☛ Cette critique est aussi disponible en français [➦].
Translated by Florence Bois-Villeneuve.
The Where Should We Begin? podcast offers its audience the opportunity to follow psychotherapist Esther Perel in a one-off marital therapy session. These 50-minute sessions bring to light the intimate, personal details of couples seeking to resolve differences. All this is accompanied by Perel’s popularized content analyses. Themes include racism, intergenerational trauma, polyamory and sexual identity.
Esther Perel is a Belgian/New York psychotherapist who shot to North American fame with the publication of Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence and her 2015 TED Talks appearance tackling infidelity. In the course of her professional career, she has specialized in the challenges of so-called different couples, including intercultural, interracial and interreligious couples of various sexual orientations, and then in sexuality and eroticism. She currently hosts two podcasts, Where Should We Begin? since 2017 and How’s Work? since 2019, which looks at relationships between co-workers.
The Where Should We Begin? podcast lets its audience in on a marital therapy session where all sorts of intimate details emerge, making it an immediate cultural sensation. In the most recent season, recorded and launched during the lockdown, she tackles relational elements impacted by the pandemic, such as reduced desire and conflicting values. The show’s strong point is Perel herself, who is gifted both in the way she approaches her one-off clients and in the way she popularizes the techniques used and her analysis. Her insights allow the audience to read the therapeutic content in a different way, and stimulate self-reflection. What’s more, by presenting couples from diverse backgrounds and realities, Perel also reduces the stigma of marital therapy, thus helping to democratize it.
Our only complaint about this series is that we inevitably find ourselves having to wait a few months between seasons, but this is something we can forgive more comfortably since the arrival of How’s Work? which allows us to maintain a semblance of psychological voyeurism satiety.
Reference
Creation : Gimlet Media
Title : Where Should We Begin? With Esther Perel
Date : May 17 2017Available on : Gimlet Media, Apple Podcast, Spotify