Succession’s daddy issues and The Flight Attendant’s rampant id: why Freud looms over TV in 2023
In an agonising scene in season three of HBO’s Succession, Roman Roy sends a dick pic to his father, Logan, rather than his on-off romantic interest, Gerri. Logan’s mobile dings, and we cringe as we realise Roman’s mistake. But, psychoanalysts would argue, it is not a mistake – rather it is an aggression caused by unconscious thoughts in a character with an unresolved Oedipus complex.
TV is replete with instances of Freudian psychoanalytical narrative motivating characters’ behaviour and journey: from and to The Flight Attendantand Shrinking. The psychoanalyst’s theories percolate through so much of modern media that you wonder if the writers are portraying the same concepts that Sigmund Freud articulated
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