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Is Allison a victim we should pity and seek to help, or is she an emotional coward who's torturing her husband?
Is Michael being pushed to the brink of insanity by his insane wife and ♥♥♥♥♥♥/manipulative nurse or is he just some jerk who got his daughter killed and isn't willing to admit to it?
Kathryn is clearly intending to make Allison better. She's got that going for her.
However, it's not clear if her plan makes any sense; she starts by feeding Allison's delusion and it's not certain shocking her back to reality is going to work or just throw her back into full denial.
How she deals with Michael is unacceptable; instead of explaining anything to him so he knows what's up, she doesn't tell him why she's feeding Allison's delusion. In addition, instead of being supportive, she acts like a ♥♥♥♥♥ toward him while also teasing him sexually. All in all she does her damn best to make it look to him like she's hurting more than helping.
When he predictably (and reasonably) begins to view Kathryn as a threat, instead of trying to clear things up and calm him down, she escalates by having sex with him while acting like even more of a ♥♥♥♥♥ otherwise, putting him even more on edge. She also looks like she's trying to steal his wife, which even if it's not true (we don't quite know) is not going to go over well with Michael. It's like she's actively trying to drive him insane.
Yes, overall I think we can put the vast majority of the blame on Kathryn. She makes people more crazy, not less.
I believe he felt guilty about Jody's accident because he was responsible for it and didn't want to admit that he was at fault. Instead he kept his wife in the terrible state we initially see her in as a way for him to do penance. Again this is a very selfish thing - he didn't care about his wife, he only cared that he needed to find a way of NOT feeling guilty and that was his out.
When he sleeps with Kathryn, she lets him think he's being seduced, but he knew exactly what he was doing and he later admits that it is his fault. He could have stopped himself, but he did whatever he wanted because he wanted to. Much like him sleeping with Susanna when his friend was dying and also there's the cousin he screwed around in front of everyone and then there's Allison's friend in college...etc etc
He claims he wants to help his wife, but throughout the "game" all we ever see is him getting pissy and angry that he's "losing" his place with his wife. Instead of helping to get his wife better and actively helping for that to happen, he balks and whines and goes to "daddy" Turner to get rid of her. To me he was acting like a big spoiled child.
He consistently tried to undermine anything Kathryn did for Allison (like balking about the dog, getting the pizza, groceries (even if the groceries were more for Kathryn - which isn't to say that she didn't do her own share of questionable things)) and complaining about keeping the illusion of Jody up. Even when Kathryn is getting the wife to come out of her shell and to sleep with Michael, he is extremely ungrateful and vicious to Kathryn. Don't get me wrong, Kathryn's not exactly an angel either and she could of dealt with him better instead of seducing him in order to stick around, but what choice does she have.
If he had actually been stable, the game could have just ended with Allison getting better and Michael having two women around... instead it ends in several ways which are either someone getting badly hurt, dead or comatose in a bed.
Michael is clearly unhappy with Allison's state. He does not at all want her to remain that way. He's in complete denial of the role he played in his daughter's accident, making guilt either nonexistent or too deeply buried to affect his actions.
He could have stopped himself from sleeping with Kathryn and didn't, but that doesn't really have anything to do with anything else. All the sex stuff seems to just be some way to make Michael look like a bad guy.
Since Kathryn never explained her plan to break Allison out of her delusion, all Michael sees is that Kathryn is going out of her way to feed Allison's delusion. Kathryn also seems to be trying to steal Allison. Yes, Michael is angry about all of this, but not because he's unstable; any reasonable person would have reacted the same way.
Assuming Kathryn had told Michael about her plan, convinced him that it would work and stayed professional with Allison, he wouldn't have had any reason to react negatively. Kathryn would have executed her plan, and who knows if it would have worked or not.
I guess it's hard to blame Michael because he never actually does anything. Kathryn's actions drive the story forward, Michael just reacts. Granted, he doesn't react well (indeed, most of his reactions are extremely immature), but this time he's not the one in the driver's seat; Kathryn is.
Of course, a lot of details were left unclear on purpose specifically so people wouldn't know who to blame... and since we're having a discussion about it, it seems like it worked.
People may certainly differ in whether they _sympathize_ more with Kathryn or more with Michael. Both characters have positive and negative sides one can latch onto. But when you ask who's to blame, then it's not about sympathy, it's about responsibility. And as the alleged professional in this triangle, it was Kathryn's responsibility to deescalate the situation and prevent harm, in fact she swore an oath to do so.
I don't know if it's because the authors didn't know much about actual psychology, or if they deliberately painted Kathryn that way, but from a professional standpoint, none of her arguments in the second half of the story make sense. In fact she's breaking the ethical rules of the profession in record time and commits clear medical malpractice on several levels.
I'm not only talking about the 200% obvious things, like sleeping with her clients husband. Her egregious, unacceptable mistakes start way earlier. The most basic steps like the discussion and explanation of the treatment plan to the husband are missing (instead of explaining to him how she intends to heal the client and why she thinks it will work, all she does is referring to her qualification). Her treatment is absolute nonsense by any medical standard - you _never_ reinforce delusions. Of course you don't fight or argue them (because then the client will just block you out), but you never, ever, push a client even deeper into their delusions, that's charlatanism. Kathryn claims that reinforcing the delusion is necessary to get access to the client, but that's nonsense, you'd do that via less damaging techniques like acknowledging and mirroring the client's feelings.
Her malpractice then continues in allowing herself to get emotionally involved in a completely inappropriate manner - every responsible psychiatrist would retreat _immediately_ when this started, actually you'll lose your license if you don't. Instead she clings to a clearly dysfunctional therapist / client / husband triangle and justifies that with the ridiculously arrogant argument that she's the only person in the world who can help Allison.
Neither Michael nor Allison behave perfectly either. But the thing is, under the circumstances they can't be expected to. They are human beings struck by terrible tragedy, their coping mechanisms are clearly dysfunctional, they need help. You can't "blame" Allison for her depression, nor Michael for his fear of feeling the weight of his guilt. But Kathryn, as the professional brought in to help, is the person supposed to keep a level head. She is fully responsible for her actions, and these actions spun a perilous situation out of control instead of fixing it.
(Side note: While in a discussion like this, we should keep in mind that the game has several different plots and endings and that we most probably haven't all seen the same plot. If you see the one where Michael gets killed, it's probably easier to sympathize with him than in the one where he becomes a killer. However, as I already said, sympathy and responsibility are different things. And Kathryn's fundamental, objective, undeniable, egregious professional mistakes are universal to all versions.)
She's clearly doing things she shouldn't be doing, but at the same time, Michael's reaction is not all her fault.
The "article" in the game about Munchausen by Proxy isn't in there by accident. It's actually plausible to consider that Michael is intentionally trying to keep Allison in the state she's in, because he wants to play the role of "the devoted husband", either because he's seeking sympathy for his selflessness or possibly is trying to assuage his guilt over Jody's death by taking care of Allison.
If we look at it in this light, Kathryn is a very real threat to him and his situation. She's actually getting Allison to open up, she's getting her off the drugs that keep her sedated, she's actually helping to at least the degree of making her more active... but he still hates her.
Consider that prior to Kathryn showing up, Dr. Turner was essentially useless for 6 months and made no progress. Then when Kathryn shows up, he's a bit shocked that she's not what he expected. Viewing it from this standpoint, there's the argument that could be made that he never actually expected a nurse to help. If a doctor couldn't help in 6 months, what good could a nurse really do, after all?
Bear in mind that Michael's resentment of Kathryn starts early. When she goes to her room the first night, he seems a bit upset that she didn't want to talk to him first.
Does this excuse Kathryn's behaviour? No, not at all. She clearly breaks multiple basic rules of treatment, not the least of which is bonking your client's husband (and depending on how you view Allison's happiness from her "meditation" sessions, her client).
However, it does cast some suspicion on whether or not Michael is really just wanting what's best for Allison.
He can be seen this way. Personally I wouldn't agree, but it's a possible interpretation of his actions.
However, being a bad / weak / immature person, and committing clear medical malpractice on multiple levels, are on completely different levels. We can point to Michael and say that he _should_ have acted better, sure. But Kathryn _had to_ act better as part of her duty as a medical professional.
Well, perhaps the game might have ended this way, given that the author probably didn't know much about psychology. But artistic license aside, Kathryn's completely unacceptable therapy approach would have made that very unlikely. She reinforced her client's delusions in order to gain her trust - that is an incredibly naive and unprofessional approach that right away breaks the fundamental rule about treating delusional patients. You _never_ reinforce the delusions, and in fact you don't have to - the justification "I needed to get her trust" is nonsense, there are techniques for that which don't worsen the disorder that you're intending to cure.
If she had made a proper plan, discussed it with Michael, explained to him how and why she expected it to work, had him sign it, and then he still acted weirdly, then perhaps it could be argued that she did her duty and thus she can't be responsible for Michael's reaction. But that's exactly what she neglected to do.
Kathryn's plan is highly suspicious even in its entirety. But she doesn't even tell Michael about the part the involves actually curing Allison. She essentially tells him "Hey, do all these pointless tasks, it's really doing wonders to strengthen your wife's illness as much as possible; aside from being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy, she's acting totally normal! Oh, and don't mind all those hints I'm dropping about me taking advantage of and stealing your mentally ill wife.".
There's no way she's so damn stupid that she didn't know all of this would make him react extremely badly. It's like she did everything she could to purposefully drive him crazy.
And then it's like "Oh, for some reason he doesn't want me near his wife, he's so unreasonable! But that's OK, I just gotta ♥♥♥♥ him so his thoughts become a potent mixture of contradicting hatred and sexual desire, that's sure to give him peace of mind."
Either the story itself is just plain unbelievable, or Kathryn herself is way, way more insane than both other characters put together.
And from a reality standpoint, it isn't. Unless I had a different playthrough where in mine, she didn't hold a gun to Michael's head to make him sleep with her or use her magic therapist powers to remove all of his free will so he didn't have any choice in how to act.
But, uh... by the way, she did, in fact, explain to him that she was trying to gain Allison's confidence first and get her to open up so she would be more receptive to when she reminds her about the accident and how it really happened. LIke, I literally just passed the point in this playthrough where she sits down with him and explains exactly why she's playing along and what she's eventually planning to do.
Whether or not this is the realistic course of treatment or medically sound is irrelevant because it's a video game and Dr. Turner is supposedly watching over the treatments in addition to Michael going to him and is okay with them, so in the video game world, it seems like it's supposed to be perfectly fine.
What is relevant is that she does, in fact, explain what she's doing. Also relevant is that from our viewpoint, it's working. Allison has opened up and is far more active and talkative. And despite the fact that visible progress appears to be getting made and Kathryn explains both to Michael AND Dr. Turner why she's doing what she's doing, Michael still resents her and thinks she's doing it all wrong. Even when he also has Dr. Turner talking about how he should relax because Kathryn knows what she's doing.
In the end, Michael had a choice. He chose to react the way he did. Trying to claim that everything is 100% Kathryn's fault is suggesting that he didn't have a choice and had zero recourse BUT to sleep with her and go crazy and potentially murder her.
What I'm trying to point out, is this: She didn't have to "hold a gun to Michael's head" to make the sleeping with him a serious misconduct and medical malpractice. Medical professionals recognize that clients and their relatives are in a difficult situation and therefore _explicitly_ forbid any form of sexual contact with either. If it still happens, the medical professional is _always_ the one to blame because they _do_ know better by virtue of their training. Here's for example the current version in the APA Code of Conduct, which is binding to all psychologists practicing in the US:
"10.06 Sexual Intimacies with Relatives or Significant Others of Current Therapy Clients/Patients
Psychologists do not engage in sexual intimacies with individuals they know to be close relatives, guardians, or significant others of current clients/patients. Psychologists do not terminate therapy to circumvent this standard."
( http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/ )
How much more explicit do you need it to get, to see that engaging in such conduct is an obvious, clear medical malpractice that will cost the professional engaging in it their license? There really isn't even any room for interpretation in these rules.
To be clear: Yes, from a moral standpoint, you can say that Michael acted wrongly in the situation that led to their sex (regardless of who seduced whom, because that seems rather ambiguous). But as the medical professional, it was Kathryn's undeniable duty to block such advances if they happen, and failing to do so was an egregious professional misconduct.
And again: I understand that there are clips in the game that paint Michael in an unfavorable light. It starts with whether he gets surprised by seeing Kathryn at her window or actively seeks the view out, it goes on with different ways of handling the inappropriate "prefer a sponge bath?" remark (it can be said by Kathryn, or Michael, or neither), there's a scene where he flirts with a colleague versus one that shows him being just friendly and noncommittal, and there are generally scenes where Michael is more unhinged and aggressive, whereas other versions of the same scenes show him more reasonable. Depending on which version you saw, he might not be a very sympathetic character for you. But none of this changes the fact that he's the person suffering through a crisis, and Kathryn is the medical professional who's clearly and actively violating her profession's ethical code.
I gather you haven't seen an actual treatment plan so far, because even with artistic license taken into account, her attempt doesn't even cover the basics.
A proper treatment plan would:
- include the diagnosis
- list _explicitly_ the goal of the treatment
- show _explicitly_ how and why the intended treatment is supposed to improve the client's situation
- have to be mutually agreed upon and signed by the therapist and the client (or, in this case, the client's nearest relative, as she herself is unable to see the problem)
Where in the movie do you see any sign of the required detailed explanation of how/why it's supposed to work, or the required mutual agreement?
All she does is making vague and completely illogical statements of how making the delusions more severe would somehow make it easier for her to magically snap Allison out of them later. Michael even raises the exact same concern that any responsible medical professional would - i.e. criticizing the reinforcement of the delusions - and Kathryn's only argument is "I know what I'm doing". For a trained psychiatric nurse presenting a treatment plan, this is condemning.
(And again: There are versions of these clips that show Michael as aggressive and reproachful, versus others that show him as reasonable and skeptical, so I understand that it may be hard to sympathize with him depending on which version you saw. But in _none_ of the versions does Kathryn ever provide a proper plan - it's always several days too late, it never explains why the cure would work, it always neglects that other options would have been better, and on top of that, she never even asks for consent, and presents the whole thing half-naked.)
This game is not set in Fantasyville, Cloud-cuckoo-land. It is set in Oregon, US. It refers to real-life places like Portland, real-life events like losing a child, real-life disorders like depression and delusions, and real-life professions such as psychiatric nurses. There is no magical fantasy video game world in which Kathryn's obvious misconduct would suddenly be okay because it's a video game. The game even explicitly includes texts about medical professionals who have broken borders and were punished for that.
In the reality that this game is set in, Kathryn would immediately lose her license, could be sued for damages with high chances for success (if she still lives, in some endings she doesn't), and would certainly never be let into the vicinity of any client ever again.
That's great, and I'm happy for you to make that point, but it's completely irrelevant to what I said except for the part where I already said she broke the rules.
I never argued that what she did was right or sound in reality. My only point ever was that what happened is not 100% her fault. Michael made the choices he did, she did not make the choices for him. In my first reply, I explicitly stated that she clearly broke several rules, so repeating to me that she broke several rules doesn't exactly add anything.
How wrong she did things is irrelevant to the inarguable fact that she did not force Michael to make the choices he made. That's it. Going on and on about how badly she messed up does not change that fact.
You put on a ski mask and approach someone threateningly with a raised knife, there are very few things that this person can do. They're going to run screaming, fight you, or give you their wallet and beg for you not to hurt them. Out of of the hundreds of things that a human being can do during their day, they're going to do one of those three things because those are the only reasonable responses to being attacked with a knife. And they certainly wouldn't have taken any of those actions if you hadn't threatened them.
If a therapist is clearly going out of her way to make her patient (your significant other) worse, you're always going to have a strong negative reaction. Michael didn't randomly lash out against Kathryn, he did it in response to her actions. There was nothing else he could possibly do, so in the end it wasn't his choice. Kathryn decided what he would do by putting him in a situation where there was only one thing he could do.
I'd say this puts all of the responsibility on her.
Except he could have easily solved his problem, even in the confines of the game reality.
She explicitly states that she seduced him because she was scared he was going to fire her. If he couldn't fire her, then she wouldn't have needed to do that. That means that he always had the choice to simply fire her. He even goes over how he's going to say it while he's in the car. And then he gets near her again and his groin takes the wheel.
So, sorry, but the game itself explicitly disagrees with your suggestion that he only had the one choice. If he didn't like how she was doing things and was adamantly sure it was wrong, he always had the choice to simply get rid of her.
She did not force him to have sex with her. She could not, even in the confines of the game reality, force him to keep her around. Those were choices he made of his own free will.
There's really no debate about this. It's pretty objective, based on explicit statements from the game, that he had the option of just telling her to leave.
Biologically speaking, turning down sex with a beautiful woman is nowhere that easy. When sex is on the table, it's like someone flipped a switch in your brain and your judgement vanishes. Countless men have slept with women when they had a lot to lose, it's just how we're wired.
It's possible to turn down sex, of course, but it's very difficult, and Michael was in a particularly vulnerable state seeing as he couldn't have sex with his wife for a long time and Kathryn, besides having an absurdly nice body, had sexually teased him multiple times before.
Again, she made it practically impossible for him to choose.
And let's not forget, he wouldn't even have had to choose between sex and firing her if she'd just done her job with any reasonable competence in the first place...