Psychiatrists analyze Harry Potter in a symposium at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in New Orleans, concluding he’s a good model of psychological health in the face of adversity. Salon And The analysts continue their discussion of The Sopranos‘ penultimate episode of the season:

‘When I was training to become an analyst, I had a supervisor with

impeccable Viennese credentials who taught me a very important

concept. And the fact that he put it in German made it that much

more authoritative. At a crucial point in a treatment, he told me, the

patient gains Krankheitseinsicht–which roughly means “insight

into one’s illness.” At that moment a person really becomes a patient,

an ally who has joined you in trying to understand the nature of that

“illness.”

Until then, people often try to explain their troubles in terms of such

factors as ill luck, their stupid boss, their nagging spouse, the

capitalist system, an unjust world–in short, on some aspect of

external reality. While many of these complaints aren’t often true,

it’s only after a person has realized that there is something in their

inner world that causes them to continuously recreate unhappy

situations that therapeutic transformation can begin. The task then

for therapist and patient is to understand the psychological template

inside of the patient that he or she repeatedly imposes on external

reality.’ Slate