Haven’t you heard? Everyone’s in therapy now, or, at least, they’re acting like it—on TikTok, on TV, in the countless group chats turned book clubs unpacking newly iconic tomes like Attached and The Body Keeps the Score. We’re living in a golden age of mainstreamed mental health awareness, in which the trauma plot reigns supreme and therapy-speak is the new lingua franca, with both bequeathing us a cultural vocabulary for defining the ways we relate to each other (and ourselves) in the holy pursuit of self-care. Boundaries are in, gaslighting is out. If you’re not deep in your healing era, that’s definitely more than just a beige flag—at least, according to a standing army’s worth of very online mental health and relationship experts (and “experts”) eager to assist with manifestations and menty b’s galore.

In a way, Esther Perel is one big reason why we’re all here. Following the success of her bestsellers, Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, the Belgian American psychotherapist has become America’s preeminent authority on relationships; for those unable to partake in her private practice, Perel has spent the past decade dispensing her counsel via viral TED Talks, a card game, and, most notably, her hit podcast, Where Should We Begin?, which invites the world to listen in on her couples therapy sessions.

This summer, under Vox Media, the sixth season of Where Should We Begin? not only revives the show’s beloved eavesdrop-y intimacy, but also expands Perel’s purview with celebrity guests and behind-the-scenes details, providing a clear-eyed dive into the full spectrum of modern relationships. Which is to say: Amateur hour on the FYP might as well be over when Perel’s back at her desk. On matters of the heart, it’s better to leave it to the expert.

In conversation with Vanity Fair, Perel talks about the beefed-up new season of Where Should We Begin?, the pros and cons of our more therapized culture, and the reason we still can’t stop thinking about Taylor Swift’s dating life.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Vanity Fair: What do you make of this current moment of mainstream therapy-speak? I’m thinking, just as one example, of how people on dating apps now brag about being in therapy.

Esther Perel: The conversation about mental health—you know, that therapy is not for “the crazies”—it actually has a lot of good in it. I come from a generation where going to therapy was the thing you never mentioned. The fact that it’s becoming a sign of being an evolved person is an interesting thing. It means “I’m thinking about myself”; “I’m reflective”; “I have an interiority”; “I’m a deep and self-aware person.” It has taken on this whole other aura! There is something about bringing more clarity and understanding to things that people have struggled with forever, and often in isolation.

But there’s a paradox. There is such an emphasis on the “self-care” aspect of it that is actually making us more isolated and more alone, because the focus is just on the self. The focus is not about the mutuality of relationships—the reciprocity, the way that you weave fabric, you know, between people who are relying on each other. On one hand, there is an importance in gaining clarity when you name certain things. On the other hand, there is a danger that you lose all nuance, that you’re basically trying to elevate your personal comments and personal experience by invoking the higher authority of psychobabble. What you call therapy-speak, we used to call psychobabble—it’s a new word for an old concept.

In the past, you could have said, “I think this, and so does the rest of the community.” So does the family, so does the church. Today you say, “I think this, and so does the DSM-5.” I don’t like what you do, so I say you’re gaslighting me. You have a different opinion, and I bring in a term that makes it impossible for you to even enter into a conversation with me. Labeling enables me to not have to deal with you.

But in the end, it creates more and more isolation and fragmentation. That is not necessarily a good thing for the community and for the social good.

The labeling has definitely infiltrated the way we relate to each other. People will read about attachment theory and then walk around with this specific identification as an avoidant, or an anxious, attachment type.

In the past, you would have said, “I’m a member of this party,” or “I go to this church.” Now you say, “I’m a member of this attachment group.” I think that putting people in boxes and reducing their complexity is problematic. If you start to name yourself by one little thing, you know, like, “I have insecure attachment,” what are you saying about yourself? Why do you want to reduce yourself to one over-important label?

Also, what this does is put clinical terminology into the hands of nonclinically trained people who then weaponize it. There’s a reason we go to school for umpteen years and continue to be trained until we drop dead, because we still don’t know it all. It’s very important to show that therapy is a highly relational, nuanced, and contextual conversation. That is very different from what you get on TikTok or IG or your friends in armchairs.

This is the sixth season of Where Should We Begin?, but you’ve also been in this field for more than 30 years. What keeps this work interesting for you?

So I have a three-hour session that awaits me this afternoon, on a subject I have never done in the podcast. It will probably be a breakup session. That in itself fills me with responsibility and humility. I’m meeting these people at a very critical moment in their life. And it's a whole lot to hold.

It’s an unbelievable thing. It’s like reading novels, you know. There are many novels that are love stories, but you still read the next novel. The way it is written, the way the characters are chosen, the way people interact with each other makes it another book that you haven’t read before. In that sense, the stories are endless.

I do shorter sessions now with individuals. Those surgical interventions are gripping; I can focus on one particular question. They call me with a question and send us recorded voice messages, and we basically surprise them with a call and do a 30-minute conversation. We’ve done 20 of those now. I could do another 50 of them, and every time it will be something new.

And you’re opening up not only the format and pacing into a full weekly podcast, but also the approach, right? Readers won’t just be listening in on your sessions.

We’re going to have a bonus subscription on Apple Podcasts with on-the-record conversations for the first time with people from the arts and entertainment—I had a beautiful conversation with Neil Patrick Harris about friendship as he’s turning 50. They’re not interviews of the subjects per se; they’re conversations about the complexities of modern relationships in all its grandeur.

I’m also inviting colleagues in my field to comment on my sessions. I’ll ask them how they would have done that session differently from me, so you get a sense that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all—there isn’t one way to do this. We have a whole series of couples who we saw two, three years ago, and I’m seeing them again, and the question is: “Where are you now?”

Whenever I’m reading about you, I’m always reminded of the fact that you speak nine languages. It makes me wonder if you find working predominantly in English to be limiting.

Yes! Whenever I’m with a couple and they speak another language, you will hear me say to them, “Say this in your own language, and then we can translate it later.” Because I know that you are going to feel it differently if you say it in your mother tongue. I want the language that brings you into the most intimate sphere. Every language makes you think differently. It’s the nine languages inside me—nine cultures, nine parts of my personal life, nine different sets of relationships, worlds in which I have relationships—this is all there even when I speak to you in English.

It’s fascinating to think about all the types of relationships that other languages and cultures can better recognize and define. Someone recently told me that there are 12 words for “friend” in Arabic, for example. 

In French, you can une connaissance, which would be like an acquaintance. You have un copain, it’s a “beginning friend.” You have un ami, bon ami—good friend—un ami proche—a close friend. If you want to talk about somebody that you haven’t seen in nine years, you don’t say “I have a friend,” you would say “I know someone” or “I used to have a friend.” Someone with whom you barely speak with and barely see doesn’t get called a friend anymore.

Incredible. Okay, one more question. You once noted that so many of the relationships we encounter in the world are scripted—i.e., they’re what we see on TV or in the movies, or these celebrity pairings that we obsess over and with which we then form parasocial relationships of our own. I’m thinking of the recent Taylor Swift/Matty Healy feeding frenzy, of course. In your view, why do we do that? What function does that serve?

We have always used celebrity relationships as a reflection of our own anxieties and beliefs. We had kings and queens, princes and princesses. That was one version of it. We’ve had Greek gods. We’ve had saints. The experience of projecting your anxieties and your fears—you know, kids do it when they play with dolls.

We all do this—live the passions of others. Especially when we are stuck in our little home living a very, very simple life. We are fascinated by those people who transgress, by those people who have children out of wedlock, by those people who have divorced when divorce was still a total rarity. The sadness, the dramas, the fractures of other people’s lives as well as the ascensions and the celebrations of other people’s lives. We have done this forever: project our repressed wishes on the lives of what we can call “familiar strangers.”

Do we do it more today? On some level? I don’t know how much we did it when we were living with saints and had a saint for every day of the calendar. Are we more public today? We certainly have more access to people being public. It functions as an element of social control. What should you do? What should you not do? What is considered crossing a line? Who gets away with it, and who gets punished for it? The entire social structure of action and consequences is embedded in this system you just asked me about.

And we’re working out these agreements with each other in real time as we gossip.

Yes. There’s a kind of modern confessional about it. People need to experience redemption; people need to be punished. That system has always existed, from the beginning of human life until now. I think what we are seeing is a new manifestation of the same system. Is the public court of today, on social media—is that different from all the people who came to the public square to see people guillotined and really relishing the spectacle?

I don’t know to what extent that what we’re seeing is fundamentally different on the level of humanity. There is something happening that is unique, because you can be a 13-year-old celebrity and you haven’t done squat with your life yet, but you have a level of influence that is completely out of proportion. Expertise has very little to do with experience sometimes, and a lot to do with marketing. That’s capitalism with therapy-speak combined.