Welcome to our first English-language post on psychologues-montreal.net. Whether you stumbled here while binge-watching Apple TV+ or you’re a clinician curious about pop-culture representations of your field, we hope you find this reflection useful — and perhaps a little thought-provoking.
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The Show and Its Central Gimmick
Shrinking, the Apple TV+ comedy-drama co-created by Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein, and Jason Segel, premiered in January 2023 and has since been renewed for a third season, currently streaming as of early 2026. The show follows Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel), a grieving therapist who decides — in the wake of his wife’s death — to throw out the rulebook and tell his patients exactly what he thinks. His crusty mentor Paul (Harrison Ford) watches with measured alarm; his colleague Gaby (Jessica Williams) watches with giddy nervousness, waiting for the other shoe to drop.[^1][^2][^3]
By Season 2, this approach had been given a name: Jimmying. Apple TV+ even put it in the official trailer tagline: “Side effects may include tears, laughter, and Jimmying.” When CinemaBlend asked Jason Segel what his name would mean if it were a verb, the term had already become part of the show’s brand identity.[^4][^5]
The comedic premise is irresistible: a therapist who finally says what everyone’s thinking, who yanks a client out of a coffee shop and takes her to an MMA gym, who moves a patient into his pool house. It is warm, funny, and well-acted. And yet — for those who think carefully about the human psyche — something quietly troubling hums underneath the laughs.[^6]
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What Jimmying Actually Is
To be precise, Jimmying refers to the set of behaviours Jimmy employs when he abandons therapeutic neutrality and becomes, in his own words, a “psychological vigilante”: telling clients what he assumes is the truth, issuing ultimatums (leave your abusive husband or I end our sessions), physically inserting himself into their lives, forming dual relationships, and generally substituting his own judgment for his clients’ emerging agency.[^7][^1]
The show frames this as radical honesty — a frustrated therapist cutting through years of therapeutic “nodding” to finally make change happen. The running critique inside the show itself comes from Paul, who warns Jimmy that his methods will “rob them of their autonomy.” Jimmy, for most of the first two seasons, is unconvinced.[^8]
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The Professional Critique: What Therapists Actually Say
The show’s depiction of therapy attracted immediate, substantive criticism from clinicians — and it is worth taking that criticism seriously, not as pearl-clutching, but as a window into what therapy actually is and why it works.
Clinical psychologist Noam Shpancer, writing in Psychology Today, identified the central problem with precision: the ethical guidelines that undergird psychotherapy serve a crucial function — to protect the client, the therapist, and the therapeutic process from harm. Violating them, he argues, does not render Jimmy merely flawed but structurally corrupt in his practice.[^9]
This is a strong claim, but it rests on something important: the rules of therapeutic conduct are not arbitrary bureaucratic constraints. They exist because people come to therapy in genuine psychological pain — and often, as Shpancer pointedly notes, because the very methods Jimmy uses (judgmental advice-giving, enmeshment, paternalistic “truth-telling”) have already been inflicted on them by parents, partners, and friends, without positive effect. Jimmy isn’t offering something radical and new. He’s offering something deeply familiar — and familiar in a way that hasn’t helped.[^9]
Other clinicians echoed these concerns. Clinical psychologist Barbara Greenberg put it bluntly: in therapy, we guide our patients — we do not demand that they change their behaviour. Dr. Chandler Chang, a clinical psychologist, noted that before any kind of directness can be therapeutic, it requires the motivation for change as well as rapport between therapist and client: come at the client too directly too soon, and you rupture the trust.[^8][^6]
The show, to its credit, does show Jimmy’s approach backfiring repeatedly — and Harrison Ford’s Paul functions as an internal conscience for the audience. But the show’s framing remains ambiguous: Jimmy’s chaos is presented as charming, his heart as being in the right place, his ethical violations as lovable flaws rather than serious structural problems.[^10][^9]
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A Deeper Issue: The Assumption About the Human Psyche
Beyond the professional ethics, Jimmying rests on a specific — and worth questioning — model of how the human mind works. It is worth making this model explicit, because it underlies a great deal of popular psychology.
The implicit assumption is something like this: People know, or can be told, what is good for them. They are simply stuck — by habit, by fear, by the constraints of the therapeutic frame. A courageous therapist who cuts through this stuckness and tells them what to do will accelerate their growth.
This treats the patient as essentially a rational agent who needs a push. The therapist, in this view, is someone who has the answer and generously shares it. Change is a function of correct information delivered with enough directness.
This is psychologically appealing — especially to audiences frustrated with their own therapy — but it runs counter to what we understand about how people actually change.
Why “Knowing What to Do” Is Not the Same as Being Able to Do It
Anyone who has ever stayed in a relationship they knew was unhealthy, continued a habit they knew was destructive, or avoided a conversation they knew they needed to have, has already experienced the gap between knowing and being able to act. This gap is not a failure of information. It is the structure of psychological life.
Psychoanalysis, from Freud onward, has been especially attentive to this gap. Freud described it through the concept of repression — the way in which parts of our mental life become unavailable to consciousness, not because we are stupid, but because knowing them would be painful. In his 1917 essay A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-Analysis, he ranked this insight as the third great blow to humanity’s narcissism, after Copernicus and Darwin: psychological research was showing that the ego is not even master in its own house. Lacan, building on and radicalizing Freud, went further: he argued that the subject is fundamentally split, that the ego is a narcissistic construction rather than a transparent window onto the self, and that what we consciously desire is never simply what drives us.[^15][^16][^17][^18]
From this perspective, clients come to therapy not simply not knowing what they should do — they often know quite well. What they do not know is why they cannot do it. And what they believe they want may be a screen for something else entirely. Lacan speaks of a passion for ignorance (passion de l’ignorance) — a deeply rooted refusal of knowledge that is not laziness but a structural feature of how the unconscious protects its own arrangements.[^19]
This is precisely what Lacan was working through in his first Seminar, in the session of January 20, 1954, where he returned to Freud’s technical papers to think rigorously about resistance. For Lacan, resistance is not mere stubbornness — it is the counter-force that intensifies as the patient approaches what is truly repressed. The closer you get to what matters, the harder the push-back. Knowing what to do, at the conscious level, does not touch this process — which is why Jimmy’s advice, however perceptive, can never substitute for the patient’s own traversal of that resistance. It bypasses the very thing that needs to be worked through.[^20][^21]
(Readers following our French-language series on the history of psychoanalysis will recognize this theme: our most recent post on Lacan’s Seminar I concluded with Lacan’s invitation to undertake a sustained inquiry into resistance — which is exactly where our next post in that series will pick up.)
In this light, a therapist who arrives with answers is solving the wrong problem.
The Danger of the Directive Stance
When a therapist acts as Jimmy does — issuing directives, giving advice, becoming enmeshed in a client’s life outside sessions — several things happen, few of them therapeutic:
The client’s desire is bypassed, not engaged. If Grace leaves her abusive husband because Jimmy told her to, she has not developed the inner resources to understand why she stayed, what function the relationship served, or how to navigate future relationships differently. She has merely complied. The work has not been done — it has been circumvented.[^22][^23][^8]
The power dynamic is distorted. Effective therapy of almost any orientation depends on a careful attention to power. Research on cognitive-behavioural therapy confirms that excessive directiveness can threaten the therapeutic relationship, and that collaborative approaches are more supportive of genuine growth. In psychoanalytic terms, an overly active therapist floods the transference, making it impossible for the patient’s own material to emerge and be examined.[^24]
The therapist’s own needs enter the room uninvited. This is perhaps the sharpest critique of Jimmy. As the Los Angeles Times noted, much of his radical new approach is, in fact, serving his own interests. Jimmy feels better when he takes action. His grief, his guilt, his need to be useful — these are finding expression through his clients’ lives. This is a textbook case of what psychoanalysis calls countertransference used against the patient rather than examined and metabolized.[^8]
Autonomy is undermined, not fostered. The goal of therapy — across almost all serious schools of thought — is not to produce compliant patients who have followed the right advice, but to foster genuine autonomy: the client’s capacity to understand themselves, make meaning of their experience, and act from their own grounded desire rather than from fear, compulsion, or compliance. Autonomy here does not mean mere independence in the liberal-individualist sense — it means the capacity to recognize and own one’s choices, including the difficult ones. Paternalism, however well-intentioned, threatens this goal.[^25]
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What the Show Gets Right — and Why It Still Matters
This is not a dismissal of Shrinking as a cultural object. The show is genuinely warm, and it does something valuable: it normalizes the idea of therapy, shows characters actively engaging with grief and mental health, and presents the process of emotional growth as ongoing and nonlinear. Harrison Ford’s Paul, in particular, quietly models something closer to real clinical wisdom — the capacity to hold space, to refrain from rushing to solutions, to trust the process.[^10][^1]
Moreover, the show’s treatment of the “15 minutes” technique — Paul advising Jimmy to sit with grief for a bounded, defined daily period — reflects a genuinely evidence-informed approach to affect regulation, one endorsed by real practitioners. Not everything in Shrinking is invented.[^26]
And there is something touching in the show’s implicit acknowledgment, by Season 2, that Jimmying doesn’t work. The backfires accumulate. Jimmy’s self-awareness slowly grows. The show is, at some level, a story about the limits of the directive impulse — told from the inside.[^27]
But the way the show frames these limits matters. By making Jimmying charming, by making Jimmy lovable, by presenting his violations as quirky rather than structurally harmful, the show risks leaving its audience with the impression that good therapy is just a slightly more careful version of what Jimmy does — that the difference between excellent and irresponsible practice is one of degree, not of kind. And that, from a clinical standpoint, is where a gentle but firm disagreement becomes necessary.
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A Note for Viewers Seeking Therapy
If Shrinking has made you curious about what therapy can offer — that’s genuinely good. The show’s creators have said they made it as advocates for therapy, and it has likely encouraged many people to take their mental health more seriously.[^28][^10]
What it’s worth knowing is this: a therapist who tells you what to do, who pushes you toward specific life decisions, who becomes a presence in your life outside of sessions — is not offering you something extra. They may be offering you something less. The therapeutic space, at its most effective, is a place where you get to discover what you think, feel, and want — with a skilled witness who is trained to notice what you cannot yet see in yourself. That kind of work is quieter than Jimmying. It is also, typically, more transformative.
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References
1. The therapeutic benefits of “Shrinking” is not necessarily in its shaky …](https://www.salon.com/2023/02/03/shrinking-therapist-apple-jason-segel-harrison-ford/) - Jason Segel and Harrison Ford’s comedy, from the “Ted Lasso” team, explores a therapist who’s hit at…
2. Shrinking — Jessica Williams, Christa Miller & Lukita Maxwell Discuss Therapy and More | Apple TV+ - The leading ladies of Shrinking discuss the benefits of therapy, what makes them cry, and the best a…
3. Apple’s beloved comedy “Shrinking” returns for season … - Apple TV revealed the premiere date and first look at the Emmy Award-nominated comedy series “Shrink…
4. Shrinking — Season 2 Official Trailer | Apple TV - Side effects may include tears, laughter, and Jimmying. Shrinking is now streaming on Apple TV https…
5. ‘Jimmy-ing’ Is Used All The Time In Shrinking Season 2. So, We … - As “Jimmy-ing” transpires on Shrinking Season 2, Jason Segel tells CinemaBlend that if his name were…
6. Does “Shrinking” Have Any Real-Life Therapists? Nah, They’re Just … - The comedy series “Shrinking” is a runaway hit, but many psychologists say its message about therapy…
7. Why Apple’s Shrinking Is Already So Controversial - There are some potential problems
8. Real-life therapists break down ‘Shrinking’ on Apple TV+ - In ‘Shrinking,’ Jason Segel plays a therapist who begins telling his clients exactly what he thinks….
9. What’s Wrong With the Show “Shrinking”? - Psychology Today - On the face of it, the new Apple+ psychology-themed show Shrinking seems promising. Yet, as Freud no…
10. ‘Shrinking’ Review: Apple TV+ comedy exemplifies the long-term … - Shrinking, the new Apple TV+ comedy from Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein and Jason Segel, stars Segel…
11. Critique of Psychoanalysis - Open Computing Facility - Freudian psychoanalytic theory, and its later offshoots, constitute a dramatic and provocative pictu…
12. Jacques Lacan Deciphering 2: Subject, Desire and the … - The subject is not an autonomous ego, but the result of a split that occurs between signifiers. It i…
13. “The ego is not master in its own house.” - Sigmund Freud … - The ego is not master in its own house. Sigmund Freud. Favorite. “A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho…
14. Quote by Sigmund Freud: “Humanity has in the course of … - Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two great outrages upon i…
15. 4. The Lacanian Perspective on Why Clients Desire Not To … - Lacan insists that underneath these concerns is a much more deeply rooted wish not to know any of th…
16. प्रतिरोध के बारे में लाकान क्या कहते हैं? – LACANONLINE.COM
17. Seminar 1.3: 20 January 1954 — Jacques Lacan - Žižekian Analysis - 🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖 (All parts in English) MANNONI ANZIEU LACAN The people who have taken an inte…
19. Sartre’s “Bad Faith”: A Practical Guide to Recognising Self-Deception - What is “bad faith”? This post explores Jean-Paul Sartre’s core concept, not as a moral flaw, but as…
20. The use and misuse of power in cognitive-behavioral … - Reflection on power dynamics is vital in cognitive-behavioural and schema therapy for maintaining et…
21. Autonomy as a Goal of Psychotherapy - Monash University
22. ‘Shrinking’ portrays the ‘15 minutes’ technique. What is it? - A mental health technique — dedicating 15 minutes to grief, worry, or sadness — appears in Apple TV+…
23. ‘Shrinking’ Season 2 All but Abandons Its Premise for a Shapeless … - IMDb, the world’s most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content.
24. With ‘Shrinking,’ therapy is mainstream. Is that a good thing? - On Apple TV’s “Shrinking,” the running joke is that therapists are often in need of therapy just as …