Allen is famous for his endless appetite for analyses, but Bruni revealed very recently that she had also been in psychoanalysis for eight years. I don’t know the exact time span over which Allen has been seeing his therapist, but if I had to guess, I’d say it has been ages. I saw his television interview on YouTube that he gave when he was 35 and in which he said he had been seeing his therapist for the previous 13 years. As far as I know, Allen continued receiving therapy for many years after this interview. If Bruni and Allen are talking about classic psychoanalysis, they must have been seeing their analysts at least three times a week. Can you imagine how long they had been struggling to understand or to better themselves or something in their lives?

My suspicion is that Allen is a kind of abuser; he uses this process to brighten his creative mind. You can see symbols, thoughts, anecdotes from the psychoanalysis process or related to the unconscious in almost everything he produces. The characters he portrays in his films are almost always deeply neurotic people seeking happiness, the most recent example being “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” It is a magnificent piece of art and an Allen classic, but look at it from this perspective and you will see what I mean.

Even if I am right and even if he has been abusing psychoanalysis to a certain extent, at least at the very beginning he must have been trying to look into himself. Bruni seems quite honest and genuine in her endeavor. She was looking for the true Carla, no doubt about it. When it comes to couples, it is generally held that the wrong spouse seeks psychological consultation; meaning the healthier one goes to the doctor instead of the pathetic one. Visualizing a picture in which Mr. Sarkozy is standing on his toes in order to make himself look taller, I cannot forget this generalization about spousal behavior when it comes to therapy.