The Flaw is the Engine:

Storytelling, Therapy, and the Gap That Drives Us

Why do we care about characters? What hooks us into them? It’s very often not their brilliance, competence, or success: it’s most often their struggles. Particularly the ones that are brought about by their flaws.

You see, a really compelling character will often make choices informed by their flaws, and it’s these choices that create the very problems they must face.

So the gap between what they think they ‘want’ and what they might actually ‘need’ creates tension. And it’s that gap (almost always unconscious to them) that becomes their engine of transformation.

But this isn’t just in screenwriting, you see this all the time in psychotherapy.

The Flaw is the Filter

A flaw isn’t just a weak spot in a character’s armour. It’s often a defence - and it’s the lens through which they interpret reality.

• A narcissistic character doesn’t simply crave attention; they interpret every interaction as a potential threat to their self-worth.

• An avoidant character doesn’t just fear intimacy; they see closeness as danger.

The flaw shapes perception, and perception drives choices. And those choices (often well-meaning, often desperate) lead directly to the conflict the character will later have to resolve.

What Looks Like an Obstacle... Is Actually a Mirror

We tend to think the plot ‘happens to’ the character. But in truly compelling stories, the plot is more like a mirror. It reflects the protagonist’s flaw back at them again and again, from every possible angle.

What looks like fate is often a response. The world pushes at where the character is weak - not to punish them, but to facilitate growth (or kill them in the process).

This is why a character who is ‘good at everything' is almost always boring. If they just breeze through the story without being tested in their weakness, there’s no arc. No tension. No change. No meaning.

The Gap Between Want and Need

So the real core of character transformation is the conflict between what the character wants, and what they need.

• What they want is clear, external, conscious: success, love, revenge, safety.

• What they need is internal, hidden, often painful: healing, humility, truth, responsibility.

They chase what they want until the pursuit stops working, or until the thing they thought would save them is revealed to be another dead end.

And then… they have a choice: to face the need, or double down on the want.

In psychotherapy, this is a familiar pattern.

A person comes in saying, “I just want someone to love me.” But what they need is to explore why they keep choosing people who can’t. Or why, deep down, they don’t believe they deserve love at all.

Another might say, “I want to feel better, I want the pain to go away.” But the need is to finally feel the grief they’ve been suppressing for years, and to stop running from the truth of their experience.

The want is the survival strategy. The need is the path to healing.

Testing the Flaw

Good storytelling doesn’t protect the protagonist. It tests them. It presses on the flaw. The love interest leaves. The promotion backfires. The lie is exposed.

These aren't random obstacles. They’re invitations.

The story isn’t punishing the character. It’s inviting them to transform. And unless their flaw is exposed, unless the thing they don’t want to face is brought right to the surface, nothing will change.

From the Page to the Therapy Room: Kendall Roy (Succession)

Kendall Roy, the heir apparent in Succession, is a character driven by a desperate hunger to prove himself. He wants to become CEO, to win his father’s approval, to finally feel like he matters. On the surface, he’s chasing power, but beneath that lies a deeper psychological need: to be loved, to be safe, and to be seen without having to perform.

His flaw: a deep insecurity masked by bravado, drives him into boardrooms, betrayals, and breakdowns. Every decision he makes in pursuit of success only widens the chasm between who he is, and who he thinks he needs to be.

His addiction is more than a plot device, it’s a mirror of his emotional life. Drugs and alcohol offer momentary relief from the unbearable emptiness of never having been enough for his father. Each relapse is less a failure of will and more a return to a familiar self: wounded, numb, and ashamed. Kendall’s efforts at recovery tend to coincide with a new project, a new role to inhabit, a new version of himself to believe in. But the pain always catches up because he never allows himself to truly grieve what he never received.

Ultimately, Kendall is a tragic figure not because he wants too much, but because he can’t stop wanting the wrong thing. His arc is a psychological parable: when we define ourselves by what we lack, we chase goals that only deepen the wound. His flaw isn't that he’s weak, it’s that he keeps trying to fix his pain with the very tools that caused it.

And like many clients in therapy, the breakthrough would come not from finally winning, but from putting down the mask and facing the grief. Only then could he stop being Logan’s shadow, and start truly being himself.

But hey, where would be the fun in that for the viewer?

Final Thought: Story as Soul Work

A lot of good stories are a kind of therapeutic journey. A character is thrown into chaos. They reach for what they want. And through the conflict, they’re forced to confront what they truly need.

Not all stories end with resolution. Some characters die clinging to the want. Others awaken. But the beauty (and entertainment) is in the struggle.

And so it is with ourselves. We all live with our flaws, filters, and survival strategies. We all think we want one thing, until the stories of our lives ask us:

“But what is it that you really need?”.