En thérapie

A psychoanalysis office in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. Ariane, a young surgeon, has been Philippe Dayan's patient for a year. After the attacks, she found herself on the front line at the hospital and spent a nightmarish weekend. However, today, she is not just here for that: she finally feels ready to share a dark secret with her therapist...

Dayan receives a new patient: Adel Chibane, police officer at the BRI. Adel was in the intervention team that entered the Bataclan on the evening of November 13. Since then, he has had symptoms of stress that he cannot explain. He makes contact with Dayan, full of reservations and mistrust.

Camille, 16, is a young high-level swimmer who is training for the Olympic Games. She comes to Dayan's office following a bicycle accident, both arms in plaster. Her insurance requires a psychological assessment attesting that she is in no way responsible for what happened to her.

Dayan is not an expert in couples therapy, but he agreed to see Damien and Léonora, who have lived together for ten years. Recently, Léonora became pregnant even though the couple had given up on having a second child. The crisis they are going through seems insurmountable. They expect Dayan to help them make a decision about this unborn child... or to make it for them.

Dayan rings the doorbell of Esther's office, a former friend and widow of his mentor. She was also his analyst and his controller, but Dayan has not seen her since the day when, in the middle of a session, he slammed the door. But today he is ready to forget old quarrels, desperate to find a new balance in his practice.

After hesitating for a long time, Ariane finally accepted the marriage proposal from her partner Cédric. Dayan, who cannot help but be disturbed, invites him to explore the reasons for this sudden reversal.

Philippe Dayan has a meeting with Inès, a brilliant lawyer in her forties, who is investigating a case of non-assistance to a person in danger involving the psychoanalyst. She unceremoniously prepares the latter for the ordeal of the appearance that awaits him, not without having taken care to remind him that she was briefly his patient around twenty years earlier. Dayan then discovers with astonishment the reasons which push the young woman to wish to come and consult him again…

The psychoanalyst welcomes Robin, son of Léonora and Damien (Clémence Poésy and Pio Marmaï), former patients he received as part of couples therapy. Aged eleven, the boy seems unaware of what brings him to the couch, and dreams of an "invisibility cloak". He refuses to spend time at his father's house for fear of Covid. Dayan ingeniously works to uncover the unspoken family secrets that weigh on his young patient, whose liveliness and sensitivity he discovers.

A final-year architecture student, Lydia, aged twenty-two, talks about a bad experience with a previous therapist. Dayan guides his patient to try to understand this failure. At the end of the session, Lydia reveals the real reason for her visit: devastating news about her health. She hasn't told anyone and refuses to seek treatment...

Alain, a hyperactive septuagenarian and head of a large company, has been caught up in a media storm since the suicide of one of his employees, who was a victim of overwork during the lockdown. He expects Dayan to give him “communication advice”. The therapist firmly refuses and tries to direct his patient towards in-depth analytical work.

On the advice of his lawyer, Dayan consults Claire Brunet, a renowned psychoanalyst, author of a recent highly publicized essay. Weakened and tense by the ongoing legal proceedings, he wants to question his practice. Claire immediately questions her patient's motivations, mentions an analysis rather than supervision. At the end of an intense session, Dayan comes across Rebecca, whom he has not seen for years. He is all the more troubled when he discovers that she is also in analysis with Claire.

Inès has chosen to abandon Dayan's defense in order to resume therapy with her former analyst. She has just had a fertility assessment, which shows that her chances of getting pregnant are declining. During their first exchanges, the therapist's supposed responsibility for the decision she made to have an abortion, twenty-three years earlier, emerges.