Cinema Therapy by Charlyne Gelt, Ph.D.

Prince of Tides and "Boundary Violations"

“One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family. . .and in terms of family melodrama, I could not have been born into a better one,” commented best-selling author Pat Conroy in a Vanity Fair profile a few years after his book, Prince of Tides, had been made into a movie. The 1991 film starred Barbra Streisand as Dr. Susan Lowenstein, an elitist New York psychiatrist; Nick Nolte as Tom Wingo, her troubled patient, and Melinda Dillon as Savannah, Tom’s twin sister. Streisand also directed the film. This film opens Pandora’s box!

The Story
The movie version of Prince of Tides is a condensed recount of Conroy’s tragic childhood in South Carolina under the rule of the father known to his three children as Godzilla. It shows Tom Wingo’s struggle to overcome the psychological damage inflicted by his abusive, dysfunctional childhood, in particular, a very raw, dark, traumatizing event (seen in violent flashback scenes) when three escaped convicts invade his home, then rape him, his mother, and his sister. His older brother, Luke, kills two of the attackers with a shotgun while his mother stabs the third with a kitchen knife. As a family, they bury the memory ― along with the bodies ― beneath the house and never tell a soul. They suppress it and soldier on.

When the movie opens, it is clear that Tom is not in good emotional shape. Burying his emotions hasn’t worked. As an unemployed high school football coach, he is angry, in a loveless marriage to Sally (Blythe Danner), distant from his three daughters, and he lacks insight into the real impact his childhood trauma has had on his life. His twin sister Savannah (Melinda Dillon), a poet living in New York, has also been affected. When Tom’s mother Lila (Kate Nelligan) informs Tom that Savannah has attempted suicide again and has been hospitalized, Tom goes to Manhattan to consult with Savanna’s psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Lowenstein. Desperate to unlock the door to her patient's suicidality, Dr. Lowenstein relies on Tom to act as his sister's memory. They butt heads because Lowenstein asks so many questions about Tom and Savannah’s painful history. He is both haunted and conflicted, and feels powerless to help his twin. The last thing he wants to do is recall the raw details of his family secrets. He discovers that not telling “the secret” is more painful than not remembering.

Gradually, Lowenstein lures Tom down the “primrose path” into a therapeutic relationship to “help her understand his twin’s suicidality.” She opens Tom up emotionally to explore and clarify feelings associated with his repressed memories and abuse. His fear and secrecy decrease. He starts to trust and to disclose. He is unaware that he is being seduced as the doctor-patient conversations turn from the therapeutic to the personal. Lowenstein crosses the line, discloses about her own troubled marriage (to a violinist who is cheating on her) and a difficult son. Having revealed a key piece of Savannah's troubled life, Tom ends up having an emotional break-down in Dr. Lowenstein’s office and weeps openly in her arms. Drawn together by their common wounds of emptiness, loneliness, and cut off from loving, they act out their neediness and succumb to a sexual affair.

On the surface, Tom’s catharsis makes him feel better. He enjoys the clearly doomed affair with Lowenstein, and builds a relationship with Lowenstein’s son (Jason Gould, also Streisand’s son in real-life), whom he successfully coaches in football. Tom feels a renewal of energy for living. Convinced of his emotional stability, he returns to his wife in South Carolina who has decided she wants him back. Lowenstein reacts with just a shrug. His sister, Savannah, recovers after being helped to piece together repressed childhood traumas (most notably the rapes and murders). She returns to her apartment in New York and to her writing.

Psychological Implications
Prince of Tides has the potential for being an informative psychological movie about the trauma incurred by sexual abuse and how good therapy can benefit a traumatized family. Unfortunately, that larger message gets mangled when the doctor and the patient, instead of doing the deep work of psychotherapy, end up in bed.

Just why Prince of Tides is billed as a “romantic drama” instead of a “psychological drama” is a mystery. There is a surprisingly amount of attention placed on the romance aspect of this story, yet little attention is focused on the barrage of legal and ethical issues, boundary violations, and even criminal behavior regarding the abuse of power. It is a real challenge to view this doctor-patient relationship, built on trust, turn into an adulterous romantic relationship. Initially, Dr. Lowenstein, a powerful authority figure, provides a “corrective emotional experience”. Then, as Tom’s level of trust increases, we witness him being seduced by Dr. Lowenstein, then used to fulfill her own neediness. We are helpless spectators to the polarities of dominance and submission and Tom’s historical pattern of abuse.

For most people real change is the result of real pain. Tom returns to a wife who first threw him out, then wants him back. Although Tom has been awakened to his buried pain through the work with Dr. Lowenstein, he has not changed. Contrary to what may seem a happy ending, Tom lives a “grin and bear it” mindset, continues to muddle through life from the submissive pole, and is unconscious to his own true identity. He revels no transformation of consciousness. He does not function from an awareness of the destructive right/wrong, “duality of thinking” that keeps him locked in the position of a helpless victim.

“Boundary Violation”
In the real world, legal and ethical standards are applied to doctor/patient relationships for good reasons, making the sexual affair between Dr. Lowenstein and Tom Wingo in Prince of Tides unprofessional, unethical and “bad medicine,” especially for a patient whose life has been destroyed by being a victim of sexual abuse. He opens himself up for “help” only to be re-victimized by the “helper.” It repeats Tom’s history of abuse and power struggles while not identifying that such may relate to what’s at the core of his sister’s suicidality.

The affair simply ruins the message. Seeing a sexual affair between a deeply troubled married man and his married psychiatrist, a presumed wise healer, is a lot to take in. In a therapeutic environment, sex should not be used as treatment or cure. It is most disconcerting to see Dr. Lowenstein breech confidentiality, turn a sacred doctor-patient relationship into a sexual one, and then reveal her own emotional and psychological inadequacies to the very patient under her psychological care.

Unfortunately, we know this occurs not just in the movies!