAPY is a documentary series that follows struggling couples undergoing therapeutic intervention. Cameras record couples from all walks of life as they discuss what they consider problematic in their relationships during weekly sessions with psychoanalyst Dr. Orna Guralnik. Throughout each session, Guralnik offers suggestions and guidance to help them think about and approach what they are struggling with differently in hopes that they can improve communication, address each other's feelings, break negative patterns of behavior, and find common ground in order to strengthen their relationships. Inbetween excerpts of these sessions, cameras capture Guralnik working through her own frustrations about her ability to help her clients and her concerns about countertransference (a conscious or unconscious emotional response to a patient during therapy) by talking with her clinical advisor, Dr. Virginia Goldner, and other professional peers, including Dr. Kirkland Vaughans. Moments where clients are in their own space or interacting with each other outside of sessions are also shown.
Is It Any Good?
What are normally private psychotherapy sessions are extremely public in this voyeuristic unscripted series, which offers an intimate look at partners working through their relationship issues. Couples Therapy meetings with Dr. Orna Guralnik are legitimate therapy sessions, and clients discuss some of their innermost feelings and concerns. However, as we learn more about them, viewers aren't given the opportunity to see or learn much about about Guralnik or the other featured therapists, thus underscoring the distant and objective relationship they are expected to maintain with their clients. Granted, all of this is delivered in polished thirty-minute episodes, despite the fact that much of what is being presented is highly edited and presented out of context. Nonetheless, there are those who will find what they see and hear on Couples Therapy to be helpful in their own lives, while others will will simply enjoy it as a bingeable series.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the reasons people seek therapy. How can it help people with their mental health?
What media stereotypes have been used to depict therapists and their clients over the years? Does Couples Therapy challenge these generalizations? How?
TV Details
- Premiere date : September 6, 2019
- Cast : Orna Guralnik , Dr. Virginia Goldner , Dr. Kirkland Vaughans
- Network : Showtime
- Genre : Reality TV
- Character Strengths : Communication , Integrity , Perseverance , Self-control
- TV rating :
- Last updated : July 24, 2024
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