Weston's In Treatment Analysis

In Treatment is HBO’s TV series about a psychologist Dr. Paul Weston and his weekly sessions with patients. One of the patient Weston evaluated named Sophie, a fifteen-year-old promising gymnast attempting suicide by rammed into a car while on a bike. Throughout the sessions, Sophie’s ambivalence and pressures which results from her divorced parents is broken down by Weston. Weston frees Sophie from guilt about her father’s affair and her mother depression and help her repairs the relationships with her parents. In this paper I will discuss about Weston’s therapist style and orientation toward Sophie’s problems and behavior.
In the TV series In Treatment, suicide attempt and the rough relationship between Sophie and her parents are the major …show more content…
In order to performed an effective therapy, a good quality of the therapist-client relationship is the best factor to perform and improve client functioning. Moreover, client responds best to an empathetic and warm therapist. Weston has a good relationship with Sophie and he shows competent, dedicated and compassion. He always encourages Sophie many times saying “I understand how scary it could be” to show his empathy. Also, he operates a flexible conversation style which allows Sophie to direct the conversation with the topic she like to talk about. Also Weston uses guide discover style, which is asking clients a series questions that allows information to be brought into the client’s awareness, allowing Sophie to discover for herself instead of telling her what her problem is which may raise Sophie’s resistance from getting help from Weston. Whenever Sophie wants to change the subject, Weston generally allows that. These indulgence and unforceful session may be due to Sophie is a teenager. As a teenager, Sophie may not like other people telling her what to do. Most of the time, Weston is an attentive listener with a finely calm tone that reduce patient’s ego-distance. He is not really talkative during the therapy, and instead of telling Sophie about his thoughts about her comments directly, he sometimes asking open ended questions allowing Sophie to express more of herself and paraphrasing Sophie’s …show more content…
He uses guide discovery and Socratic questioning to assess the reasons of Sophie’s excesses pattern and tries to change Sophie’s maladaptive thoughts. Weston also uses psychoanalysis to interpret Sophie being traumatized by her father’s past behaviors in Sophie’s childhood and guide Sophie to discover her angers toward her father. Weston does not use paradoxical directive, using whimsical or ridiculous behavior to stop the arguing within the family, which may seem inappropriate when Sophie is confronting Zach for neglect the family. Weston does not use the tools such as self-monitoring, which is recording daily event, cognitions, and emotion, and gives Sophie a life education which teaches adaptive skills and build ego capabilities. He lets Sophie to decides on her own what to do with her relationship with Zach in the end of Sophie’s therapy. The only techniques that I will use over Weston’s method is Perspective-switching. I will ask Sophie to do a perspective-switching instead of psychodynamic therapy techniques to solve the relationship between Sophie and her