King's Speech

Analyzing the Analysis in “The King’s Speech”

The King’s Speech was met with a great deal of excitement when it came out this past winter. I think this may have been particularly true in the analytic and therapeutic community. It is, after all, about a therapy and more importantly about a therapeutic relationship. Although the therapy is speech therapy, it is very specifically a form of speech therapy that focuses deliberately on personal dynamics and, with less conscious intent, on transference-countertransference dynamics.

For anyone who has not seen the film, it is based on a true story of a very special speech therapy. The patient is “Bertie,” the Duke of York who would become king after his older brother abdicated. The speech therapist is an Australian commoner named Lionel Logue. To compound the difference, we learn that Logue is a self-made man, a would-be Shakespearean actor, who has no formal degree in speech therapy.

Logue’s approach shows some intuitive understanding of psychodynamics and the role of psychic conflict in physical conditions. He is firmly convinced that dealing with the person- al dynamics of his patients is essential to resolving their speech impediments. In fact, that conviction creates conflict between the two primary protagonists, contributing to the transference entanglements that make the film so interesting to analysts, and, I think, to the “lay” viewer as well.

The future king is a severe stutterer. The film opens to a painful scene in which he attempts to give a speech at a crowded stadium in 1926. He begins haltingly while making progress, but after a few sentences, he falters and cannot go on. We can feel the tension and sense the shame as the members of the audience at the stadium frown with disdain or possibly sympathy.

The scene shifts to a painful session with a

pompous speech therapist, who forces Bertie to try to speak through a mouthful of marbles. When he attributes the technique to Demosthenes, Bertie’s wife,...