Succession; Yellowstone - and ‘change’ in therapy

[spoilers alert]

Yellowstone and Succession are two colossal, powerful, brutish shows. They’re different but both saturated with the exquisite, tantalising promise of change – of something monumental shifting: and yet while change happens, fundamentally, people keep on being stuck.*

Counsellors, psychotherapists, people, have beliefs about how and whether things can really change and how important that is. It is worth exploring this – because the feeling in therapy of getting repeatedly stuck or disillusioned about the likelihood of change is significant and may mean it isn’t working for you. (Or it may mean you’re getting to the heart of something!)

Past v Future – which route to ‘recovery’

The trauma of the past hovers around every scene in these dramas, made more captivating because it is not fully revealed. What exactly happened to Logan Roy in childhood? What made John Dutton so mean, adored, wounded? (Fascination with the latter enabled origin series, 1923.)

Is it possible that information about the past, full insight and understanding, can shift things in our life or others’ lives? Knowledge is power, after all. Some people hope for this kind of forensic insight in therapy. Evidence indicates, though, that insight alone may not bring change. It tends to be useful but it can also hurt someone who has good reason not to know certain things. (And let’s face it, any world where we have the full measure of John or Logan is a barren, unenticing one!)

In some counselling approaches, manualised programmes are used - that don’t look back but instead offer present-day strategies for making change. They can work but sometimes are met with resistance or provide successes that don’t last.

Is there a ‘key’ or a series of steps that will get Logan or John to open up, become vulnerable, change? Maybe. But the drama is in part so resonant because they and the storylines resist this at every turn: they will be masters of their own destiny, or nothing! Power wielded by any external authority or system of knowledge feels toxic to them. (The scene where Logan’s children try to organise family therapy is one hilarious example).

Counselling work might be seen as being on a continuum: sometimes focusing more on insight about the past and sometimes focusing more on what steps to take to achieve an outcome. (It’s not that simple, of course.)

What about context (Montana ; New York)?

Big, solid men and overbearing landscapes dominate these series. (Again, wry self-awareness of exaggerated egos is crucial to the programmes’ success. Female characters are fewer but also larger than life: it is interesting to think about how they operate in these masculine spaces.)

Yellowstone and Succession are epic in historical and environmental scope. Backdrops are primary. The ever-present ‘wild west’, John physically and psychologically fighting to keep land and livestock, to carve out territory and cut off incursions in a wild-western space that increasingly feels too big for him. The steely, sterile, uncompromising systems, buildings and luxury spaces of American capitalism take away breath and distract us from - or encourage us to mock - every puny, beating human heart attempting to maintain a steady beat: Logan makes a valiant, terrifying effort to be king of the castle but, in the end, retreats to his self-made coffin.

Logan and John are products of their contexts, even while they shape them. And it is impossible to separate personal change, even intergenerational change, from the context. History, oppression, perceptions, power structures and physical environments are inextricably bound up with us as individials. Capitalist culture may tell us that with the right effort, tools, spending and training we can change ourselves - but our power is limited and such promises make most of us feel like failures.

Counsellors can aim to create a relationship or space that brings relief from the context. People might then see more clearly what kinds of power they have. It can be useful to have respite, to reflect on our history, notice the impact of oppression, separate the way others see us from the way we see ourselves and become aware of how power is at play in each and every interaction. Including in therapy.

Connection and Power

The smallness of the human person is evident in Succession and Yellowstone. Even the biggest of people are small. In the opening episode, Logan Roy nearly dies and in the final series, he finally does. It is devastating. John Dutton is desperate to cling onto his ranch because he knows he cannot, actually, cling on to it: the consequences of his desperation expand and expand.

Therapy is a relationship not a strategy for change. Evidence suggests the quality of the relationship is vital in the work. Some therapists argue that the best way to achieve change is not to aim for it. Others might prefer to think about change as a process, not an outcome.

Maybe a view of what is happening to us that accepts change is ongoing, internally and externally, that it is a collective, interdependent and cyclical process, where we all have power and influence one another, might be useful. The lie of ‘every man for himself’ is what scuppered Logan, John and their families in the end. (Don’t try to tell them!)

What do you think? What are you looking for in therapy?

* I am only part-way through Yellowstone at the time of writing