Sex Detective vs Dr Phil, part two

Holy fuck!  I clicked onto a random part of his website and some hitherto inanimate Dr Phil pic came to life and started talking to me.  Don't do that shit, Phil, it scares people.  Like a pop-up sex ed book for molested kids.  What's worse I refreshed the page and he then refused to so much as twitch, which makes it look like I'm the crazy person.

Anyway, I'm not quite done with Phillip MacGraw.

Round two, Phil: you've got the weight, but I've got the crazy!

Cliches

Dr Phil has a lot of these, snappy little catch-phrases and one line wisdom droppings.  Slogans and analogies that make my cognitive centres scream in pain.  And that's not including his quaintly absurd cultural offerings.

"We have a saying in Texas: 'If a bird-hound's in heat...... spin the possum...... Mexican toes...... vaginoplasty receipt.'  I think y'all know what that means, right?" 

The audience applauds while I'm still trying to work out if he's lamenting his oral virginity or planning to invade Poland.  Either way, I'm not about to base life decisions on Texan folk proverbs anymore than I would nazi limericks.

"The greatest predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour."

In other words we're doomed to repeat our mistakes, which is kinda contrary coming from a guy dedicated to changing behaviour.  People change behaviour all the time, Phillip.  They find religion or lose faith.  They get hooked on drugs or kick habits.  They like vegemite then switch to peanut butter.  And occasionally some middle-aged citizen with a spotless record wakes up one day and takes an assault rifle to work.  But in your binary, monochrome world there are only two possible formulae:

Future behaviour = past behaviour = bad

OR

Future behaviour = past behaviour + Dr Phil = good

"If he does it to you, he'll do it with you."

He's aiming this one at cheating husbands.  Again.  In fact most Dr Phil case studies of infidelity involve compulsively lecherous husbands.  I could argue about this being a disproportionate representation of male douchebags, but that's actually the whole point, isn't it?  When 80% of your demographic are bored housewives your business model demands that hard-working, middle class men be demonised as frequently as possible.

"Do what works for you rather than following some standards you might have read in a self-help book or heard from a well-meaning friend."

What the fuck, Phil baby?  I've seen your online store.  All you sell are well meaning self-help books full of standards.  Oh, you mean books written by other people.  Sorry.

Relationship Rescue!

Apparently at some stage Dr Phil drugged 6 couples and unlawfully detained them at a haunted summer camp in order to save their marriages or summon the Devil or something like that.  After forcing them to watch one of his many re-education videos he set them a bunch of dehumanising tasks to perform in the false hope of regaining their freedom.

At the end of day one of the "Relationship Rescue Retreat," Dr. Phil assigns some homework for the six couples to complete individually.


•Write one page about "the current deadness" in your life.

•Write one page about "the current loneliness" in your life.

•List 20 times you asked for or needed love and were denied.

•List 20 times someone asked you for or needed your love, and you denied them.

•Write a 65-item "bitch list" about your partner. 

That's not therapy, it's documented forensic evidence for a multiple murder-suicide pact.  Also, sixty-fucking-five items for a bitch list?  That figure seems as strange as it is excessive.  Or maybe not.  I checked a couple of other 'homework' style approaches Phil employs - 'Finding your authentic self', and issues to do with jealousy - and the load was similar when it came to compiling lists.  Can't you see what's happening here?  He's not helping people become empowered by exploring their issues, he's punishing them by making them write lines on the blackboard!


Your Authentic Self

Do you know who you are?  According to Phil you don't have a clue.
No, Phil, I was not aware that I was secretly suffering some sort of dissociative identity disorder.  Of course I have a fictional self - at the moment I'm a narcissistic and somewhat disturbed blogger called Kidd Vengeance who claims to be something deliberately creepy and meaningless called a Sex Detective.  It's a satirical vehicle for critiquing popular (and unpopular) culture.  But I'm also me, a guy who works full time, pays his bills, hangs out with mates and girlfriend, and a thousand other things that consitute my lifestyle.  I rarely get confused about this and rock up to work wearing a hockey mask and a bicycle light around my neck.  KV's role as a petty, angry social vigilante is just a cathartic, fictional aspect of me.  But you've devoted a fair bit of your site to claiming and then solving what you assume is a pandemic of existential crises.

Are you living a life that is more in tune with your "authentic" self (who you were created to be) or your "fictional" self (who the world has told you to be)?
You probably weren't even aware that these versions of your "self" existed!

 
This concept receives mucho airplay on his site.  It's extensive and yet mind-bogglingly simplistic, like fully functional, free-thinking humans can be processed like cheques, not unlike what the Dr Phil accounts department will be doing when you buy all the instruction manuals and work books necessary to find out who you really are.  Life scripts, unconsiously inherited beliefs, self-labeling, internal dialogues, personal truth and a whole bunch of other excuses for why you might be a bit of a dick.  But people continue to lap this shit up, and only for one simple reason: 'it's all about you.'  People thrive on being made to feel important, even if the attention they receive is only generated by themselves.  The fact remains that there's a statistical probability you will never be rich, famous or even particularly successful, and deep down we all know this.  And most of what we use to rate success (financial gain, material security, social status and so on) pale in comparison to the gauge used by folks in poorer, less self-absorbed parts of the world - survival.
 
 

It's time to get real about your life, son: you inherited the belief that food matters.

 
Phil argues that you should be defined by your core, true self, and not by what you do in life and your role in relation to others.  Thing is, we already know this.  Occupations, hobbies, relationships, addictions, perversions etc are never used to to define a person, they're used to describe them.  I don't need some mass printed text of bullshit to guide me on the path of self-discovery because there's nothing to discover. I already own me.  I colonised me the moment I spawned from the hatching pod of my mothership, and I've been expanding my internal evil empire ever since.  Trying to make me over-think my identity by selling me the psychological equivalent of a colouring-in book might actually detract from my 'too busy not being a pussy' time.  I can't deconstruct all the crap he puts into discovering Your Authentic Self, but there's one section that I really had to flag:
 
Defining Your External Factors

According to Dr. Phil, you can trace who you've become in this life to three types of external factors: 10 defining moments, seven critical choices, and five pivotal people.

What is with all these arbitrary numerical values?  Especially when there's no parameters in place?  Do I accumulate 10 defining moments by age 16 or 60?  Do I only get 7 choices ever, or is that a minimal quota?  What if I can only find 3 pivotal people, do I have to recruit 2 more, like in Amway? 


Sex Detective Conclusion

None of this makes sense to anyone not diagnosed with a serious mental illness or developmental disorder.  Your psyche is not a Lego set that requires a Dr Phil manual to rebuild.  Life and who you are in it is a rich tapestry of experience, interaction and persistent self-learning tempered by your individual neurological structure, and even that can change.  You are a dynamic, complex system designed to fail and succeed on a regular basis, because both are equally important parts of growing up and gaining knowledge.  There is no 'true you', there is only you.  And there is always at play a little thing I like to call the Sex Detective Rule of Trade-offs: you will never be good at everything.  If you're a successful workaholic, your family life will suffer.  If you're good at polyamory, you will suck at monogamy.  If you're good and rich enough to market self-help books and syndicated television programs, chances are you're not that much of a therapist. 

Thousands of clinical psychologists gain their doctorate each year and still turn out to be crap.  There is a trade off price for everything you do and don't do.  Being told you have limitless potential is a lie, or at least an unattainable truth.  Exploring your dreams is not nearly as useful to your life as knowing your limitations.  Fucking up almost always occurs when someone thinks they are better than they actually are.

Phillip MacGraw is not a practicing psychologist any more, having withdrawn his licence in 2006.  His weight-loss products don't work, and his advice on just about everything is too simple to treat what are actually quite complicated scenarios.  This isn't just my crazy opinion either - just google 'Dr Phil + lawsuits'. 

Sure, I offer bullshit advice all the time but I do so freely because it's worth every cent.