Dr. Phil Is To Therapy As Fingerpainting Is To Jackson Pollack
by Garry Cooper, LCSW
My friend John Riolo doesn’t think that Dr. Phil is so bad. I think that’s because whenever someone gets therapists aggravated, John nearly approaches sainthood by adopting an attitude of seeing only the good in that person.
I not only can’t watch Dr. Phil anymore, but I can hardly talk to people who want to tell me about his latest episodes. Explaining what Dr. Phil is really about to his fans is like trying to talk about fossils with a Creationist. The problem with any reality TV is that it isn’t. What viewers see is edited down, sometimes scripted and rehearsed and reshot, until it seems just like reality. (People who get off on reality TV remind me of those people at ringside who get so infuriated at Mad Dog bin Laden or the latest wrestling villain that they turn apoplectic and even occasionally leap angrily into the ring). The truth is, reality TV isn’t reality, and Dr. Phil doesn’t do therapy.
Now, that may seem OK, because Dr. Phil often admits that what he does isn’t really therapy. But he reminds me a little of Robert Young, who portrayed Marcus Welby, MD and used to do aspirin commercials as well. “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV,” he would say, going on to endorse whatever aspirin he was hawking. I guarantee you, thousands of people bought his brand of aspirin because the reassuring and competent Dr. Welby had recommended it.
Likewise, despite Dr. Phil’s disclaimers (at least he has the right credential; he is a psychologist, though he hasn’t practiced psychotherapy for years), thousands of people walk away convinced that therapy’s really a very simple thing. You tell your therapist why you’re upset, he asks a question or two that cuts right to the heart of what’s REALLY going on, and then he tells you exactly what you have to do to fix things. That of course is closer to Dear Abby than to therapy. And frightfully close to Dr. Laura, who combines the style of Dr. Phil with the intolerance of Pat Robertson and the personality of the Gorgon Medusa.
There’s one way in which Dr. Phil is like some therapists, and it’s to neither of their credit. He has one style, one way of doing things. When therapists like that are good, they are very, very good, but when they are bad, they are horrid (and then blame the client for resisting or for not being ready to change). Therapy outcome researchers believe that therapists with the widest repertoire of styles, who can match the right style to the client’s preferences, have much higher success rates. Some clients do want and need a super-directive therapist; others want or need just the opposite. Also, in therapy, timing—when to ask the probing question or share the difficult insight or prod for change--is really important, and Dr. Phil’s highly edited sessions give absolutely no sense of the importance of timing. Sometimes change takes a lot of sessions. His show feeds one of the most unfortunate and pernicious illusions of our time—that all fixes are quick ones and all answers are simple. Dr. Phil shows us, accurately, that grief, anger and fear are sometimes horribly intense, but he also shows us, inaccurately, that they can be dropped or gotten past pretty quickly.
He didn’t invent this faux therapy, of course. He’s a kinder Dr. Laura, no great trick. And before either of them came those horrible movies in which the client comes up with the one insight or buried memory that heals everything. My favorite entry in this genre (“favorite” being an inverted concept here) is the execrable, shameless melodrama Prince of Tides, in which shrink Barbra Streisand not only cures Nick Nolte by uncovering the childhood skeleton in his closet but violates almost every conceivable boundary between therapist and client along the way. And speaking of violations, how about that Dr. Phil show on out-of-control children, which featured videotape of kids throwing the most shocking and violent tantrums? I’m sure the show covered its legal rear end by getting the parents to sign consent forms. But I doubt those consents will do anything to relieve the children’s mortification of knowing the millions of people watched their tantrums on TV, and that those tantrums will be preserved on tape for decades. (See my article in the March/April, 2005 Psychotherapy Networker www.psychotherapynetworker.org )
If I were to fire paintball guns at white canvas and then tell people I was doing the same thing as the artist Jackson Pollack, every artist, art historian and anyone else with a modicum of culture and common sense would decry me as a fraud and a Philistine. Dr. Phil’s good entertainment, but that’s not what they’re pretending to market. Note it’s DR. Phil, not Phil, the In Your Face Answer Guy. He gives millions of people the completely wrong idea about therapy, about how change occurs, and about human nature. It’s perfectly legal, but let’s not fall prey to another of the common fallacies of our time—confusing legality with ethics.
Garry Cooper, LCSW is a therapist and writing coach in private practice. His “Clinician’s Digest” column for the national magazine Psychotherapy Networker, covers the latest news and research in mental health and psychotherapy. Visit his website Psychology Trends. He can be contacted at garry@psychjourney.com
Read a counter-point by Dr. John Riolo.
