PSYCHOLOGY: The Alienist, Dakota Fanning, Luke Evans & Daniel Bruhl

Was The Alienist the first great TV series about forensic psychology?

⚠️ Trigger warning: discussion of the murder and mutilation of children, including child sex workers, and infant deaths.

The Alienist, the TNT series based on Caleb Carr's 1994 novel, follows Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Bruhl), John Moore (Luke Evans) and Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning) as they hunt a serial killer through 1896 New York. Season 2, The Alienist: Angel of Darkness, takes the team into a new case.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy bring a clinical lens to the series: what an "alienist" actually was, how psychology stood just before Freud, and why the show's portrait of an obsessive, shadowed investigator works so well.

Covered in this episode:

- The Alienist (season 1) and The Alienist: Angel of Darkness (season 2)

- Caleb Carr

- Daniel Bruhl, Luke Evans, Dakota Fanning

- Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Psychopathia Sexualis

- Sigmund Freud

- Theodore Roosevelt and the NYPD

- Mindhunter, Sherlock, House, The Americans

Clinical concepts: forensic psychology, competency to stand trial, the history of psychiatry, pathologizing sexuality, trauma, the antihero, Jung's shadow, character arcs

A correction from us: Sara Howard is fictional. The NYPD's first woman detective was Isabella Goodwin, promoted in 1912.

Related episodes:

- PSYCHOLOGY: Mental Illness in Horror, Joker, Hereditary & The Babadook

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*Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes. *

Until then... sleep safe. 😴

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