The International Journal of Psychoanalysis

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Game of Thrones—A psychoanalytic interpretation

including some remarks on the psychosocial
function of modern TV series

Gerald Poscheschnik

To cite this article: Gerald Poscheschnik (2018) Game�of�Thrones—A psychoanalytic

interpretation including some remarks on the psychosocial function of modern TV series, The
International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 99:4, 1004-1016, DOI: 10.1080/00207578.2018.1425092

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2018.1425092

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INT J PSYCHOANAL
2018, VOL. 99, NO. 4, 1004–1016
https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2018.1425092

Game of Thrones—A psychoanalytic interpretation including

some remarks on the psychosocial function of modern TV
series
Gerald Poscheschnik
Institute of Psychosocial Intervention, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck,
Austria

Introduction
There are certainly many different aspects which contribute to the international success of
films or television series: stagecraft, camera work, location and scenery, stage clothes and
theatrical makeup, as well as an enthralling story with spectacular events that transcend
the ordinary life of the average spectator. But beyond this cinematographic realization,
the production also has to attract and fascinate its spectators on a deeper, more implicit
and latent level of meaning. The artist or the artists—enabled by their capability to capture
the Zeitgeist—create a scenic assemblage, in which latent content is not only derived from
unconscious childhood-complexes, but can also be coined by experiences made later in
life and by the external reality of society and culture. Psychoanalysis sees any mind as a
resonating mind permanently in touch with the surrounding social and material environ-
ment. The constraints of social facts such as gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, class, and so
on greatly determine unconscious psychic structure (Hopper 2011; Hopper and Weinberg
2011). This is the reason why multiple forms of unconscious processes regarding groups,
societies, and cultures are postulated.
Freud already assumed these types of unconscious elements and a dialectic relation
between the individual and its society. He considered culture itself as a regulating instance
forcing its individuals to repress parts of their own nature (Freud 1930). Inner psychic struc-
tures such as the super-ego are built by the internalization of external objects and the
relations with them (Freud 1923). Fromm (1962) explicitly pointed out that society deter-
mines a person’s fate and its unconscious structure. In his view, the family as the first agent
of socialization serves the dissemination of societal principles. As a result, every psyche
also contains—along with individual elements—patterns typical for a given society or
culture. Among them are unconscious elements that should not become conscious,
because they would threaten the smooth functioning of society. Society works well as
long as contradictions, conflicts, and tensions can be covered and moved to the uncon-
scious (Haubl and Schülein 2016; Tubert-Oaklander 2006). According to Dalal (2011),
society always has an ideology, which fulfils the function of social defence. This system

CONTACT Gerald Poscheschnik gerald.poscheschnik@uibk.ac.at Institute of Psychosocial Intervention, Faculty of

Educational Sciences, University of Innsbruck, Schoepfstr. 3, Innsbruck 6020, Austria
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
 INT J PSYCHOANAL 1005

of attitudes, beliefs, and socioemotional dispositions is primarily unconscious and “(…)

legitimates the interests of interest groups, but in ways that are hard to recognize. This
is because the work of ideology is to give the historical and contingent the appearance
of the natural and inevitable” (Dalal 2011, p. 257). These considerations are supported
by Klímová (2011), who analysed more or less collective traumatizations in totalitarian
regimes. In such cases, the educational interactions not only provoke the rejection of a
true self and the fostering of a false one, but also create a kind of “false collective self/
false we” as a dynamic part of the social unconscious. Such traumatic experiences can
result in rigid defence strategies and psychic retreats (Mojovic 2011), and can even be
transmitted from one generation to another.
Such unconscious elements can also be found in commonly shared myths or narratives
that are considered to be “imaginative creations of groups and peoples” (Freud 1925,
p. 69). Like dreams (Abraham 1909), they represent and mirror individual and societal
unconscious fantasies, conflicts, and complexes. Popular films and television series can
be seen as a form of modern myth. In his theoretical analysis of the horror genre, King
(2012) has argued that on a conscious level horror operates by shocking or disgusting
its audience; but on an unconscious level the story has to activate phobic pressure
points that can be related to collective fears or traumata of society as a whole. As an
example, King (2012) refers to the 1950s space race—a competition between the super
powers USA and USSR, which culminated in the Sputnik crisis, when the Soviets surpris-
ingly orbited the world’s first artificial satellite in 1957. During this decade an abundance
of science-fiction stories were published in the USA that covered the glorious colonization
of outer space; but there have also been sci-fi-horror stories about the invasion and
destruction of the world by extraterrestrial powers. In this case the extraterrestrial usurpa-
tion symbolized the communist threat and the nuclear annihilation of the planet. In short,
these narratives must mirror and represent widespread and commonly shared uncon-
scious fantasies, if they want to fall on fertile psychological soil and prove successful in cap-
tivating many. Without this symbolic analogy of the scenes and unconscious patterns they
would probably rather bore their spectators.
The latent content of a narrative is embodied in its scenes and can be uncloaked through
the psychoanalytic method of scenic understanding. This method is applied by psychoana-
lysts to understand the transference dynamics of their patients, and was especially carved
out by Lorenzer (1973, 2016). It soon became very popular beyond clinical psychoanalysis,
because it was established as a method of qualitative social research for the interpretation of
texts and cultural phenomena. Scenic understanding became a codified method based on
explicit rules and a step-by-step model targeting unconscious structures (Author’s name
2015; Hollway 2013; Salling Olesen and Weber 2012). Scenic understanding approaches
the unconscious structure in several steps by starting with a paraphrase of the manifest
content. This step is called logical understanding and remains on the level of mere
content. On the basis of a common language, the analyst or psychodynamic researcher is
able to understand the sentences of his/her counterpart. “The psychic contents of the
other are realized as contexts of meaning. (…) In the case of two contradictory statements
(…) both of them are treated as equal facts” (Lorenzer 1973, p. 89). In the second step, called
psychological understanding, the analysis focuses on emotional processes accompanying
the manifest content; the guiding question is no longer what it is all about, but how it is
psychologically evaluated and performed. “Logical understanding is considered to be an
1006 G. POSCHESCHNIK

understanding of the spoken word, psychological understanding is considered to be an

understanding of the speaker” (Lorenzer 1973, p. 138). “The affective constitution of the
patient is mainly becoming accessible to our ‘empathy’, that is psychological understanding,
by a number of ‘gestures’ (…)” (Lorenzer 1973, p. 101). The third step is scenic understand-
ing, where the logical and the psychological level are brought together to capture the
underlying and unconscious interpersonal pattern that determines the concrete actions.
Scenic understanding targets “on the realization of the situation of the patient in the field
of his object-relations” (Lorenzer 1973, p. 187). Finally, the understanding of the scene
can lead to a reconstructive interpretation that establishes parallels between the underlying
scenes in different situations of life. What looks distant and far at first glance can become
very close with scenic understanding (for a summary see also Author’s name 2015).
Television and television series should be taken seriously as an object of psychoanalytic
research (Bainbridge, Ward, and Yates 2014; Storck and Taubner 2017a). Contrary to a
single movie that is only seen once and lasts approximately two hours, a TV series accom-
panies its viewers over much longer periods of time. Thus, series can become a ritual occu-
pation in everyday life. Their repetition can create a much stronger bond and longer
lasting identifications, as well as a more influential psychosocial impact on the individual
psyche. Using Game of Thrones (GoT) as an example, I will try to show that a successful and
even hyped series can comprise a meta-narrative, including references to actual societal,
cultural, and political fantasies. Television series comprise societal unconscious elements,
they are “investigating culture and society” (Storck and Taubner 2017b, 5).
The US-American TV series GoT, produced by HBO since 2011, entertains millions of
enthusiastic viewers worldwide and predominantly receives rave reviews; some even
consider the series as a culminating point of so-called Quality-TV or Complex-TV
(Mittell 2015). GoT is an adaption of George R.R. Martin’s serial novel A Song of Ice
and Fire and interweaves strands of traditional drama with elements of trash, splatter,
horror, porno, and the fantasy genre. Up to the present, GoT has nearly 70 hours of
footage, which show about 100 relevant parts for various storylines. Choosing selected
strands or characters would offer many, and also different possible interpretations. In
online forums for example, many different attempts are made which try to diagnose
the personas of the series using psychiatric classifications. The palette of these diag-
noses—quite appropriately—ranges from borderline to antisocial personality disorder
to alcoholism. But you could also focus on oedipal conflicts, hero’s journeys and person-
ality developments, sadomasochistic infightings, the logic of the primary process and
magical thinking or other patterns and elements of the story. My psychoanalytic
interrogation of GoT is neither concerned with the characters themselves nor psychody-
namic patterns, but the production as a whole, the narrative core of the entire drama. In
this interpretation, GoT is understood as a symbolic articulation of currently virulent
socio-political fantasies. A focus on the collective fate of all the figures is not discrediting
the importance of fantasies regarding the individual unconscious. One aspect doesn’t
preclude the other. If you analyse the audiovisual narrative of the series with the psycho-
analytic method, remarkable parallels between the scenic core of the narration and
actual societal happenings appear.
On the manifest level, GoT is set in a historically and geographically distant, even
fantasy world. It is a fictional medieval spectacle with supernatural creatures, and a
freak show of the most atrocious rulers. Furthermore, GoT provokes with nude and
 INT J PSYCHOANAL 1007

carved up bodies, and impresses with explicit dialogues. So this mixture of sex, blood, and
violence is not for the faint-hearted. On the surface there are nearly no points of contact
with the private and societal life of the average contemporary viewer. By subtracting all
the typical elements of the genre and reducing the plot to its very elements and to
their relations, one can uncover a scenic-unconscious or latent level of meaning—a
complex drama that seems to mirror the feeling that many people have about the
status quo of Western society. The topography of GoT with its three pivotal locations
(the continent Westeros, the North, and the continent Essos) and its occurrences can be
interpreted as components of this somewhat vague fantasy about the contemporary con-
ditions of Western society. Thus, GoT can be seen as an audiovisual representation of fan-
tasies regarding societal dynamics, which suddenly are anything but remote and
extraneous. Hence, what makes GoT successful and evokes the hype, along with the
already mentioned craft, is the presentation of suppressed fantasies about the societal
status quo, fears, and hopes that are encoded in the scenic assemblage. Hidden behind
the mask of a furious medieval spectacle, GoT contains a narrative core with surprisingly
up-to-date socio-political references, which can animate its viewers to think about and
reflect on themselves as political and societal beings, as well as on society per se.

Westeros—Collapse of an order
The civilization of the fictitious continent Westeros technologically and culturally resides
approximately in the Middle Ages. Climatically it is affected by pronounced winters and
summers which last for years. At the end of such a summer, shortly before the onset of
the long-lasting winter, the incumbent king Robert Baratheon, a notorious drunkard
and philanderer, is lethally injured by a boar while hunting. Influential and powerful
houses, among them the Lannisters, the Starks, and the Baratheons, now start to vie for
the so-called Iron Throne by means of intrigue, diplomacy, military, or economy. In this
battle, the powerful do not impress with nobleness or faultlessness, but rather they are
predominantly greedy for power and morally depraved. Joffrey Baratheon, for example,
the alleged son of the departed king (and in fact a result of infidelity and incest of his
mother Cersei, the king’s widow, with her own brother Jaime) is a sadistic Machiavellist.
He accuses his fiancée’s father of treason and beheads him, then he humiliates and
abuses her in public. Other aspirants for the throne are also characterized by madness
and inhumanity; Robert Baratheon’s brother Stannis, who considers himself to be divinely
legitimized, not only executes political opponents, but finally—driven by the vain hope to
appease his god this way—burns his own daughter at the stake. Even the seemingly
shining exceptions among the protagonists, like Jon Snow or Robb Stark, use draconian
penalties and decapitate those who won’t surrender. In this interplay, power can always
and suddenly change to powerlessness, and vice versa. The Stark family, once mighty
and loyal allies of the king, has nearly been erased completely. The tyrannical king
Joffrey is poisoned at his own wedding and dies miserably for the entire world to see.
And queen mother Cersei arms religious fanatics to assure her own power, but loses
control, gets captured and humiliated by them, and finally strikes back and crushes her
enemies with an infamous coup. Common people only have a marginal role in these intri-
gues: they are simple pawns in the game of thrones the ruling class is playing. Sometimes
1008 G. POSCHESCHNIK

they are victims of plunder, and sometimes they are reluctantly serving in the military,
getting mutilated and killed.
These events on Westeros seem to hook up to a fantasy that many people share in
Western society, which is shattered by a global economic crisis. In a Lacanian sense the
dying king represents the collapse of the symbolic order, and by that declares a change
of times. The looming long-lasting winter mirrors the feeling that times are worsening.
The gathering of the war clouds, the case of dog eat dog, and the threat of helplessness
and destruction serve as a scenic representation of a daily struggle for economic survival
that is nowadays becoming harder. The economic bust, which has become permanent,
shrinks the wealth of the middle-class that was acquired by previous generations. The
intensification of the globalized rat race between individual states promotes the relocation
of jobs and emphasizes the casualization and precarization of labour. Many workers realize
that they have become replaceable drudges, whose workplace can be relocated some-
where else or allocated to someone more motivated (see Beck 1992). In a society in
which wealth predominantly increases for the rich (Piketty 2014; Stiglitz 2012), social
descent is becoming a real threat for many (Nachtwey 2016). The archaic brutality of
GoT matches the feeling that this struggle is experienced as existentially threatening
and most notably is becoming increasingly harder. This subjective feeling is not derogated
by the fact that most viewers still live in the richer part of the world. The above-mentioned
presentation of common people who are starving, wounded, victimized, and powerless
represents a widespread feeling that Everyman has to play a game where rules are
forced on him/her. The subjective impression that the powerful are exploiting the
common folk and only pursue their own advantage is spreading in Western countries.
The fight for power of the political elite seems to only serve self-sustaining purposes
and alleged economic constraints that are sold as inevitable.

The North—Repression and return of the repressed

The crownland is shielded from the nearly completely glaciated North by a gargantuan wall
that was constructed eons ago. The Night’s Watch, a troop of men dressed in black, stands
sentinel over the Wall and the North. These men make a vow that demands unconditional
loyalty towards their duties and includes renouncing marriage, children, and family. What
sounds like sublime company is in fact only a gang predominantly consisting of criminals,
cobbled together, which enrolled in the Night’s Watch to evade jail or capital punishment.
The northern land behind the Wall is characterized as a form of anarchy. The people living
there are called the Free Folk or Wildlings. They know no state, no cities, no civilization, and
no submission under authorities. An example for libertinism beyond the Wall is Craster, an
old and cantankerous man, who lives with a group of his daughters in an incestuous way; he
keeps the daughters he fathers with them as prospective concubines and kills the male
babies. There is also old lore about undead creatures that exist behind the Wall; in
modern Westeros these legends are regarded as the bogeyman no one believes in them
anymore. But suddenly the so-called White Walkers are being sighted again by the
Night’s Watch. The rulers of Westeros are being informed about this brewing menace.
The intrigue for power, symbolized by the fetish of the Iron Throne, could pale in comparison
to the imminent calamity of being overrun by an army of undead, but almost all regents
throw the warnings to the wind.
 INT J PSYCHOANAL 1009

The Wall and the North are a mise en scène for the things repressed to the unconscious.
The uncanny things and creatures are alien and unfamiliar in appearance, but once were
familiar and close. They stem from repressed memories and anxieties that are being pro-
jected into a figure with evil intentions trying to threaten and to harm our existence (Freud
1919; Suler 2016). The symbolism of the resurrected dead and their impetus to overcome
the Wall refers to the innumerable skeletons in Westeros’ closet and can be interpreted as
the return of the repressed (Freud 1915). Thus, it is not random that the zombies are res-
urrected humans or metamorphosed human babies sacrificed by the above-mentioned
Craster, as we learn later in the series. In sum, the Wall is a broader symbol for the
defence against the mere angst that is being concealed by the furious struggle for survival
and power of the houses of Westeros. In psychoanalytic therapy you could perhaps inter-
pret a permanent hustle and bustle as a form of resistance helping to avoid the inner calm
that would be a necessary precondition for reflection, insight, and change (Freud 1914). A
Western way of life produces undesirable side effects, its existence must fall victim to some
kind of defence or repression. Nevertheless, they are always on the verge of dropping back
to us: the production of goods, which are actually or allegedly needed for our lives, entails
a predatory exploitation of natural resources of our planet and a ruthless treatment of
nature. The accumulating pollution of air, soil, and water, the clearing and grubbing of
forests, desertification, and the greenhouse effect don’t destroy the environment, for
the sole basis of human existence, in the short term, but in the long run. In addition,
you can also find human victims of the dark side of globalization and rampant capitalism.
The exploitation of less-developed nations is one of the foundations of Western cornuco-
pia. Additionally, in Western society, in spite of economic growth, there is still unemploy-
ment and poverty. According to Freud (1915), repression is not a static category, but a
dynamic process. Societal repressions have to be gained anew repeatedly. Defence
never works perfectly, and somehow there is a simultaneous knowing and not-knowing
about repression and denial. Of course there are sporadic reports about, for example, eco-
logical devastation, global warming, the so-called working poor or youth unemployment,
but contrary to their de facto explosiveness they are not continuous topics. They flash up
occasionally in the media, but then are quickly “forgotten” again. So, like Westeros, our
own civilization is threatened by self-made problems that are suppressed tenaciously
but nevertheless impend to fall down on us like the sword of Damocles. The realization
that we cannot completely absolve ourselves from responsibility for this obvious careless-
ness provokes feelings of guilt. The atrocities in Westeros such as infanticide, patricide,
incest, murder, crime, rape, mammonism, deception, and insidiousness provoke feelings
of guilt that are projected to the North. But the guilt that Westeros tries to ward off
comes back as the spirit of vengeance in the shape of revenants.

Essos—Hope for a better world

In far-off continent Essos, separated from Westeros by the sea, the last successors of the
former dynasty of Westeros, the Targaryens, live in exile. Before they were dispossessed
by the late king Robert Baratheon, they obtained their power with the aid of fire-breathing
dragons that have now become extinct. In order to acquire an army and reconquer the
Iron Throne, the now powerless Viserys Targaryen arranges a forced marriage for his
teenage sister Daenerys, an ethereal beauty, with the mighty tribal leader Khal Drogo.
1010 G. POSCHESCHNIK

After the death of her husband, Daenerys burns herself in the fire that shall cremate him,
but survives completely unharmed. Three dragons hatch out of fossilized dragon eggs she
took with her to the fire. Step by step, Daenerys is able to achieve some level of power
again. She sets up an impressive army and relieves some cities in Essos from slavery.
Although Daenerys’ decisions are often inconsistent, and she judges by talion—an eye
for an eye—she has the insight that she still has much to learn in order to become a
wise leader. She relies on her counsellors to internalize the abilities needed to achieve
well-balanced regency. Before going for Westeros and the Iron Throne she practises
being sovereign in the freed cities.
While Westeros is completely gripped by the destructive game of thrones and a devas-
tating danger brews in the North, the figure of Daenerys Targaryen somehow represents a
glimmer of hope. Daenerys seems to satisfy the hope that a better world in which peace,
more justice, less greed, less competition could be possible. She differs from most of the
other potentates because of her ability of discernment, as well as her aptitude for learning.
She has a wish to learn and the desire to become a better person and regent. And that is
why she most likely has the characteristic traits of a person who could become a peaceful
and lawful ruler of Westeros. She somehow embodies hope, and by using her dragons she
could also have the recipe against the dark menace from the North. Yet, Daenerys does not
represent an elaborated concept of a better world; her personal search for identity sym-
bolizes a hope in the making. Daenerys stands as a cipher for the feeling that a lot of
things are going wrong in Western society but nobody quite knows how it could be differ-
ent. On the one hand there is widespread dissatisfaction with actual socio-political devel-
opments and a desire for change, but on the other hand there is—because of the downfall
of leftist utopias (Honneth 2016) or the crestfallen promises of the new age movement—a
lack of ideas about what path Western society could take. Hope as a feeling exists, but
there is no clear vision. That Daenerys is located in Essos, a faraway continent, and that
she is still in search of an identity, suits well this feeling that hope and change are still
distant and in development. Beyond this dimension of hope, Daenerys Targaryen can psy-
choanalytically also be understood as an epitomization of a wish for reparation, which is a
common and powerful theme in many media productions (Yates 2014). The feelings of
guilt caused by the outrages of Westeros and symbolized by the threatening danger
from the North are compensated by a magical action of a seemingly innocent saviour.
Perhaps Daenerys will have to sacrifice herself in the end to fulfil the messiah fantasy
that an icon comes to release everyone from their guilt and restore an order of peace
and justice for all. This is certainly quite a naïve fantasy, because hope—lying at the
bottom of Pandora’s box after all the evils escaped—is only a quantum of solace.
However, on the other hand hope is also a kind of effective defence mechanism,
warding off unbearable affective states of depression, fear, and anger. Furthermore,
hope has—as the proverbs “hope dies last” and “hope springs eternal” insinuate—a
defiant and motivating dimension. In this perspective, Daenerys Targaryen also personifies
a tenacious and powerful antithesis to the often heard TINA (there is no alternative) argu-
ment that is brought forward as soon as criticisms on current economic doctrines arise.
 INT J PSYCHOANAL 1011

Discussion
Many modern TV series, among them GoT, are able not only to entertain but also disturb
their viewers. TV series such as Breaking Bad, House of Cards or The Sopranos, to mention
just a few of many possible examples, shatter the expectations of the average viewer.
There are no manicheistic constructions of the characters—the audience neither finds
the entire evil nor absolute good, and nearly all the figures are drawn ambivalently and
are surprisingly multifarious. There is also no clearly identifiable moral of the story,
taking a stab at educating the viewers in a rather blunt way. The unimpeachable ones
do not always win, nor do the felonious ones always lose. In addition, GoT refuses to
submit to a simplistic interpretational pattern; because of such frustrations the viewer is
forced to reflect on what happens either alone or in dialogue with others. At this point,
psychoanalysis can contribute to the understanding of the functions of such modern TV
series. Television series, as any other narrative, can fulfil many functions for the individual
mind. Among them are entertainment and distraction from unpleasure, the opportunity
for a cathartic experience by showing a secret wish as satisfied, providing a moral of
the story and offering a model of what is ethical and what is not. But what seems most
important to me from a psychoanalytic viewpoint is the possibility to contain and mentally
work with unconscious material presented in the audiovisual production.
Psychoanalysis can understand not only the unconscious meaning of a cultural
phenomenon, but it can also enlighten the interface between content of the media and
its subjective reception. Donald Winnicott’s idea of transitional space can be fruitfully
applied to the study of cultural phenomena such as TV series (Kuhn 2013). Winnicott
(1999) has emphasized that developmental processes often happen with so-called transi-
tional objects or in transitional spaces. These things and zones on the one hand are part of
the real external environment, but on the other hand are charged with subjective, psychic
meaning. They lie somewhere between the external-material and internal-psychic world.
In this space the question of whether it is real or fiction is of no importance. The potential
space provides some kind of third area that neither belongs to the inner world nor to
external reality. The idea of transitional phenomena derives from infant observations,
but they are of importance in the adult personality too. Phyllis Creme (2013) talks about
the playing spectator, when she addresses the spectator’s engagement with the audiovi-
sual media as a kind of playing in a potential space in the sense of Winnicott. When we
start watching a movie we make a psychic shift to the potential space and start to
believe what is shown on the screen. To that end, watching television becomes a
virtual intersubjective situation in a multimedia realm. “This is more than ‘escapism’; it is
life enhancing” (Creme 2013, p. 49), because in playing the individual discovers oneself
(Winnicott 1999). “(…) audiences are shown not simply to fuse emotionally with media
texts (a kind of dependence), but also to (re)shape and (re)orient the self (a kind of
agency)” (Hills 2013, p. 84). So the engagement of the audience should not be understood
as pathological but as a creative process first (see Hills 2013). Engaging with media delivers
a kind of transitional space which offers the possibility to contain and work through per-
sonal and psycho-cultural conflicts. In this context, Yates (2014) also mentions Christopher
Bollas’ (1979) concept of the transformational object; it builds upon Winnicott’s ideas
regarding the transitional object and emphasizes the fact that we are also changed and
transformed by these objects. Therefore, television via working through can even
1012 G. POSCHESCHNIK

become an object of transformation (Yates 2014). The series delivers psychic raw materials,
such as emotional beta-elements or scenes based on unconscious clichés, to its viewers,
who can play with them in their potential space by enhancing them with their own
psychic experiences and mental templates. The mental processes happening in this
third space have a transformative potential for the individual viewer. They can be—
depending on your paradigmatic emphasis—conceptualized as working through (Freud
1914), containing (Bion 1962), playing (Winnicott 1999), or mentalization (Fonagy et al.
2004).
Where scenic understanding of GoT can deliver a psychoanalytic exploration of the
series itself, the concepts of transitional space and the playing viewer help to understand
what mentally happens with the audiovisual story in the viewer’s mind. Although the
scenes and parts of a series can be processed in a very individual manner, this mental
process remains bound to its contents and narrative frame. The scenes presented in a
series will trigger similar representations in the conscious and unconscious mind of the
viewers. In the case of GoT, even the manifest content of the series invites thought and
reflection about cultural and societal topics, such as war and peace, the ethics of
regency and leadership, power and powerlessness, race, gender, disability, and class. On
a scenic level, the meta-narrative even mirrors widespread and commonly shared, but
repressed, fears and hopes about a society in decay, which refuses to recognize its pro-
blems. Hence, GoT is a tableau offering a diagnosis and reflection of fantasies regarding
societal and cultural changes. In this way the series is deeply connected with real life:
In fact it may be a pivotal attribute of contemporary series that they touch something in us,
help to potentially work it through, so that something is internally “retained”. (…) That some-
thing is durable internalized in this way, would apply on a personal level (we reflect our
concept of gender roles and gender relations then as now, when we are watching Mad
Men) as well as on a societal and political level (when we cogitate about the specifics of a
good head of state because of Game of Thrones). Then TV-series change us, and their eman-
cipatory potential is related to common processes and states in a transgressive (…) mode.
Even more than the so called “reality TV” television series are helping to interfuse everyday
life, even indeed when we are transferred to Westeros or a world after the zombie-apocalypse
(Storck and Taubner 2017b, p. 2).

The hidden meaning of GoT, which is packed in the narrative hull of a medieval fantasy
genre, can become at least partly deciphered in the potential space by playing with the
contents, by fantasizing about them, by reflecting on one’s own emotional reactions, by
enriching the narrative with one’s associations, by discovering analogies with their own
(societal and cultural) life. By these means, the unconscious fantasies, conflicts, fears,
and hopes comprised in GoT can become conscious to a certain extent, and subsequently
mentally reflected, worked through, and transformed. On a conscious level GoT, as well as
other modern TV series, just fulfils its task to distract the viewers from societal faults, con-
flicts, and problems by simply entertaining them. But on the other hand—although staged
in a distant medieval fantasy world—GoT is unconsciously challenging societal and cul-
tural ideologies by delivering a more accurate description of the present age than the
advocates of the status quo. On this latent level—as I hoped to show in the previous sec-
tions—GoT bears resemblance to aspects of Western society that tend to be somewhat
swept under the carpet. Therefore, GoT is almost a (therapeutic) confrontation challenging
the common set of societal beliefs. Where conscious ideology, for example, would tell that
 INT J PSYCHOANAL 1013

the elected leaders of Western society are unselfishly working to guarantee the pursuit of
happiness for everyone, GoT in contrast shows leaders in Westeros who only fight for
their own interests and exploit the populace. People in Western society are normally told
that industrial production, global trade, economic growth, and military interventions are a
benefit for the whole world and unavoidable to gain more prosperity and safety for every-
one, whereas GoT confronts us with a rather dark and icy North, a waste deposit full of
uncanny problems that are persistently ignored, although they are on the verge of overrun-
ning the whole land. Where social and economic problems of Western society are usually
answered with the standard argument that there is no alternative and the solution is to
do just more of the same, GoT presents the continent Essos, a laboratory for better alterna-
tives. Thus, the unconscious meanings of GoT even have the potential to create inner ten-
sions in the transitional space by shattering common beliefs. To resolve these conflicts
the puzzled viewer has to play with and reflect on these meanings. As a result, the
mental examination with GoT can change mental representations about culture and society.
From this point of view television even fulfils a kind of therapeutic function, which can
promote reflexivity and more psychological awareness (Bainbridge 2014; Yates 2014).
Taking this under consideration, one can come to the conclusion that French philosopher
and psychoanalyst Guattari (2009) was perfectly correct when he considered cinema to be
the “Poor Man’s Couch.” This bon mot even works better in the situation of watching tele-
vision in one’s own living room: just like the psychoanalyst’s couch offers a secure space
where it is possible to take a closer look at disturbing themes, the couch in front of the
telly, and watching television, can become a potential space, where playing with uncon-
scious elements is possible.

Conclusion
TV series and movies are still often criticized as superficial and stultifying. One of the
most famous versions of this criticism stems from Horkheimer and Adorno (2002). Their
much-cited opinions about the so-called culture industry (Kulturindustrie) argue that cine-
matic products of culture industry degrade its viewers to mere consumers and condemn
them to intellectual stagnation through their manipulatory attempt.
This truly striking un-dialectic interpretation of culture as a simple commodity to manip-
ulate the masses is disagreed about by different branches of research. Cultural Studies sur-
mount the dichotomy between high culture and popular culture, taking the latter
seriously. Cultural Studies emphasize the element of subversion in popular culture as
well as the active part of the viewer in the construction of meaning (Barker and Jane
2016; Williams 2011; Winter 2010). Also, contemporary Educational Sciences emphasize
an active role for the experiencing and learning person. In German there are two words
for the English term “education”: Erziehung and Bildung. Erziehung has a narrower
meaning, and focuses on the more or less target-oriented relationship in which an educa-
tor aims to influence the offspring. The active role is dedicated to the educator, whereas
the ones being educated are considered to be a type of passive vessel. To a certain extent,
this conceptualization makes some sense for the relation between parents and their chil-
dren or teachers and pupils. Bildung, in contrast, has no real English equivalent and means
a much more active and reflective process, in which schemes regarding the understanding
1014 G. POSCHESCHNIK

of self and world are transformed by examination with contradictory and critical-laden
experiences (Koller 2011). From this perspective, the viewer of a movie or series has to
reflect the audiovisually represented disconcertments and logical breaks and find
meaning in it. Also, psychoanalysis is interested in popular culture and emphasizes the
mental process of its reception, wherein the person plays an active role. Apart from this,
it can contribute to the understanding of TV series by offering a comprehensive theory
about the human condition, that is, dealing with the dynamics of mental processes, the
intersubjective nature of the self, and the relation between individual and society. Further-
more, research on television series can benefit from psychoanalysis, because it provides a
methodology that is able to reveal unconscious-latent levels of meaning. A mere analysis
of manifest contents is often too superficial to understand what makes the individual
psyche resonate, what invites identifications and contra-identifications, and what
creates the maelstrom of not missing a single sequel. Psychoanalytic methodology and
theory can enrich the understanding of cultural phenomena in general and television
series in particular. And, vice versa, television series can be a fruitful field of research for
psychoanalysis (s.a. Bainbridge, Ward, and Yates 2014; Gabbard 2001; Kuhn 2013; Lorenzer
1988; Storck and Taubner 2017a).

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