Audience as analyst: Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective

Author Dennis Potter has written an exceptional psychoanalytically informed television series in The Singing Detective. Potter succeeds by echewing the usual portrayal of psychoanalysis in cinema and television as a therapy which the viewer observes but instead creates, by means of the content and structure of the series, a production that forces the audience into a role of analyst. The story of the current life and the childhood of the protagonist, Philip Marlow, has depth and context which allows the audience to examine the personality of Marlow, including character pathology and traits, sexuality, fantasy, dreams, and delusions from several metapsychological viewpoints. Potter allows the audience to use the dynamic, genetic, topographic, and, most unusual in drama, structural viewpoints. The audience can experience aspects of an analyst's experience, including the process of formulating and evaluating over time analytic hypotheses and coping with emotional reactions to the material which at times has transferencelike qualities.