4 Clinicians Decode Films Every Therapist Should Watch

Like a great therapy session, a great movie doesn’t end when the credits roll. It lingers with you. It sparks reflection, challenges assumptions, and sometimes even changes the way you walk through life. Readers loved our last two pieces on therapists’ favorite films so much that we asked four more therapists to share their favorites—ones that stayed with them long after the screen went dark.

Succession

By Ramani Durvasula

Watching Succession would seem like a busman’s holiday for a person whose career is focused on understanding antagonistic personality styles, such as narcissism, and their impact on relationships, but it’s still one of my all-time favorite shows. The plot of the series centers around the Roy family, a billionaire-class media-owning family (think Rupert Murdoch’s clan), and the machinations of a tyrannical father and his four adult children.

It’s easy to write one-dimensional narcissistic characters: the malignant villain, the arrogant charming playboy. But the writers of Succession brought a nuanced understanding of the vacillations between grandiosity and vulnerability, the shame, the punching down, and the sycophancy up. The patriarch, Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox), presents with malignant narcissistic patterns—coercive, exploitative, menacing, triangulating, and sadistic—and has a backstory characterized by significant adversity. Each one of his children evinces their own narcissistic profile—grandiose, vulnerable, with sprinkles of malignancy—and are locked in a permanent vacillating re-enactment between winning over or destroying the subjugating father. (It plays as a gilded version of Arrested Development meets Hamlet.)

The narcissistic relationship cycle is fueled by intermittent abuse and perpetual hope, as well as the human desire for attachment to a person who’s governed by self-interest, superiority, and little interest in mutuality. In most cases, especially for a child, the only path forward to attachment with a narcissistic parent is the fawn-self-abandonment cycle, dissociation from the true self, silencing of wants and needs, self-devaluation, fragmentation, capitulation to the parent, and the eternal misplaced hope of being attuned to by the parent.

Logan Roy engages in the perpetual narcissistic patriarchal tactic of future faking, the psychological carrot on the stick: fostering the possibility in his children of their father finally bearing witness to them, and anointing them with the familial crown, but like Charlie Brown’s Lucy with the football, always pulling it away. The net result of this is that none of them are capable of maintaining a healthy adult relationship. They’re chronically dysregulated, juggling substance use and addiction, struggling with sexual difficulties—and not surprisingly, they go on to abuse and subjugate others. Their single-minded quest to vanquish their father while simultaneously getting his love, becomes their life’s work.

But where the series simulates what happens in a real-life narcissistic relationship is how it takes the viewers on the wild ride of reviling, then being concerned for, then empathizing, and then going back to reviling these narcissistic characters. We, in essence, become trauma-bonded to them as viewers.

The most compelling character is Roman Roy (played brilliantly by Kieran Culkin), the youngest son, who initially presents as an entitled, insolent, arrogant, insouciant perpetual adolescent. He’s the prototype of a racist, classist, privileged trust-fund brat. As the series unwinds, we observe in this deeply immature man, the child who endured the physical abuse of their brutish father, who despite his vitriolic attacks, passive-aggressive commentary, and contempt for others, is panicked at the thought of betraying his father. His father plays this vulnerability expertly, drawing his ne’er-do- well son into triangulated gambits. Ultimately, we recognize that Roman doesn’t give a damn about running the company: he’s lost in winning over his father. The 5-year-old boy wants to be seen.

The theme of “loyalty tests,” a common tactic in antagonistic relationships plays out consistently through the show, too—with Logan chronically testing his children, pushing them to ethical and personal limits, encouraging them to wantonly destroy the lives of others to prove their love to their father (a dynamic often perpetrated in cultic systems). In one affecting scene, the patriarch Logan, who has once again future faked Roman with grandiose promises, wants to isolate Roman from his siblings, who want to vote in a bloc against the father. Logan asks Roman to fire a long-standing corporate executive in the company with whom Roman has had a complicated sexualized maternal-in-nature relationship. Roman’s physiological response to such a level of self-betrayal, and betrayal of an “ally,” is to become, in a word, “squirrely,” crawling out of his own skin, highly irritable, and buried under shame and grief. (It’s a profound piece of acting by Culkin.)

Ultimately, betrayal becomes normalized in antagonistic systems, almost expected, and the themes of vindictiveness, dominance, secrecy, triangulation, manipulation, gaslighting, and abject selfishness are laid bare in Succession. Despite all the wealth, privilege, and plenty, everyone is starving for attunement, attachment, and safety. It’s a reminder that everyone in systems characterized by antagonistic leaders or patriarchs is hurt. Succession is a master class that intergenerational cycles die hard, and that money and resource may simply make the malevolence more Machiavellian.

Succession plays like theater and reminds us that maybe Shakespeare (and perhaps the epic poets and mythmakers before him) understood narcissistic abuse before anyone else.

The Woman in Cabin 10

By Terri Cole

The psychological tension in the Netflix movie The Woman in Cabin 10 isn’t just about whether a crime occurred. (Spoiler Alert: It did!) It’s about what happens to a person’s sense of reality when their perception is repeatedly denied by those around them. As you watch the murder mystery unfold, you’re also watching what happens when self-trust is slowly worn down in real time.

At its core, gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which someone’s reality is questioned, minimized, or outright denied. Over time, this can destabilize a person’s confidence in their own perceptions, memories, and instincts. In the film, the main character, Lo, played by Keira Knightley, believes she’s witnessed something deeply disturbing. But instead of receiving support or even curiosity, she’s met with consistent dismissal. The more she insists, the more her credibility is undermined.

What makes this dynamic especially potent is that Lo is already positioned as someone whose reliability can be questioned. She’s anxious and has had a recent trauma. Too often, when a person has a history of anxiety or emotional distress, others may consciously or unconsciously use that as a reason to doubt them. We see this play out in clinical settings, in families, and in intimate relationships. The narrative becomes less about what actually happened and more about whether the person reporting it can be trusted—especially when that person is a woman.

This is where the film becomes psychologically accurate in a way that’s recognizable. Gaslighting doesn’t always look dramatic. It often shows up as a calm, confident denial; as subtle redirection; as “Are you sure?” or, “That doesn’t make sense.” Over time, this can lead someone to turn against their own internal knowing. The mind starts searching for alternate explanations because the social pressure to conform becomes stronger than the internal knowing.

There’s also something important happening in the body. Before the mind organizes a coherent narrative, the nervous system often registers that something is wrong: a sense of unease, a spike in vigilance, or a feeling that doesn’t quite resolve. When those signals are dismissed or overridden, especially in a high-pressure environment, such as the isolated setting of a boat, the internal conflict intensifies. Part of the self is saying, “Something happened.” Another part is saying, “No one believes you, so maybe you’re wrong.”

That internal split is one of the most damaging effects of gaslighting. The person begins to doubt not only the external reality, but themselves. The ship’s closed environment amplifies all of this. There’s limited access to outside perspectives, which increases reliance on the dominant narrative in the group. When everyone around you appears certain, it becomes much harder to hold onto a dissenting perception. This is a dynamic we also see in family systems and controlling relationships, where the absence of external validation reinforces the power of the gaslighter.

What’s compelling about Lo’s experience is that her persistence becomes an act of psychological resistance. Even as her credibility is challenged, she continues to return to her original perception. This doesn’t mean she’s unaffected. We see her question herself and the impact of isolation and doubt. But there’s still a thread of self-trust that she doesn’t fully abandon.

From a therapeutic perspective, this is the point of intervention, where we help clients reconnect with their internal cues, support them in distinguishing between anxiety-driven narratives and grounded intuitive knowing, and validate that it’s disorienting, even destabilizing, to have your reality questioned repeatedly. We can then slowly help them rebuild the capacity to say, “I believe what I experienced happened,” even when others do not.

The Woman in Cabin 10 captures something many people have lived through in less dramatic ways: being told you’re overreacting or being dismissed when something feels off, and learning, over time, to override your own perceptions to maintain connection or avoid conflict. Ultimately, the story is about uncovering the truth of what happened on the boat. But the more interesting revelation is the much more personal process of reclaiming trust in oneself. And that, in many ways, is the real resolution.

Marriage Story

By Lisa Kleyn

There’s a pivotal scene in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story that will probably rattle you. It’s the moment Charlie, one of the main characters, screams at his estranged wife, Nicole, “I wish you were dead!”

Charlie lets loose this statement midway through the film, in the sterile apartment he’s rented while he fights for custody of their son. My partner happened to be watching with me, and instinctively, I gripped his hand. Charlie’s words echoed through my body with a familiar pain, the same kind I’ve felt while sitting with clients and community members who’ve talked about their marital discord—and as a daughter who saw it in her own family.

By this point in the film, Charlie and Nicole have crossed a point of no return. He crumples to the floor, wrapping his arms around her legs as if for survival, overtaken by shame and grief he can’t metabolize alone. She collapses toward him in shock. And I felt the reflex every couples therapist feels when they see conflict reach a boiling point: the urge to press pause and call the fight.

“How do two people who love each other ever get here?” I whisper to my partner.

After years of studying relationship science, working as a clinician in global trauma recovery, and contributing to policy reform to prevent child abuse across communities, I’m still shocked by how routinely we wound the people we love most.

If Charlie and Nicole were in my consulting room, I’d walk them back to the frightened parts of themselves that fired those missiles. But Marriage Story isn’t a therapy session; it’s one of the most clinically precise depictions of relational rupture in cinematic history. It shows what happens when two people who love each other never lower their protective defenses long enough to feel seen, safe, or soothed.

The film opens with a devastating scene disguised as tenderness. A mediator has each partner write down what they love about the other, and the lists (read to us by each of them in voiceover) are specific and alive. Charlie loves how Nicole makes him feel like the most important person in the room; Nicole loves his patience with her and how effortlessly he seems to parent their son. Love and admiration remain palpably intact. I exhaled, daring to think they might make it after all. Mutual positive regard is still within reach, and that’s what repair is made of.

But a moment later, when the mediator asks them to read their lists aloud to each other, Nicole can’t do it. The vulnerability feels intolerable; she’s been carrying too much hurt for the exposure to feel safe, so she shuts down and storms out of the room. What looks like defiance is really the only shape her hurt can take in a space where it no longer feels safe to reveal it. From this point on, the film becomes a chronicle of every repair attempt smothered before it can fully surface.

I often recommend this film to therapists and clients who are convinced the problem lives inside their partner. Baumbach captures the opposite: the negative cycle lives between both partners. Charlie is the classic avoidant, regulating through competence, control, and intellectualization. Nicole’s pursuit, once the engine of the marriage, has collapsed into flight; her move to the other side of the country is the last protest of an unheard attachment need. What makes this film essential—for clinicians and anyone who’s ever found themselves throwing punches at a loved one they never meant to throw—is that it gives you a ringside view of what every couple is capable of. You can see exactly where Charlie and Nicole lost their footing, and exactly where they could have found their way back. If you’re in the ring, you’re too close to see it. 

In the scene where Charlie and Nicole are fighting in the apartment, we see that the more Charlie leans into his reactive part, the more Nicole disconnects from the part of her that still loves him. The more she retreats behind cold logic and cutting words, the more his dysregulation escalates. This is what John Gottman calls diffuse physiological flooding—the moment the nervous system becomes so overwhelmed that no bid for connection can be received, and all Four Horsemen— contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling—arrive at once.

The longing underneath never disappears; it just becomes impossible to reach. They’re trading blows, each one landing harder than the last, pulling them further from the only thing that could have saved them: one of them stopping the swinging and saying, “I’m scared, and I need you.” You can see the solution. They cannot.

Only once their divorce is almost finalized does Nicole tell Charlie she read his emails and knows about the affair. His response isn’t a defense as much as a diagnosis: he’d been sleeping on the couch for months. Nicole had withdrawn, subsumed by Charlie’s ambition. But her withdrawal had registered in Charlie’s nervous system as loneliness—and he’d sought solace from another woman. In the end, he and Nicole suffered the same wound, each feeling abandoned but unable to articulate it in a way the other could hear.

Marriage Story doesn’t let viewers off the hook. In the film’s final moments, Charlie’s hands are full as he carries their son, so Nicole kneels to tie Charlie’s shoelace. The gesture is so small, yet so reminiscent of their love lists that it gets me every time. For me, the saddest part of the film is knowing that everything Charlie and Nicole needed to save their marriage was right in front of them the whole time. They just couldn’t lower their armor long enough to see it. 

I see this every day in my consulting room: couples who aren’t failing in love, but failing under the weight of what we’ve asked love to carry alone. Sometimes therapy itself is part of the problem, when individual narratives are validated at the expense of the relationship. We expect more from our relationships today than any previous generation, yet we’ve stripped away the communal scaffolding that once held them in place. We’re better informed about love, but less supported in sustaining it, and the cost is visible everywhere: rising loneliness, declining marriage rates, and falling birth rates. Charlie and Nicole aren’t an anomaly, they’re a mirror. That’s what makes this film so hard to watch, and so hard to look away from.

Imperfect Women

By Eli Harwood

I’m currently in the stage of parenthood and therapisthood where I rarely have time to sit down and binge-watch a good show. Between emails and laundry and dishes and herding my three wonderful-but-sleep-allergic children into bed, I usually just want to go the f*** to sleep at the end of each day.

But earlier this year, during a school break, I took my twin daughters to an aquarium where we ran into the incredibly talented actress Elizabeth Moss, most known for portraying Peggy Olsen in Mad Men and June Osborne in The Handmaid’s Tale. She was there with her toddler, and we kept ending up at the same exhibits at the same time. I awkwardly verified her identity somewhere around the stingrays, and then tried to act normal as we continued to bump into each other throughout the sea life adventure.

Naturally, as soon as I got home, I Googled her and went down an internet rabbit hole that led me to the discovery of her newest show, a psychological thriller called Imperfect Women, also starring Kerry Washington and Kate Mara. The series is based on the 2020 bestselling book of the same name by Araminta Hall. And boy oh boy was it worth the sleep loss it took to watch it.

The story revolves around the mysterious murder of one of the women, Nancy, and the reckoning that comes from her death and complex revelations she never shared with her very closest friends. The show chronicles some steamy drama and betrayals that I won’t spoil for you, but more importantly, it asks a deeply important question: why do we often hide huge parts of our lives from the people we care about the most?

Spoiler alert: The answer is the crippling shame that emanates from the unresolved traumas, social inequities, and dysfunctional dynamics in our relationships and rhythms that we aren’t yet ready to acknowledge.

As a clinician who specializes in attachment, this question and its answer are so deeply rooted in early relationships and the impacts they have on our comfort (or discomfort) with being authentically known. Whether we believe we are worthy of support and closeness affects whether we reveal ourselves to the people we most desire support from.

Before her death, we see Nancy wrestling with the impacts of her profound childhood trauma. Her mother, a severe alcoholic, clearly neglectful of Nancy in childhood, is shown going into a violent jealous rage when she discovers that Nancy is being abused by her stepfather. We see Nancy desperately seeking approval and validation as she tries to silence the haunting questions that come with her childhood abuse: Did I participate in this? Was it my fault? Do these circumstances define me forever?

We see Eleanor living under the pressure that comes from being a Black woman who grew up with financial wealth and status but without emotionally close family relationships. She has means, but growing up, lacks meaningful support to navigate her life experiences in primarily white schools. Eleanor creates deep meaning for herself in her career (she runs an international relief nonprofit), that brings her into proximity of more diversity, but as a boss, without the camaraderie she craves.

And last but not least, there’s Mary, a housewife who feels inadequate and pines for a career she left behind for her family. We see Mary struggling to be honest about herself, her desires, and her use of illegally obtained stimulants. We witness her uncover that her husband has been lying to her for their entire relationship, and even more profoundly, that she’s been lying to herself. When Mary seeks the counsel of her husband’s ex-wife, the woman poignantly says to her, “You believed him over your own eyes.”

On top of reminding us why we hide our emotional baggage, Imperfect Women also invites us to question our obsession with watching women betray each other (hello Housewives series!) and to dig deeper into understanding and addressing what keeps us from the closeness we need and deserve from each other. Because it isn’t our imperfections; it’s the lies we were told about what makes us valuable and loveable.

After watching this group of friends grapple with the past and its impact on the present, anyone who’s thinking about the intersection of attachment patterns in friendships will find themselves with plenty to reflect on.