Sex Detective vs Dr Phil's Life Laws & Personality Types

Right now, okay!  As contemporaneously as possible!

Dr Phil's Life Laws
Fuck you, Moses, Phil has his own ten commandments. I not about to go through them all, though, because your brain isn't ready for that, fool.  It'd be the human soul's equivalent of auto-erotic asphyxiation if you were plunged into this much self-realisation in one hit.  For your own safety I'm only choosing four from this list.

As a possible detective, I know a few things about laws, albeit often as an end-user.  Phil's 'top ten' aren't presented as laws per se though.  They're just statements.  Phil-baby, you somehow manage to create a paradox in my simple, sexy mind by actually creating pop psychology that is uniquely generic. 

Life Law #2: You create your own experience.

Strategy: Acknowledge and accept accountability for your life. Understand your role in creating results.

You cannot dodge responsibility for how and why your life is the way it is. If you don't like your job, you are accountable. If you are overweight, you are accountable. If you are not happy, you are accountable. You are creating the situations you are in and the emotions that flow from those situations.

There are probably only nineteen million or so exceptions I can cite to this claim, Phil, but they all basically come down to 'situations beyond our control'.  If you seriously think that millions of African kids chose to starve, or that every target of kidnapping, rape and torture somehow chose their own fates, then I will pay anything to visit the Self-Empowerment Nation of Philtopia.  Sounds like a fantastic place, full of riches, eternal youth and unicorn sundaes topped with angel semen.

Glasser's Reality Therapy model has been around for a while.  I was trained in its merits 20 years ago, and still apply some of the key concepts pertaining to self-responsibility today.  But it was never designed to make such broad-sweeping statements.  If you don't provision this claim with clauses relating to a defined locus of control then such advice only becomes a source of deep depression and disappointment.  I don't ever get the luxury of creating every situation I'm in, you Texan twat, nobody does.  The best I can hope for is to initiate a situation I want now and again, or avoid one I don't.

Life Law #4: You cannot change what you do not acknowledge.

Strategy: Get real with yourself about life and everybody in it. Be truthful about what isn't working in your life. Stop making excuses and start making results.

Philip is effectively telling us that you have to get to know yourself in order to change yourself.  I can tell that whenever he stumbled upon the concept of self-awareness he got all excited and turned centuries of existential philosophy into a bumper sticker.  Somehow he's taken the most puerile of dumb rehabilitative concepts from those 12-step wankers at Alcoholics Anonymous and made it even dumber (that's right, peeps, AA is absolute crap - take it from an ex-addict who cleaned up using the alternative 'two-step' model: put the fucking needle down and get a job). 

Life Law #6: There is no reality, only perception.

Strategy: Identify the filters through which you view the world. Acknowledge your history without being controlled by it.

What!?!  The strategy for Law #4 was all about getting real, wasn't it?  In fact, 'get real' is probably your most famous catch-phrase.  Now you're hitting us with some 'there is no spoon' bullshit?  There is only reality, Doc, and our perception (which is not the opposite of reality by the way) simply gives us the ability to interact with it.

Of course there's a fucking spoon, Neo, he's holding it right in front of you.

Just ignore the creepy kid, he's high on chemo-therapy.

Life Law #10: You have to name it before you can claim it.

Strategy: Get clear about what you want and take your turn.

Another classic Philistic slogan.  Slogans are the most overused marketing tool on the planet, whether it be for politics or products or cults.  They work because our brains don't like to repeat verbal tasks and actually think clearly at the same time.  And, because this is another snappy catch-phrase, the rhyming style employed makes us enjoy the verbal bit.  Now, the above statement is - apart from sounding like a radio jingle chorus -a cognitive observation so fundamentally obvious that it should only come as an epiphany to crustaceans.

Hence forcing me to solve my own rape case, the fucker.

Phil's Personality Tests

I've got a more in-depth post on personality bullshit coming up, but this page of Phil's really caught my eye.  Gouged it, even.  Here we have a series of 'tests' that are in fact just a few leading questions to which you are compelled to answer "Yes, I'm a shallow cunt.  Ha-ha, that's me all over, all shallow and cunty like."  Discover which of the following 3 or 4 (the fourth doesn't have the same Q&A format, like he got bored and resorted to ironically complaining about his wife) intricate personality types you may be.  He even adds that if you don't fit into one of these you can create your own category.  Thanks, Phil, because empowerment is all about the ability to classify yourself by type.  And one thing you can bet your fucking ass on, Doc, I will come up with much cooler category names that these piles of shit.

Are you the Porcupine type?  You know, always defensive, critical, spiky and possibly an insectivore?

Are you the Chicken Little type?  Do you always assume the worst, preach doom, practice constant anxiety, and also a chicken?  Like a real one?  Or maybe you're just nervy because don't understand his archaic references?

Perhaps you're the Poser type?  Vain, image obssessed, aesthetically competitive and socially elitist?  You're nothing but a mannequin, a rich, successful, high society mannequin with rockin' tits, aren't you?  You're probably also every cheerleader who ever refused to suck Phil's dick in highschool. 

Here's my personality question: just how fucked up do you have to be to admit to being one or more of these three cartoon arch-types?  I've seen deeper personality analysis on a Facebook quizz when it asked me what type of cock-ring I was.  Let me offer you an alternative, Doctor.  I propose that there is nearly seven billion different personality types within the human population, and that they are divided into two distinct and easily recognisable categories: me, and not-me.

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.

Sex Detective vs Dr Phil, part one

You know why I despise Dr Phil?  Yeah, apart from him being everything I'm not - rich, successful, famous, well-marketed, Texan, bald and fat.  No, what shits me is what he represents: just the right mix of simplistic truth and twisting lies that sells so well to people who have forgotten how to think like fully functional adults.  Phil is a great believer salesman in instantaneous behavioural modification.  "You've gotta change your life!"  "Take charge of your life today!"  "Today is gonna to be a turning point in your life!"  But like all salesmen, his solutions weren't warranted until he told you there was a problem in the first place.  It's Dianetics and infomercials all rolled into one.  Do you have a troubled teen?  Is your relationship on the rocks because of lies?  Does your kid hate vegetables?  Is your ass suffocating your head?  Then buy one of my many books that tell you how to live your life, because you obviously can't be trusted to work it out yourself, moron.


What Would You Do?
I had a peek at his blog today in order to tackle the hard questions on offer.  Today's biting provocation into the heart of your soul was this: What would you do if you only had 24 hours to live?  Many respondents droned on about forgiving rapists, surrounding themselves with family, or praying to their imaginary friends or something.  Personally I found the scenario bizarrely disturbing.  I could only come up with two viable reasons why it would present itself.

1. I was already dying horribly from something and the doctors just gave me the expiration date, in which case the best I could wish for on my last day were every happy drug they could pump into me.

2. I was being held hostage by some assholes who were real sticklers for punctuality, meaning that I had a whole day to piss and shit myself in between begging and sobbing.

"Hey, guys, what would YOU do if you only had 24 hours to live?"

"Rape you 48 times, now shut up and keep walking, imperialist scum."

But even assuming I was otherwise healthy and unrestrained when the news broke, I'd be so fucked up by the prospect that I doubt anything sanely worthwhile would occur to me.  I guess I probably wouldn't go to work for a start.  Not too sure I'd be all nostalgic and remorseful either.  No way would I waste time contacting every family member and close friend to let them know - why the hell would I put the people I love through that grief?  I'm actually not always a very nice guy, and by telling me I'm dead by tomorrow kinda disinclines me to keep that flaw in check.  In fact I can almost guarantee that over the next 24 hours there would be a lot of 'closure' heading towards every cunt who ever pissed me off, mainly in the form of highly ironic practical jokes.  And by 'jokes' I mean 'fists'.  It would be a 24 hour smack-fest.  A knock at the door followed by a falcon punch without preamble or explanation.  Balls or ovaries, I wouldn't discriminate, just punch, punch, punch til the timer on my cortex bomb ran out.


Keep It Real, dude
But aside from inciting pointless fantasy scenarios, Dr Phil likes to dish out simplistic relationship advice for folks who need a crash helmet to navigate a stairwell.

Do you ever lie? Or are you in a relationship with a liar? Dr. Phil offers steps to change your behavior, and in turn, change your relationship with a dishonest person.

Everyone lies, Phil, even you.  It's not only one of many innate human traits, it's essential for people to function in society.  Bad people lie for careless gain, good people lie to help others.  Some people even lie to sell shitty self-help books on their TV shows.  Deceit is just as valid a survival ability as any other.  It's not the lie itself that harms, it's the reason behind it.  But, no, that's way too cynical for the audience.  Instead you offer them insanity.

Be Real with Yourself and Your Partner
If you lie to yourself, you’re the filter. You’re the way the world gets to see you, so if you’re distorting, then you’re totally lost.

Technically these are legitimate sentences oozing out of his self-righteous head, but fucked if I can make sense of them.  Put the word 'dude' at the end of his sentences and suddenly you realise it's just '70s stoner philosophy as typically discussed while waiting for the pizza to arrive.


A Family Affair Fucking Train Wreck

Ed hates his wife, but she wants to save the marriage as punishment.

Six months ago, Ed revealed to his wife (Kandi) of 12 years that he'd been having an affair. That news was shocking enough, but shortly after he dropped another bombshell: The mistress is pregnant.

Ed is a doctor (a real one, not like Phil) and yet possibly the stupidest man on television.  His family, his really pissy looking wife most of all, think that by exposing Ed's shame publically on Dr Phil, some ageing Texan therapist can fix this shit.  Hey, do you wanna know what men do when women pressure them with shame for fucking up?  They continue to fuck up more, often in new and interesting ways.  Compound this pressure with half an audience of rabid women and you turn an otherwise conventional marital abortion into a national disaster.  He's confessed to fucking at least one of his nurses, and unless this mistress did her medical training in the Vatican, she deliberately allowed him to impregnate her.  Still, Dr Phil reckons he can help with some vague, hick advice on marriage saving.

"There definitely is a plan and a way to work through this. But both of you have to say, 'I'm just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other'."

Sure enough, the marriage is doomed, no matter how many feet get put where.  Ed moves out (gets his ass booted) leaving his wife and their 3 kids behind.  Of course Phil will claim this is because they failed to follow his advice.  That's what we call a non-falsifiable claim, or unprovable bollocks.  Look, the guy was getting his on the side, hoping for just a fling, but ended up in a shit storm of his own making.  I'm guessing the guy is great at his job - the medical bit, I mean, not necessarily the nurse-fucking bit - which means he probably sucks at other stuff like monogamous, healthy relationships.  Instead he turns soft-cock, telling each woman whatever bullshit they want to hear at the time until one or both of them make a decision (eg: get the hell out) for him.  Why?  Because he can.  He knows damn well he's got 2 broads fighting over him.  Many modern women are competitive on levels we guys cannot conceive but are happy to exploit if we are weak enough to do so.

Ed adopted a victim mentality the moment he fessed up to Kandi.  He wanted to get away from her, but lacked the cajones to file for divorce.  Instead he simply had to continue to be a lecherous dick until she threw him out.  The public shame forum that is Dr Phil just solidified his victimhood status in his own mind.

The Sex Detective would certainly adopt a different approach.

SD: "Ed, it's obvious to me that you hate your marriage, otherwise you wouldn't be fucking some other chick out of boredom or spite, or, from what I've seen of your wife, pure physical revulsion.  Divorce her, dickhead."

Ed: "But my kids - "

SD: "Will be fucking fine, just like every third kid in their class living with divorced parents right now."

Ed: "But I think I still love my wife!"

SD: "Can it, fool.  Love's a verb, not a noun.  It's a doing word, and you ain't doing shit, pal.  Divorce her now, and if you still feel that way about her on a few years time you can always marry her again, okay?  Pussy.  [Turns to audience] Next we have a mom whose emo kid likes to cut himself in his room, so we're going to give her some carpet cleaning tips.  Stay tuned."

Click here to see Part Two...