“You’ll have bad times, but it’ll always wake you up to the good stuff
you weren’t paying attention to“
~ The late, great Robin Williams as psychotherapist Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting
In the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, therapist Sean counsels reluctant fellow under-achiever Will. Young Will is a prodigy who’s working well below his intellectual capabilities, and sabotages his chance at true love. I re-watched Good Will Hunting, and it got me thinking about the practice of psychotherapy, ethics and what constitutes good therapy.
Will is a defiant and mistrustful 20 year old, who’s sense of self worth has been severely compromised by a traumatic childhood. Therapist Sean uses confrontation, self disclosure and wisdom as a way to challenge Will’s resistance to grow into the person he is meant to be. Yes, in true Hollywood fashion, Sean violates professional boundaries by threatening and manhandling Will. Sean’s inappropriate outbursts aside, the gist seems to be that Sean is ultimately successful in helping Will overcome his defensive – though unconscious – self-blame for being abused by his father and the foster care system he grew up in. Will’s repressed self blame and fear of being unlovable are what has held him back his whole life because, up until his breakthrough in therapy, he seems to have believed he was unworthy and incapable of having a better life, including his girlfriend’s love.
Most therapists are trained to be much gentler in their orientation than Sean, and being confrontational generally gets a bad rap in therapy circles, especially as a primary strategy. But the film begs the question – is gentleness always practical or useful in counseling? Would Sean have been able to reach Will if he had used a softer approach?
Confrontation is a bit of a ‘martial art’, and must always be conducted in the very best interest of the client’s psychological well being. By it’s very nature, confrontation is always risky and takes humility, skill and courage for a therapist to do effectively. In an ideal world, Sean would have all the time necessary to help Will gently overcome his resistance to change. Will was only in therapy for eight sessions, and few clients will stay in therapy much longer, so optimizing effectiveness in the moment is the therapist’s best approach. And, sometimes, being skillfully challenging may be the most effective choice a good therapist can make.
While certainly not promoting confrontation in general, I believe that if used humbly and strategically, especially after a trust relationship has developed, challenging a client can help them get unstuck from a painful or unhelpful perspective, relationship or way of approaching life. Challenge can allow the therapist to ‘stand up for’ – or temporarily hold the vision – for the client’s hopes, dreams and goals for their life, especially when the client seems unable to do so for themself.
Psychotherapy is an evolving field. What was considered cutting edge 50 years ago, is now often viewed as unacceptable or even harmful. If Freud or Jung were practicing today, they would likely have been hauled before their professional licensing boards for professional misconduct! 50 years from now, what currently stands for ‘best practices’ in counseling may be subject to the same unforgiving scrutiny.
From my experience, being authentic with clients, and using strategic disclosures, like Sean discussing his grief and loss over his wife’s death, helps clients trust therapists more and, because of that, to get more out of therapy. Clients relate so much more to the human, heart felt side of the therapy relationship, rather than to a clinical role. Clients need to know there is a real, vulnerable human being looking back at them, who can relate to their pain, while helping them hold on to hope.
In the end, I believe all successful therapies are an act of love. This love is reflected in the therapist’s willingness to be open and honest, kind and challenging with their client, where appropriate. This egalitarian approach signals to the client that we are all on this human journey together, suffer in the same ways, and can help each other move past life’s pain. In this way therapists love, and are loved backed by their clients, and grow as clinicians and human beings. And in his own hyperbolic way, Sean loved Will in just the way Will needed to heal and move on with his life.
What do you think? Would you like to have someone like Sean as your therapist?
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Glynis Sherwood – MEd, Canadian Certified Counselor, Registered Clinical Counselor, specializes in helping people build their Self Esteem and Confidence, overcome Family Conflict and Scapegoating, Anxiety, Depression, Grief and Addictive Behaviors. I look forward to hearing from you and helping you achieve the life you want and deserve!
Hi, I just watched Good Will Hunting for the second time and was thinking about my counselling journey and thinking, yes, I would’ve liked to have Sean as my therapist. So I googled GWH and found that Matt & Ben wrote the screenplay, not a psychotherapist author. So I added ‘therapy’ to my google and landed here. Thanks for your insights. I thought my counsellor, Alan, was not always authentic with me and that actually he wasn’t authentically interested in helping me. However, I pretty much knew what I had to do and he pretty much agreed with it. Also many people were in greater suffering than me and I felt like I was wasting their time and his. We had some nice chats, I left my toxic situation behind and crafted a new life for myself over the last couple of years. Still, at some point, I’d like to get to the bottom of why I am like I am. Maybe I’ll meet a Sean.
Thanks for your comment Martin. It’s interesting that you – and so many others – have said they’d like a therapist like Sean. Authenticity seems to be of tremendous value to therapy clients – having a real, invested connection with the counsellor.
Thanks for your reply, Glynis. Yes it’s true and a little bit ironic that a hollywood movie can depict authenticity – all credit to the actors. Also the appeal to me is the depth of understanding that Sean appears to have of the core needs of Will, the need for his catharsis and the fathering/mentoring. I’ve read a couple of other therapists comments suggesting that Sean broke several rules of therapy. That only increases my respect for the approach because the client’s healing and welfare is placed above considerations of professionalism.
Yes, Sean was more interested in being helpful and effective than following the rules.
Glynis, perhaps psychiatry needs to be reformed to accommodate for a stronger patient/client relationship. I know one hurdle to building such relationship is a lack of a privately or publicly funded system that pays therapists so that there’s less of a professional customer/supplier type relationship.
Jeremiah – Thanks for your comment. Psychiatry is pretty much tied to a medical and biological ‘disease’ model of mental health, so it is indeed very limited in terms of the client / therapist relationship. Most psychotherapy is done by therapists like myself – i.e. Registered counsellors, psychologists, social workers, etc. I agree with you, there is a shortage of funded mental health services available to people in North America, and much of what’s out there is based on the medical model. I have been both client and therapist, and find that paying for services is not an impediment to people who have the resources. In fact, it frees the therapist from bureaucracy, leading to the creativity and lack of time restrictions it takes to be truly effective.
That sounds a bit too idealistic for the reality of the mental health profession Martin. Every therapist, Marriage & Family therapists, Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Clinical Mental Health Counselors, Psychologists, and Psychiatrists all have licenses and there are state boards that grant them permission to practice their profession. It might sound nice to have a therapist throw the rules to the wind for the better of the client, however, it is unrealistic. Would you go through 4-8 years of specialized schooling followed by licensing and continued education in your field just to risk it all on breaking ethics rules for the good of your client, facing not only losing your license but possibly legal consequences and being sued?
I know I’m late to the party, but having had a couple experiences with CBT therapists which were not all that helpful, yea, I kinda wish I could find someone like Sean and magically arrive at that “it’s not your fault” sort of “breakthrough” or “a-ha” moment and be “better” as a result, but I fear all of that is a bit too Hollywood. I do like the approach that’s shown of getting to the sort of “heart” or “origin” of the client’s issues — do folks think Sean is using some kind of psychodynamic approach?
Yes, Sean is helping Will face his defenses in order to overcome his core wound – the abuse by his father – so he can discover his own sense of self worth and transcend his deep seated beliefs that he is bad, worthless or unlovable. Very psychodynamic indeed!
I have also watch the film Good Will Hunting a couple of times and really enjoyed it as a movie. I think many potential clients would appreciate the kind of therapist Sean was in my case not so much for the self disclosure as for the fact that he genuinely cared about his client. I have recently tried some counseling and very much felt the counsellor was way too detached and not particularly interested in me. I ended the sessions early. I found this site while searching on family scapegoating and appreciate your clear style of writing and your step by step approach to dealing with this issue.
I hated Good Will Hunting. Sean has no idea how to be a therapist. Assault on his client? Seriously? If you’re so clingy to stuff like your dead wife you shouldn’t even be giving therapy.
The film gives a very unrealistic approach to psycotherapy. While yes, many CBTs today are short, they’re about 9-12 sessions long, and CBT is not everything. I’ve gone to therapy for over 4 years now, for example.
If somebody pulled that **** on me I would not, EVER cross their door again. And to cap it all, Sean then gives a stupidly condescending speech to Will about how he “lacks experience”, but confrontation on therapists is stupidly common, so Will had his role right… but the one who actually snapped and PHYSICALLY RESTRAINED someone was SEAN, so HE is the one who should have gone scolded.
While the next part in the silence was pretty well done, I felt like the rapport was forced (not by the characters, rather by the script) and that Sean was a little TOO open to Will. In the end therapists have to take some distance because it’s the client’s time, not theirs, and they talked too much about Sean’s own problem.
And finally… “it’s not your fault”. I know this is a movie, but if we’re gonna do a serious analysis… so, Sean just reads about Will’s life, and he can go through him? Just like that? I don’t buy it. My therapist is very confrontational and big moments didn’t just happen like that – there was a direction and a purpose, which the movie had at the moment, but it didn’t have a backbone.
Frankly I don’t think this was a good movie and I thought it was an awful therapy.