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Type Watching the Movies: The Secret Lives of Dentists
It is just about as thrilling as the title implies. Let me preface my comments by admitting that my husband and I watch an inordinate amount of movies rented through Netflix. This is no major box office hit, but I did find it an interesting slice of life movie particularly if viewed with type in mind.
The story line follows a couple of critical months in the lives of married dentists, David and Dana Hurst. At least it’s not Hurts. They are business partners, have been married for around 10 years, and have 3 young daughters. The little one is great fun to watch.
The opening scenes show the husband David (played by Campbell Scott) handling most of the classic wife and mother duties at home, cooking, caring for the children, and putting them to bed, etc. while his wife Dana (played by Hope Davis) pursues her amateur interest singing in a local opera. The turning point in the movie comes when David goes backstage to find Dana on opening night and sees her apparently engaged in an other-than-operatic relationship with another man. He turns around, walks out and never mentions what he saw.
As a Guardian (if you aren’t familiar with Type and Temperament, now would be a good time to read our Intro to Type and Temperament), Dave’s core need is belonging and the responsibility to contribute to the group, i.e. family, to which he belongs. He also is great with logistics, getting people where they need to be on time, handling the office, managing dinner and bedtime. The last thing he wants to do is to mention something that might disrupt the home and life he has created.
To add insult to injury, a patient, Slater, confronts him in front of the gathering audience with the filling that had fallen out that day; an example of the David’s expertise. Slater and David couldn’t be less alike. In contrast to the dentist’s very classic appropriate attire and circumspect behavior, the patient is rude and unkempt.
Once the opera begins Dave and the movie audience are carried away by his memories. He is using his Si function to remember their courtship and early days of marriage. We get a clear picture of what he cherishes.
David appears to be ISTJ (SiTeFiNe). He’s devoted to his family and to his patients. He’s a caretaker, responsible, and takes his duties seriously. We hear him thinking to himself (definitely introverted) that the hardest part of his job is the social interaction required with his patients. At the end of the day you see him meticulously putting away all the tools of his trade. And, of course, he is quite comfortable with the routine of the job and with handling all the tools and other physical requirements of the job. He’s the guy who holds the job and the family together.
His Ne, which is his inferior or 4th function-in-attitude, takes over and he imagines Dana in all sorts of situations with other men, none of them good news. He never uses his normally reliable and trusted sensing function to actually collect all the facts, to find out the truth. David is unable to confront her to ask for the specifics that he would do in a less stressful situation.
The cleverest and most humorous part of the movie is that the rude patient (Denis O’Leary) becomes his unseen imaginary companion, riding with him in the car, holding conversations with him. I see the patient as the opposing personality ESTP or SeTiFeNi, unlike the dentist in every way: messy, cigar smoking, pushing for him to confront his wife, suggesting he just chuck it all and leave, urging him to blow up.
You can see his wife, on the other hand, hesitating before walking in the door as if gathering herself together for the mundane duties her role demands. She clearly loves her family but at this stage she??s transported to another world through opera. I see her as probably a Rational, bored with the routine of the dentist’s life and the daily responsibilities of being a mother. She’s passionate about opera and no one in her own family can appreciate the beauty of the music. She’s assessing her life and comparing it to other possibilities, maybe even another man. Perhaps she is an INTP in the grip of Fe, romanticizing her relationships and her role in life. She was the star student in dental school, but bored now with the day-to-day grind. Grind, hmmm, a good place to end a review about dentists. You’ll have to rent it to see what happens.
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