Good Will Hunting

The scene from the movie, “Good Will Hunting,” in which Robins Williams, “Sean,” connects in a deeply healing way with Matt Damon or “Will’s” pain is one of my favorite moments in media portrayals of therapy. So, in my inaugural blog post of this series I want to start here.

In the scene, Sean, a therapist, is holding Will’s file, a report for the judge, including a history of Will’s abuse. Will had been seeing Sean for some time now, and with this report their relationship would be coming to a close. Their relationship itself - Will’s tough, aggressive standoffishness paired with Sean’s authenticity is in itself delightful to watch unfold up to this point. Though there is much that is controversial! But that’s a topic for another time.

Will asks, “You have any experience with that?,” referring to the file for the judge. Sean says something about 20 years of experience, not quite getting so close yet, either in sharing his own pain, or in getting close to Will’s pain.

“I mean personal experience.” Here Sean makes a choice to share about some of his abuse at the hands of his father. Will then, in turn, talks about his alcoholic father’s abuse. The two men are still a bit removed from their emotions, talking as men are taught to talk about their trauma, in a dismissive, war-story kind of way. But Sean ups the ante, stepping closer and motioning with Will’s file, “All this shit.” “It’s not your fault.” Will responds softly, maybe dismissively, “Yeah I know that.”

Sean steps a little closer, “Look at me son, It’s not your fault.” Will responds with a little faster vocal tone, trying to dismiss the emotion, “I know.”

“It’s not your fault.” Will looking up, maybe a bit annoyed now, “I know.”

Sean steps even closer, “It’s not your fault.” Will stands up as if to escape, “I know.”

“It’s not your fault.” “It’s not your fault.” No answer, looking down. Now looks up directly, aggressively - “Don’t fuck with me.” With his vocal tone and posture Will warns him to back off.

“It’s not your fault.” Now the aggression explodes in a shove. Will is now physically trying to keep him away from his pain. “Don’t fuck with me! Alright, don’t fuck with me, Sean not you!” Now Will is begging Sean not to destroy the trust Will had come to have with Sean… “Not you.” Will starts to sob. And Sean reaches for the back of Will’s head to pull him into an embrace, and Will sobs, letting the hurt he has carried so long along be finally felt in the presence of another.

There is so much to unpack about this scene!

One of the comments that I suspect I’ll make often in this blog series is that movies, tv shows and media in general “speed up” the process of therapy. Of course they do - we have limited attention spans. And to be fair, we haven’t yet done much exposition on how the movie builds up to this moment as it tells the story of the two men’s relationship. I say that because there are so many moments in which maybe in real life this might have unfolded a little slower, because there is quite a bit of risk taken by Sean in this scene. Now, I say that as a young therapist. I only have a fourth of the experience represented by Sean’s twenty years doing this.

The first risk Sean takes in this scene is one of self-disclosure. Sean “self-discloses” when he talks about his own abuse. This isn’t the biggest risk, but is an important choice for therapists. One of the ethical principles therapist’s must abide by is that the therapy is for the client, not for them. Clients should never come away from therapy feeling like they have to take care of their therapist or that the therapist is using the space for the therapist’s own needs. So, generally, therapists abide by a rule of not disclosing about themselves. Sometimes, you’ll meet therapists who err too much in this direction. They are “anxious” about not breaking this rule, so they take care of their needs, their anxiety, by abiding too strictly to this rule. I’ve been in that position at times. What Sean demonstrates in this scene is that sometimes self-disclosure can be “for” the client. It is the decision Sean makes to self-disclose that opens the door to Will getting closer to his own trauma.

This risk isn’t the one I felt was the biggest though. It is more clear how the self-disclosure benefits Will. The bigger risk is carried in the “tension” of this scene that makes it so powerful. It is the stepping toward Will’s trauma so…aggressively…physically represented by Sean moving in closer, that alarmed me the most. Something I’ve learned about trauma, is that it can be possible to move too quickly with trauma and even re-traumatize a client. Will might have pushed Sean away and concluded that Sean couldn’t be trusted, that Sean was one more person aggressively betraying Will’s autonomy, in a similar way to the way his father violently betrayed his autonomy.

As a beginning therapist, five years ago now, I perhaps was too confident of the need for people to connect with their emotions in the therapy relationship. I should say I was too confident in that I went too fast, before trust is built. I’ve learned to take it slow. What I could wonder, is, if in real life, this scene might have played out over several encounters. Sean might have said, “It’s not your fault,” maybe a few times, and then responded to Will’s queues to keep away. Sean would have demonstrated that he could be trusted to respect Will’s readiness to face his trauma. Sean would still be moving towards Will’s trauma, “pushing” Will in a sense, but also doing so carefully.

But I offer these thoughts with some humility. Sean’s twenty years of experience as well as the relationship he built with Will may have been the grounds under which Sean could trust his instinct that this is what Will needed in this moment.

In closing, I do want to touch on what actually happened here, apart from the risks Sean took. From a psychodynamic framework, we could say Will’s whole life was organized, mostly unconsciously, around keeping people away from his deep emotional wounds. He did this because his early relational experiences taught him that close relationships with others are dangerous. Yet, there is a yearning for that emotional pain to be felt with another and to be cared for by another. Sean’s relationship with Will touched that yearning, and in this scene Will got to experience something that contradicted his past experience. His pain - his trauma - could find a relational home. This new experience could be the grounds for an unlearning of his past way of engaging others and the first step towards building something different.