Pyschologists in science fiction or fantasy are kind of a rare character type. Professor X, Nancy Thompson, and Counselor Deanna Troi are great examples. It makes sense that Professor X would be a psychology professional, but to discuss his exploits would take pages that I don’t have here (so go here and here). And as a kid watching TNG who wanted to be Wesley Crusher, I thought including a counselor was wimpy, so I didn’t necessarily follow Troi’s storylines. But as I rewatch ST:TNG, I’ve grown to like Troi’s character, and value the strategy of employing an empath/counselor on a long-term, interplanetary mission. GOOD IDEA. But it would still take longer than I have here to summarize Troi’s activities over 10 seasons and several movies. (I can’t say too much about Nancy Thompson because I have only ever seen 15 minutes of the first Nightmare on Elm Street, and I was dragged to Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which I watched from between my fingers – but Nancy is worth including in the introduction.)
Otherwise, we’re familiar with the plotline of the first responder forced to go to therapy to be reinstated, or the criminal interacting with their therapist–or therapists getting drawn into their clients’ worlds (hello Harley Quinn and Dr. Sam Loomis). The line gets kind of blurry whenever a psychologist finds themselves emotionally invested in a client’s (hopefully) well-being.
It took some time, but I came up with a list of fictional psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors who are protagonists, not just minor characters or part of an ensemble, in contained stories in science fiction, horror, or historical fiction. They are therapists and/or investigators whose analysis of clients and suspects drives the story. (Yup, there’s a glaring show/character that I haven’t mentioned yet.) These are stories that examine the professional distances, ethics, and morality of the practice of psychology–not that I think psychology is bad, mind you (pardon the pun).
And me being me, I’m presenting them in order of good to evil.
Dr. Laszlo Kreizler in The Alienist, Caleb Carr (novel, 1994; TNT series, 2018). Historian Caleb Carr wrote two books set in 1890s New York City, with a pre-Presidential Theodore Roosevelt as the city’s police commissioner overwhelmed by crime on the streets and corruption in his police force. The violent, gruesome crimes of a escalating serial killer targeting boy prostitutes is about to cost Roosevelt his post and reputation. Roosevelt allows Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, alienist (Daniel Bruhl in the series), to run a separate investigation. (“Alienist” is the original term for “psychologist.”) Kreizler is aided by a motley crew of investigators: privileged, freewheeling journalist John Moore (Luke Evans); secretive, ambitious police secretary Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning); forensic expert brothers Marcus and Lucius Isaacson (Douglas Smith and Matthew Shear); and a rotating cast of people taken in by Kreizler during the course of his practice in the fledgling science of psychology. The Alienist is gritty and disturbing, and Kreizler, employing the tools of psychological investigation to catch the killer and struggling with how he was raised, often ends up alienating his own friends and colleagues. Book and series are both very immersive; the television brings to light sumptuous dinners and costumes, contrasted with the downtrodden world of New York. Carr followed up with The Angel of Darkness (1997); although The Alienist is the better work, Angel of Darkness is just as good in its own right (and also currently in development by TNT).
Dr. Joan Bright in The Bright Sessions (podcast, 2015-2018). This is a really entertaining (and LGBTQIA inclusive) series of about Dr. Joan Bright and her therapy sessions with “atypicals,” or patients who exhibit unusual abilities: Caleb, a high-school football player and empath; the reclusive Sam, a time traveler whose jaunts are triggered by panic attacks; Chloe, a happily ace telepath trying to deal with the demands of college; quiet veteran Frank, whose Marine unit was subjected to atypical field experiments; and Damien, a mind influencer who becomes the villain of the series. Dr. Bright doesn’t just have a full plate–she has an entire dinner party. When Sam reveals she has seen a twentieth-century man who seems to be stuck in time, Dr. Bright believes Sam may be her only hope of rescuing her brother, Mark, an atypical whose power is absorbing and amplifying abilities of atypicals in his presence. Mark was kidnapped by Dr. Bright’s employer, the AM—a secretive, quasi-governmental, private contractor whose mission is to study atypicals. This mission often includes illegal experimentation; during one such experiment, Mark was stranded in time by another time-traveler who died shortly afterward, and another experiment doomed Frank and his unit. Dr. Bright herself left the AM after she discovered the experimentation–but the AM, like any shady government org, never really lets anyone go. Over the seasons, she and her patients form and dissolve bonds and face down challenges, and the podcast is as much an intense but sensitive character study as it is a superheroish action drama. The series has quite the (much deserved) cult following; creator Lauren Shippen continues to communicate with fans via the show’s tumblr account, and still releases standalone episodes featuring new atypicals.
Dr. Michelle Kessler in Inhuman Condition (2016, Kinda TV/Youtube, 33 episodes). I stumbled across this somehow and binge-watched it in about 3 hours. (Hey, I didn’t have anything else to do!) Inhuman Condition is a professionally well-done, well-acted web series about Dr. Michelle Kessler (Torri Higginson), psychologist to troubled people with crazy powers: Tamar (Cara Gee), a sheltered young woman struggling to control her very destructive powers; Clara (Clara Pasieka), a member of the “living dead” (nowhere as humorous as it sounds); and Linc (Thomas Olajide in an excellent performance) as a werewolf with connections to werewolf activist/terrorist cells. Fans of Stargate and Sanctuary will recognize several actors in the course of the show. Almost every 3-10 minute episode centers on a therapy session with one of the aforementioned clients, alternating with episodes about Dr. Kessler’s life, how she gets involved in her patients’ lives, and ultimately makes a decision that will protect her patients from agencies that want to use them, imprison them, or destroy them. The ending is a little rushed—I could have used at least another episode—but the limited cast, set, and action make for a compassionate, engaging character study, scored to a quirkily haunting soundtrack. Also, like The Bright Sessions, the characters are LGBTQ+ inclusive. (Unlike The Bright Sessions, I’m not sure how many of the actors are members of the community.)
Dr. William Haber in The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. LeGuin (1971). The road to hell is paved with good intentions–because our intentions start out meaning well and then they get worse. In the time-honored tradition of stories about mad scientists seizing power and playing God, this is a story about George Orr and George’s psychotherapist, Dr. Haber. Caught taking drugs to suppress his dreams, George is mandated to attend therapy with Dr. Wiliam Haber. George must convince the doctor that his dreams have the power to rewrite reality—a reality that is and always has been true for everyone else except George, who remembers them all. So of course he sounds absolutely crazy. Dr. Haber initially promises to help George, but session after session takes advantage of George’s ability to begin remaking the world as he sees fit. It’s a riveting, horrific tale of good intentions and the abuse of power; Dr. Haber starts out trying to cure the ills of the world, making suggestions to George in his dream state that have disastrous global – and universal – consequences. Haber figures out how to dream reality himself, and George becomes the safeguard of reality as he tries to stop Haber from ending e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. There are lots of twists and a truly shattering conclusion. I swear this must have been an influence on Alex Proyas’s Dark City, which in turn influenced the Wachowski Sisters’ Matrix trilogy–or so I heard.
I saved the best (most evil?) for last.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Dr. Will Graham, Agent Clarice Starling, Dr. Alana Bloom, and Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier in Manhunter (1986); Silence of the Lambs (1990); and Hannibal (TV series, 2013-2015). I’m limited to these film versions of Thomas Harris’s books, because they are the only ones that I have seen. I have never read any of the source material, either. But you’ll notice the large cast of characters. That’s because these screen treatments are replete with psychology professionals. Harris’s Hannibal Lecter isn’t supposed to fit any particular entry in the DSM-5; but he is an intelligent, immaculate, socially adept, very cunning killer. Manhunter was my first introduction to these characters. It stars a pre-CSI William Petersen as the first iteration of Will Graham. Both Manhunter and Hannibal (the series) were based on Red Dragon (the book). Will Graham, survivor of a cannibalistic attack by Lecter, reluctantly comes out of retirement to catch a new, elusive serial killer (Tooth Fairy) – and must work with Lecter to do so, only to discover that Lecter betrays him to the killer.
In Hannibal (2013), these events spool out over two seasons’ worth of edge-of-your-seat, darkly humorous, morally and ethically ambiguous, cat-and-mouse episodes whose sumptuousness directly contrasts with gruesomeness to deliver unsettling, disturbingly unforgettable scenes and brilliant performances from start to finish. The third season then jumps to events in Hannibal (the book). Everyone from the showrunners (Bryan Fuller), production designer (Matthew Davies) and food dresser (Janice Poon), to the actors (Mads Mikkelsen, Hugh Dancy, Caroline Dhavernas, Laurence Fishburne, and Gillian Andersen) paid such attention to detail that they sold the show at every opportunity. Hannibal was canceled at the end of its third season, but it really is one of the best examples of television (that just so happens to be about a serial killer). Should it have continued, Fuller hoped to cast Ellen Page as the new Clarice Starling – and I think if anyone could have followed in Jodie Foster’s footsteps and simultaneously reinvent an iconic character, Page has the acting chops to do it.
Don’t take him up on quid pro quo, Clarice.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991), I argue, was Clarice Starling’s story, although we remember Lecter because of Hopkins’s performance, imbuing Lecter with a supernatural, evil persona (complete with food quips). Foster won her second Oscar for her performance as Clarice Starling, a feminist protagonist in a major film: an ambitious, career-driven FBI agent who rebuffs romantic or otherwise encroaching advances from colleagues and even superiors, tracking down a serial killer targeting women – who repels Lecter’s psychological forays and puts together the clues he gives her in time to save at least one woman (hope I’m not spoiling anything) from Buffalo Bill. (I think this article says it the best.) But first–who puts an agent trainee in conversation with the world’s worst human? Nevertheless, Starling more than holds her own against the slimy, cunning Lecter, making Silence an interesting juxtaposition. Hannibal (series) built on Silence’s tradition of brilliant scripting and performances.
What other characters are headed to therapy (besides the New Mutants) and who else is a therapist or counselor in the SF/F/H realm? Comment below and keep the chain going.
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