The Therapy Zone

    It can play the devil with your mind, ‘the Prisoner,’ it can mean the one thing one day and something completely different the next. It can bend the mind when it should actually be the other way round, one’s mind should bend ‘the Prisoner’ to whatever you want it to be. Yes ‘the Prisoner’ can be a real mind-bender when it wants to be and that’s more often than not.
   The deeper one delves into ‘the Prisoner’ the less it becomes clear, and just when you think you’re on the right path of an understanding, something comes along and takes you along another path that can twist and turn so much, that you either end up dealing with a completely different topic that takes you away from what you were originally thinking about. Or it ends up back where you started, or completely lost and unable to find your way back! Something within ‘the Prisoner’ can mean one thing, and yet something else entirely, depending on interpretation. I suppose ‘the Prisoner is rather like peeling an onion, it’s made up of so many layers.
    There are times when ‘the Prisoner’ allows the mind to wander, and at other times one has to be single-minded if one is to arrive at the right conclusion about something. There are times when aspects of ‘the Prisoner’ are black and white, and yet there are equally as many grey areas. And at other times a simple answer may suffice when a more complicated interpretation only clouds the water even more.   ‘The Prisoner’ is about a man who resigns his job and is abducted to The Village, although not necessarily for that reason. There has to be more to it than that, otherwise it would be a pretty poor look-out for anyone who chucks their job up! For the viewer, the fan, the enthusiast ‘the Prisoner’ is about belief. It’s what you believe that matters. Oh I’ve been ridiculed in the past for what I believe to be right in ‘the Prisoner.’ But I’ve never allowed coercion to change my mind. Isn’t that what the Prisoner teaches us, to resist, to be an individual, to stand up for what we believe in, and not to give in to others? That’s one side of ‘the Prisoner’ which gets rarely discussed between enthusiasts. I know of some fans of the series who would love to lead their lives in the way of the Prisoner, or so they would have others believe. But to do that it takes strength, conviction, and belief in yourself. And yet who really wants to live their life like the Prisoner? Everyday for Number 6 was a struggle against an authority that held him captive against his will. People who say they want to live their lives like the Prisoner, they are not captives, merely prisoner’s of themselves. Perhaps it’s merely escape from themselves they seek. After all we all want to escape at some point in our lives.
   As for ‘the Prisoner,’ there are not many television series dating as far back as the 1960’s, if any, which can still manage to stir the mind, as well as retain many secrets, with questions that still remain unanswered today!

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