How “The Matrix Resurrections” Critiques Psychotherapy

I loved the new Matrix movie. I felt skeptical initially. Another reboot? I watched it only because my parents wanted to. But surprisingly it had many smart ideas about what it means to live today in the age of the internet, social media, and virtual reality.

But I digress. This is not a movie review. I leave that to others. But as a therapist, I found the movie’s characterization of therapy particularly fascinating. One of the main antagonists of the film is a character called “The Analyst” played by Neil Patrick Harris. Without spoiling too much, our main character, Neo, is in therapy because of an attempted suicide attempt. He sees his analyst who tells him that he has detached from reality and needs to take medication to return to the so-called “real world.”

Therapists in this movie, and I’d argue increasingly in the modern world, are the Brahmins, the priestly caste, connected to the cruel Gods of fate. I’m sure there are great academic articles about this; I think of Nietzsche 140 years ago declaring that God is dead. The modern world had killed him. Science and capitalism had destroyed the mysteries of existence. What replaced God? Work and productivity as Gods, for sure. But also psychoanalysis. No longer did we look to God for answers for the modern bourgeois. But the psychoanalyst would listen to the patient drone…