Succession’s Roy children diagnosed by a therapist: ‘constantly beaten down by dad’, ‘mommy issues’, ‘incredibly toxic’
- With Season 4 up and running, therapist Elizabeth Earnshaw diagnoses Kendall, Shiv, Roman and Connor to give insight into the Roy children’s various issues
- Over the whole series, whenever the children try to be their own master, Logan would defeat their confidence and ability to be a differentiated adult, she says
With its fourth season up and running, HBO’s Succession, one of the most layered and nuanced portraits of family dysfunction to air on television, has begun its long conclusion of the saga of the Roys.
Based loosely on Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and Shakespeare’s King Lear, Succession is a family drama about the uber-rich Roy family and the various schemes and plots its siblings undertake in the hopes of being named successor of Waystar Royco, a media conglomerate founded and shepherded by patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox).
“I thought it was interesting how well the show’s writers were able to articulate what it looks like to have family trauma [and] how individual children can all grow up in the same family and respond so incredibly differently,” says Elizabeth Earnshaw, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and author of I Want This to Work: An Inclusive Guide to Navigating the Most Difficult Relationship Issues We Face in the Modern Age.
“Another really big theme was watching them continually try to placate dad – who uses financial abuse every step of the way – hoping that one day they’re going to be the favourite.
“That plays out [in the battle to be named successor], but it’s really ‘I want to be loved by this man.’ And no matter what they do, it never works.”
Here, Earnshaw “diagnoses” members of the Roy children to provide insight into their various daddy issues and differing attachment styles.