Heart to Heart: Psychiatrist and Patient

Heart continues its unexpected fun, with sociophobic Hong-do and attention craving Yi-seok fast-tracking their romance with a kiss (and omo, is that a bed scene?!) at the end of ep4. That is…unexpected.

In terms of stylistic presentation, tvN continues to play with tested formulae like the quasi interview technique used in Discovery of Love, also seen for 3mins in Heart — we had a short almost-interview session where Hong-do talks candidly to the camera on why she chooses to play 2 roles, as helmet Hong-do and Granny Young-rae. And not forgetting Marriage, Not Dating‘s last-comes-first trick. In ep4, we open to a steamy (post-you-know-what) bedscene, and the story launches from the end of ep3 without explaining how the bed scene got there (is it a figment of our or the character(s)’ imaginations?). The sizzling parts return at the end though, I won’t tell you how or whether it really leads to the opening, you gotta watch for yourself. 😛

Smooches and hugs aside, most of eps3/4 are taken up with Hong-do scurrying to Yi-seok to plead with him for treatment, cos she NEEDS to overcome the hurdle of her epitomic shyness in order to confess to Doo-soo. She does get her wish, Yi-seok treats her, with conditions. She muz be his assistant and work in the same consultation room during Tues, Thurs and Saturdays. Hong-do’s occupied on the other days as Young-rae, working for Yi-seok’s grandad. (she’s drawing double salaries from the Ko family, to no one’s knowledge…at the moment)

However, there’s an issue with Hong-do’s consultations. In psychiatric counselling, the bottom line to start off a behavioural change is for the patient to acknowledge s/he has a problem, and if possible, to understand that there’s a root cause to the issue. When Yi-seok probes her on how she is feeling when she blushes, and why she thinks she is feeling this way, Hong-do snaps and tells him to “mind his own business”, and “juz heal her”. Obviously it can’t work this way. Yi-seok isn’t a miracle healer.

Even though Hong-do doesn’t dig to figure out the cause of her phobia, she does have some (or is it too much?) success in changing her behaviours. For one, she confesses outright to Doo-soo on Assertiveness Exercise Attempt 1. Granted, Yi-seok is only goading her to ask Doo-soo whether “he slept well”, but she has a slip of tongue and it comes out as “I like you”…but hey, quantitatively, we can deem Hong-do as jumping a few steps on her “recovery” process.

While Hong-do appears to be the patient, Yi-seok is also getting some form of treatment from her. Namely, empathy. There is a somatic response to Yi-seok’s impatience and general lack of bedside manners — his ears start ringing and in ep3, he even faints. Interestingly, most of these episodes happen when he is around the elderly. I suspect it probably has to do with his naggy grand dad, who generally has a poor opinion of everybody (especially with Yi-seok’s bipolar mom) and is super hard to please. Yi-seok finds that when Hong-do is around him, the symptoms disappear. And that’s why he agrees to Hong-do’s condition to treat her foc, in return for her sitting around in his consultation room when he is seeing patients. (come to think of it, it’s a pretty easy job)

But Hong-do doesn’t juz sit there. In fact, she manages to steer Yi-seok towards more in depth and accurate diagnoses than if he were to handle it alone. In the first case where they worked together — which involves a young woman running stark naked round town — Hong-do raises the observation of the lady having couple rings with her mum and wonders whether they have a very good mother-daughter relationship. Yi-seok, with his cynicism and impatience, doesn’t notice the rings, but he clocks Hong-do’s observation. He has a different interpretation though — the young lady hates her overbearing mother — which turns out to be correct.

In their second case, Hong-do chides Yi-seok for destroying an old lady’s delusions of having a 12-year old grandson. She forces him to look at the case from the patient’s pov, instead of juz being a clinical, detached practitioner. The old lady which Yi-seok brushed off happens to suffer from a terminal illness, and she depends on her “grandson” for psychological comfort. When Yi-seok destroyed her illusion, she nearly dies.

So while the psychiatrist appears to be treating his patient, the patient is also healing him in her own way too. If this doesn’t scream “OTP”, I dunno what else does.