“How I Met Your Mother” is one of my favorite tv shows. That being said, a recent couple of episodes had me cringing and shouting at the tv the majority of the time. I felt a little bit like my mother, who often gets frustrated with exciting hospital tv shows. She was trained and worked for many years as a nurse in the emergency room, and readily picks up on the reality (or lack thereof) of the situations portrayed in television hospitals. As a budding counselor, I felt a similar frustration with this portrayal of a therapist.
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This particular set of episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” involved one of the characters, Robin, seeing a therapist for a court-mandated session after assaulting a woman on the street. The show unfolds through Robin’s telling of the scenario in a therapy session and frequent quips by the therapist (or psychiatrist or counselor, it is unclear) to hurry up her story (“Can we just get to the assault?”). Throughout the show he also breaks confidentiality on several counts by describing his other clients (in one case, he describes how one of his other patients – mostly “disturbed felons” – sent him a bag of his own feces for the therapist’s birthday). In the following episode, the therapist actually starts to date Robin. Ted tells his friend Robin, “Robin, if you asked a hundred people who is the worst person you could possibly date, they’d all say your therapist.” What the show fails to regard is the fact that therapists, and in fact, the American Counseling Association (ACA), agree with Ted and those hundred people he mentioned. Dating a former client is prohibited for counselors for 5 years after the cessation of treatment, according to the ACA’s Code of Ethics. While the tv therapist acknowledged that he was not supposed to date Robin, he continued on to do so without much apparent concern for this violation of ethics.
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I found the portrayal to be unprofessional and, while the therapist’s humor aided the ridiculous nature of Robin’s story, it was not so over-the-top as to be a satirical portrayal of a therapist. In addition, this character only seemed to care for Robin’s well-being after he established a personal romantic interest in her; there was no demonstration of professional (and ethical) empathy. While it may not be as interesting, humorous or contextually appropriate to have a caring and empathetic counselor in this situation, it is a shame that a counselor or therapist may be portrayed without ideal qualities (or even, some could argue, decent ones). Unfortunately, for many who have never participated in a counseling session, watching this stereotype on television may be the closest they get to counseling.
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American Counseling Association. (2005). Code of Ethics. Alexandria, VA: Author.
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Thomas, C. & Bays, C. Producer. (Producers). (2005). How I Met Your Mother (Television series). Los Angeles: CBS Broadcasting, Inc.