“Wicked” Through an Attachment Lens

When the film adaptation of Wicked (the play based on The Wizard of Oz) shattered box-office records last winter, selling more than five billion dollars in tickets, something was happening beyond mere entertainment. Granted, not everyone is an Oz fanatic like I am, but the response showed there’s a public hunger for stories about belonging, rebellion, and reclaiming personal power. Audiences weren’t just watching a movie, they were experiencing a collective, therapeutic journey, responding to societal structures that, for many, feel exclusionary and oppressive. With the sequel, Wicked: For Good, scheduled for release this November, the anticipation—and therapeutic opportunity—is only growing.

What does this have to do with my work as a therapist? The cultural phenomenon around the world of Oz is a powerful depiction of relational neuroscience and the modern attachment spectrum, both of which I often explore with my clients. As Ann Kelley and I discussed in our recent Psychotherapy Networker article, “Rethinking Insecure Attachment,” traditional attachment categories pull from research published over 50 years ago, and were never designed to be applied in a clinical setting. Instead, the model we’ve created, the Modern Attachment-Regulation Spectrum (MARS), is designed to be used in therapy, and it highlights the fluid, contextual nature of unconscious defensive patterns, or what we traditionally call “attachment styles.” MARS recognizes that because these attachment styles are fluid and contextual, they’re actually temporary activation states, not fixed identities as is often thought. It also addresses what’s missing in the predominant attachment lens: a focus on the discriminatory institutional systems that are responsible for patterns of dysregulation.

Using the MARS framework, we can illustrate different defensive states on the attachment spectrum, which we signify with different colors. Here, the world of Oz becomes a brilliant palette for our therapeutic canvas: the Tin Man’s emotional shutdown embodies the shift in activation intended to reduce vulnerability, the cooler, blue side of the attachment spectrum. The Scarecrow’s uncertainty and anxiety, in the red range, represent a hyperactivation of the attachment system, resulting in a “floppy” sense of self as others’ wellbeing is prioritized over one’s own. The Lion’s hypervigilance and false bravado represent what we call “the tie-dye experience”—moments of dysregulation where multiple strategies activate simultaneously in an attempt to feel safety. Even Toto becomes therapeutically relevant, representing our neuroceptive sonar system, perpetually scanning for threats, and sometimes hijacked by flying monkeys that steal our sense of security.

With the MARS model, stories like The Wizard of Oz, which shaped us so much growing up, with their childhood heroes, villains, and epic quests, become something even more powerful: reflections of the defenses and longings we carry into adulthood. And the creativity involved in collaborative story-retelling helps clients recognize that while defensive patterns are real and natural, they’re also non-shaming temporary activation states they can master.

The Power of Fiction

At a glance, stories like Wicked might seem like pure escapism. After all, we’re forming deep emotional connections with characters in a fantasy world.  But this kind of bonding is actually a sophisticated psychological process. These parasocial relationships, one-sided emotional bonds we form with characters from Dorothy to Frasier Crane to Walter White, create safe rehearsal spaces for emotional exploration. Unlike relationships with real people, fictional attachments allow us to experience intense emotion, practice new responses, and explore different ways of being without immediate consequences or reciprocal demands.

In therapy, we can explore beloved stories with our clients as healing containers—familiar narrative territories where they can examine their own patterns through the comfortable distance of character analysis. Movies and familiar stories also offer cultural touchstones for both the therapist and client, creating common ground and reducing the sterile feeling that often accompanies therapy and inhibits imaginative exploration.

Clients are typically eager to learn and nod approvingly when we explain concepts like polyvagal theory or trauma-based relationship patterns. But these clinical concepts live in the intellectual part of the brain and rarely generate the visceral right-brain experiential understanding that drives real transformation.

Instead, when we’re transported into a beloved narrative, we’re not just thinking about change; we’re feeling our way into new relational experiences with characters we know and love. Exploring these characters becomes an entry point into embodied learning.

When I mention Glinda the Good Witch to my client Maya, I watch a soft smile emerge—a hint of an immediate state shift. Suddenly, we’re talking about someone she’s known since childhood, making analysis feel fun and safe. This is what researchers call “transportation”—when our critical faculties relax, we stop analyzing, and start experiencing. In this way, the story becomes a therapeutic Trojan horse, sneaking past resistance through emotional engagement rather than confrontation.

When Maya and I talk about the character of Glinda, we re-examine the character’s presentation as a perpetually smiling helper. Although she may appear perfect from an outsider perspective, she’s arguably the loneliest character in all of Oz. This creates the potential for incredible therapeutic exploration: Why did Glinda make Dorothy complete an entire quest when she knew the ruby-red slippers could give her what she wanted all along? After Maya and I notice that Glinda revealed this only after her two rivals—the Witches of the East and West—were eliminated, we explore how Glinda’s niceness is masking feelings she’s been taught to ignore. Soon, Maya experiences that crucial “aha” moment of recognition as she safely projects herself into the story.

Another client, Katelyn, used this aha moment to release shame around her caretaking tendencies and friendliness—behavior she’d previously labeled a weakness. Using Oz references and the MARS framework, she was able to reframe these behaviors as a natural, protective state (“a floating bubble”) she’d inhabit whenever she felt threatened. Using the story of Oz, she was able to explore the Tin Man’s struggle to find his heart and feel safe being vulnerable, which opened her up to insights about her own shutdown patterns.

This playful exploration led to her trying somatic work, where she explored the body responses that signaled when she was shifting into “please and appease” modes—which she creatively dubbed “Good Witch activation.” Katelyn began to notice her voice and smile more, recognizing when they went from natural to performative. As she developed more awareness of her performative shifts, instead of feeling shame when they emerged during social interactions, she gradually learned to catch herself and return to her natural affect. Back in therapy, our chats about Glinda helped her integrate the assertiveness she’d been afraid to express. At the end of a recent session, we laughed as we imagined Glinda letting go: lounging in jeans, hair tousled, and having just disappointed someone but still knowing that everything would be okay.

The Bigger Picture

Using the MARS framework in this way doesn’t just promote change in the therapy room, but outside it as well. It creates space for clients to explore how systems actively shape insecurity. In the context of Oz, the Wizard’s false authority becomes a perfect metaphor for societal institutions that benefit from keeping certain people small and compliant. Elphaba’s story shows how: she’s born different, punished for her green skin from birth. She’s brilliant, passionate, and fights for justice, yet she’s labeled “wicked” by the very system she’s trying to reform. The Wizard scapegoats her to maintain his power and turns the population against her while he continues his oppression. Sound familiar? How many clients have internalized the Wizard’s voice, telling them they’re “too much”—too angry, too sensitive, too different? Like the woman who apologizes for her “tone” when calling out sexism, or the Black employee who’s labeled “aggressive” for the same directness that makes white colleagues “executive material,” or the queer person who’s told they just need to be “less obvious about” their queerness, or the neurodivergent child who’s punished for stimming?

These systems are masterful. They create the wound, then pathologize the bleeding. They demand that you shrink to fit their containers. They teach you to monitor your voice, your body, and your very existence for signs you might be taking up too much space—and then ask why you struggle with people-pleasing and perfectionism. The systems that create the problem punish those who refuse to shrink, like Elphaba. The truth is you’re not “too sensitive.” The cage is real, and your impulse to break free isn’t pathology, it’s sanity.

This is where Elphaba’s full story becomes essential. She isn’t simply a Wicked Witch, as the fairy tale would have us believe. This isn’t a story of pure good versus evil. That’s just another lie these systems use to keep us trapped.

Elphaba starts off morally pure, but after enough systemic abuse, that morality begins to degrade and she begins to use her powers for herself. We see that there is no pure “good” or “wicked.” All of us are a complex mix of light and shadow. But the more we work with our disowned parts instead of projecting them onto others, the more integrated we become, which allows us to truly be both free and connected.

A therapeutic breakthrough occurs when clients stop trying to be “good enough” for the established status quo and start asking the dangerous questions: “Who is the Wizard in my life? Where might I be turning into one myself? What if what they’re calling my “problem” is actually my power? What if my refusal to stay small isn’t pathology, but necessary rebellion?”

Just as Elphaba discovers she no longer cares what others think, our clients can learn that the path to security means embracing their full complexity: their anger, their differences, and their refusal to comply. This is the moment of therapeutic flight, when our clients begin to trust their own wings and stop limiting themselves for those who never intended to see them succeed.

This work goes beyond helping individual clients. It’s how therapy becomes revolutionary. When we help clients embrace their full complexity and break free from accepted limits, we’re participating in a larger cultural awakening.

The yellow brick road doesn’t lead to the Emerald City; it leads us home to ourselves, wings spread, and gravity defied.