Vasudha Sadany
Dear Zindagi is one of the few Bollywood movies that explore the realm of mental health and takes us through the journey of what it is like to undergo therapy. Kaira, the protagonist, seeks out Dr. Jehangir Khan as her therapist to help her navigate through and understand her newly developed insomnia. But in the process, she delves into other aspects of her life, which help improve her interpersonal relationships and overall well-being.
The movie does a great job of showing the trajectory of a therapeutic relationship and the different approaches underlying the treatment. It also illuminates the importance of a good client-therapist relationship for improved results in psychotherapy. You can see Dr. Jehangir Khan, the therapist, tries to build a rapport with his client by cracking jokes and breaking the pattern by cycling one day or going to a beach the other. While some people would disagree with therapy outside confined areas, others argue that outdoor therapy helps with a clients depression immensely (Kyriakopoulos, 2011).
Other psychotherapy components include how information is acquired, which include understanding the clients chief complaint, symptoms, precipitating factors, history, and cognitive and physical observations, all of which are covered throughout the course of the sessions as shown in the movie. Dr. Khan would ask Kaira open-ended questions, often prodding her to dig deeper into her answer and think about how they made her feel. Such is often the structure of a psychotherapy session where the conversation is more back and forth, rather than a narration of the problems and solutions (Taffel, 2022).
The character of Dr. Jehangir Khan uses various counseling theories and approaches such as cognitive, behavioral, and systemic therapy to work with his client, Kaira. He uses stories as cognitive tools to validate her emotions, rationalize her thoughts and show her that he truly understands what she’s talking about. When Kaira feels cornered and judged about her romantic relationships, Dr. Khan talks about his ‘chair theory’, which says that relationships are like buying chairs from a furniture shop, you’ve gotta check a couple of them out before you find your chair. It’s an example of how he uses cognitive tools and real-life examples to help Kaira gain some clarity over her life and not feel judged. Another example of a cognitive tool is the narration of the story of ‘Pyarelal Ji’, where Kaira learns that society may sometimes correlate choosing the hard path to making the right decision. But you need to know that it may not always be true, that it would be wiser to know your limits, rather than to push them. We also see that Dr. Khan psychoanalyzes Kaira’s dreams and helps her make sense of a bunch of her jumbled thoughts and find the root causes or issues giving birth to these thoughts. He also gives her ‘homework’ in the form of exposure therapy, a simple behavioral tool often used in therapy. He encourages Kaira to face her fears of abandonment and work on creating a better bond with her family members.
The concept of transference can also be visible by the end of the movie when you see that Kaira redirects her romantically inclined emotions towards her therapist. But maintaining the ethical code of conduct for practitioners, Dr. Khan shuts down any of Kaira’s attempts at any form of relationship outside therapy with her.
Another apt portrayal of a client-therapist relationship is shown by how Dr. Khan acquires information from Kaira about the different spheres of her life, gradually and steadily, by not prying too much, but prompting questions wherever necessary. In the initial sessions, the focus is on immediate problems and circumstantial issues. Only by the 6th or 7th session do they show Kaira being comfortable enough to talk about her abandonment issues from childhood. Psychoanalysis in modern-day therapy works somewhat similarly.
But the movie shows some aspects of psychotherapy that aren’t entirely accurate. For instance, Dr. Khan is seen to share personal information with his client, which doesn’t usually happen in therapy. No working alliance is created at the beginning of therapy, thus no predetermined goals. And with no established structure, the therapy sessions tend to be haphazard and inconsistent (Gelso et al., 2008, pg. 267). But apart from these limitations, Bollywood does a fairly decent job at showing what psychotherapy interviews look like.
Bollywood presents therapy in a much lighter, simpler and open-ended manner. But therapy isn’t always like that. It can be messy, client-therapist relationships can take time to establish, or sometimes they may not work out due to neither of their faults. How they interact is extremely important, as when undergoing therapy, a person’s relationship with their therapist is highly correlated to their level of improvement and well-being. How a therapist frames questions and how they implore on the more intimate details of a person without making them feel judged or interrogated is essential. Psychotherapy through the lens of Bollywood tries to present and achieve the same.
References
Gelso, C. J., & Samstag, L. W. (2008). A tripartite model of the therapeutic relationship. Handbook of counseling psychology, 4, 267-283.
Taffel, R. (n.d.). Using conversation in therapy. Psychotherapy Networker. Retrieved October 12,2022,from https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/blog/details/581/using-conversation-in-therapy
Kyriakopoulos, A. (2011). How individuals with self-reported anxiety and depression experienced a combination of individual counselling with an adventurous outdoor experience: A qualitative evaluation. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 11(2), 120-128.
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