The Birth of Phil Studies

Today’s episode of Dr. Phil was rather uninteresting, unless, of course, you enjoy listening to former child star Danny Bonaduce recount his failed marriage and the myriad of other problems he so clearly continues to have despite being “sober.” Still, there was some theory that we could talk about. Phil made his usual reproductive futurist rant about how the important thing is the children and their lives. We get it, you’re a heterosexual—yawn. We also had the astute point by our esteemed Dr. that “there are two Danny Bonaduces—Danny Bonaduce the personality and Danny Bonaduce the real person that I know, who cares about his family and his kids.” It would be interesting to take this to the next step: people on t.v., or in any theatrical situation, are not real people. We could think of Žižek’s idea of acting “as if,” Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality, Lacan’s Borromean knot, Brecht’s alienation effect, and so much more! It will be fun, and Dr. Phil is one thing, but I’m not going to do it with Danny Bonaduce, at least not until he starts calling himself a poet or a philosopher, or something like that.

Instead, tonight we have a bit of meta-analysis to do as it has recently come to my attention that I did not, in fact, create the field of Phil studies. I had hoped that, like Freud or Marx, I was working as a “founder of discursivity” (Foucault, What is an Author?) Therefore, it was quite a surprise to find that, over two years ago, a pair of professors from St. Lawrence University had written a good-sized scholarly article on Dr. Phil in The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, a web-based periodical from the Department of Religious Studies and Anthropology at The University of Saskatchewan. Professor Egan and Papson’s full article, “You Either Get It or You Don't”: Conversion Experiences and The Dr. Phil Show,” is available here: http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art10-drphil.html.
I encourage you to at least read the abstract. Egan and Papson are observant enough to realize that there is no religious content in the Dr. Phil show, but do assert that the episodes follow the structural pattern and the narrative of a religious conversion (particularly of the televangelist ilk) with a confession and testimonial followed by conversion and transformation. The authors conclude that “the televised presentation of reoccurring conversions functions to produce a sense of moral authority, self-empowerment, and an imagined community [and] that the boundary between the sacred and the secular blur in this highly commodified television spectacle.” Now, I have a friend who says he likes theory, but thinks a lot of theorists argue too much with each other. I find these two positions difficult to reconcile, as it should be the duty of any decent theorist to envisage critiques and theories that can hold up against the entire world to reinvent and reinvigorate its intellectual understandings and possibilities. The idea, the theory itself, might stand out in (or against) reality, but it does not reach the level of discourse until it is acknowledged, reproved, and re-proved. Egan and Papson are already, of course, part of the discourse within Religious studies. They’ve cited authorities within the field and it’s periphery (at least, not being an expert on theology, I assume that’s what they’ve done). They’ve been reviewed to reach publication, and have likely been cited or read as a result. But this is all as religion experts, or, perhaps in the amorphous field of cultural criticism. When it comes to Phil studies, however, it is safe to assume that this is—as Dr. Phil would say—their first rodeo. We can remedy that. Firstly, I think Egan and Papson are wise to bring in things like Neilson ratings and advertising. Economics and politics are central organs in Phil studies. Egan and Papson also sagaciously pick up on the fact that the Dr. Phil we see on television is actually a staged personification. The analysis has only one glaring deficit in that Egan and Papson do not seem to pick up on the fact that there is a Phil canon. Instead, they simply observe two shows, “Addiction” and “The Weight Loss Challenge.” This ignores the fact that Dr. Phil often brings back guests, revisits segments, issues, or mini-series like the Dr. Phil house and obviously expects his viewers to watch regularly, visit his website, and read his books. More importantly, it seems to skew their findings slightly. While both the episodes they chronicled might have taken on the mode and style of a conversion, there have also been many that might more aptly be described as promoting reversion (to better times, etc.), aversion (when something just needs to stop), or diversion (for preventing that which hasn’t actually even begun to occur). From outside the actual mechanism of the Dr. Phil Show, the possibilities are even more numerous. As we’ve tried to demonstrate, the show can also be seen as the location of perversion and subversion. Even limiting oneself to the domain of theology, it might be just as fitting to describe the arc of most shows as an exorcism or, in some cases, an excommunication. The fact is, the Dr. Phil canon is large and often contradictory. This is also a part of Egan and Papson’s largest mistake. While they seem to see an insidious side to Dr. Phil because he attempts to become the high priest, carving out his own commodified religion, mixing the secular and the sacred, there is an equally dark side. Failing to promote the scriptures, the pillars of psychology—the great psalmists like Freud, Jung, etc. and their seminal works—is tantamount to heresy. If Nietzsche and Marx are correct in their assertions that “God is dead” and “religion is the opium of the people,” then we must conclude that—if Dr. Phil is attempting to rule over a conversion to a half secularized, half sacred televangical reality—he is continuing to feed his guests’ various addictions, refusing help, and instead embracing philosophical death for all parties involved (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right").

The Myth of Sisyphil

Tonight’s episode of Dr. Phil brought us back to an episode that first aired 3 or 4 weeks ago. Using the unique medium of the Dr. Phlashback we can refamiliarize ourselves with the episode: “Ken’s got enough money for fancy cars, cruises, and air hockey machines and I’m on welfare” “Keri makes the kids afraid to come visit and lies to the police” “He hits them” “She’s on drugs” “Well, I’m just gonna sit back and let ya’ll work this out.” Apparently Dr. Phil’s strategy didn’t work the first time, but this most recent encounter was equally hostile and ineffective. Dr. Phil summoned all his reproductive futurist gusto and teleological bourgeois might to reminded Ken and Keri that he wanted to “restore order” and “come down on the side of the kids.” Numerous times the bickering between Ken and Keri (with wife and boyfriend respectively) got to the point that Dr. Phil just stopped. Resuming, he always called their interactions “infantile” (which we’ve already discussed elsewhere in some detail) and “absurd.” This should immediately bring to mind Camus’s famous concept of the Absurd, especially since it is best expressed in the essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” where he uses the example of the mythical Greek who, as punishment for his wily and deceitful feats, had to push a huge bolder up a hill daily, to watch it roll back down and start over again. Here, there seems to be a little of Sisyphus in syndication. The question is, then, does Dr. Phil’s interpretation of the absurd have anything to do with Camus’s Absurd, and is there, indeed, anything absurd or Absurd about the situation at hand? First, it should be noted, that to Dr. Phil and many laypeople, absurdity is a bad thing, equated strongly with misery, unfairness, and weirdness. To Camus, though, Absurdity is a very normal, ethical, and happy idea. He famously writes: “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” because “happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the felling of the absurd springs from happiness.” The core elements of Sisyphus’s (and Camus’s) Absurdity do not seem absurd when viewed through the lens of Dr. Phil and those like him because they do not speak of, or with, the same Absurdity. To Camus, coming face to face with the Absurd is becoming “convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human” whereas to Dr. Phil it might be something like: ceasing to be human (and instead infants, animals, monsters, et cetera). The absurd hero looks at the world and, especially at the height of its absurdity, thinks: “all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems…neither sterile nor futile.” To Dr. Phil (who is not, like Sisyphus, the “wisest and most prudent of mortals) to think of life without order, end, and meaning is a tragic punishment. Thus, we might even say that Dr. Phil does not meet the first criterion of the Absurd hero, that of consciousness. We can say of Sisyphus, but not Dr. Phil: he “knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent.” For Dr. Phil—and by extension Ken, Keri, and the whole gang—the Absurd epiphany has not been reached and cannot be built on until there is the realization that objective success is hopeless. The only hope, for Sisyphus and Phil alike, is not to put the rock down, but rather to keep going while consciously embracing, not maligning, the Absurdity inherent within the system. To try and “fix it” is worse than going against the natural order of things or defying the gods because it is to miss out on the possibility that “the lucidity that was to constitute…torture at the same time crowns…victory.” To Camus, life and its Absurdities are worth living again and again. For Dr. Phil, we must consider the possibility that his show is, in a very real way, the locus of many suicides, perhaps chiefly his own.

The Phil in Pedophile

Today we were bestowed with another generous helping of Dr. Phil Now, where the singular psychologist gave us his 9 ½ cents worth on an important issue: pedophilia. Examining the case of Chester Stiles—a recently apprehended fugitive accused of raping (and video recording) a 3 year old girl—we heard from a variety of guests including the victim’s mother, her lawyer, a relevant district attorney, and the son of the woman who may have unintentionally facilitated the contact. What is so outrageous about this outrageous current event? The rape? Most certainly not. Rape is obviously a horrendous act, but unfortunately it is far too prevalent an occurrence to elicit such shock and condemnation by itself. It would be safe to assume that, instead, the answer lies in the 3 year old victim’s youth. It matters more that the victim was a child than that there was a lack of consent. This socially promulgated act of fetishization in the form of reproductive futurism has been addressed in previous essays, and it will likely be discussed in further detail again. In this situation, however, it seems completely inadequate to give up here. There was a strange subtext to today’s episode that seemed to suggest that—on an atavistic level of psychological relics and symptoms—we were not actually discussing the righteousness of pedophilia. Philosophically, we have only one appropriate source to turn to, Socrates, the “father” of moral and political philosophy. Socrates was also accused, tried, and eventually executed for “corrupt[ing] the youth” and “not believ[ing] in the gods of the state” (Plato’s Apologia, trans. Benjamin Jowett). Pederasty was a very real (and generally accepted) part of Socrates’s Greece, so it is an equally real (though often bowdlerized) possibility that the great philosopher was actually being accused of a crime similar to the one outlined here by McGraw^*. It is curious then that Socrates’s defense does not address such a possibility, nor does it respond to Plato’s (more Platonic) version of an ethical pederastic relationship or even the abstract idea of corruption in terms of Athenian youth. Instead, Socrates uses the important platform to defend wisdom and philosophy and, by association, one could easily interpret this as Dr. Phil’s true target. On the first take, it seems absurd to conflate pedophilia with philosophy and the death of one of the most celebrated philosophers. Yet even on the show pedophiles, and Mr. Stiles, were not characterized as the usual lot of ruffians and hoodlums. Instead, the various guests and Dr. Phil described the classic pedophile as “calculated and cunning,” “charming individuals,” “and intellectualizers.” It seems like a great many of our finest thinkers then, our philosophers par excellence, all fit the profile of the pedophile. Dr. Phil, in his aversion to pedophilia, echoes exactly the Athenian prosecutors who warn the public: “guard and [do] not allow yourselves to be deceived by the force of [Socrates’s] eloquence” (Apologia). Socrates’s defense, his articulation of his own wisdom is simple though considerably counterintuitive. Unlike most men (and I see no need to exclude Dr. Phil) who claim to be wise without really knowing themselves or the world, as Socrates says: “I know but little of the world [and] I do not suppose that I know” (Ibid). A constant, deep, and serious inquiry is therefore required, a philosophical delving into the nature of existence, ethics, society, the self, et cetera. Dr. Phil, on the other hand, inheriting the role of the prosecutor, is content to rest on “oration duly ornamented with words and phrases” in lieu of seeking out serious questions of truth. In his possibly well-intentioned efforts to eliminate pedophilia, Dr. Phil has also, through his sophistry-laden methodology and motivations, also placed himself in the position of prosecuting philosophers (regardless of whether their “corrupt[ion] of the youth” is ultimately for good or evil, physical or psychic) (Ibid). Socrates’s prophecy that the Athenian public (who voted to convict and punish him to death) and prosecutors will be reviled through history did seem to come true. Dr. Phil reveals another way the prosecutor injures himself more than the accused in the event that truth is not actually on trial: if no one is beyond suspicion and those most interested in getting to know and manipulate children are pedophiles, we might easily conclude that—in a philosophic sense—there is something of a pedophile in Dr. Phil and a part of Dr. Phil in every pedophile.


^*It seems necessary, before the argument continues any further, to point out a few facts that are quite pertinent, though perhaps not essential: 1.) Socrates’ trial is not, of course, retold by Socrates himself. In fact, Socrates has left no works extant (leading many to conclude that he didn’t even exist) and this particular reading comes from Plato’s Apologia. 2.) While the word "apologia" looks and sounds like the etymologically similar “apology” it means something somewhat different: a defense or explanation of one’s beliefs.

The Phil-Phunction

Today’s episode, “The O.J. Simpson Book Battle,” discussed the circumstances and controversies involved in the recently published book If I Did It. The show featured the work’s ghostwriter and the Goldman family as guests. Most peculiarly, it presented Dr. Phil in a novel role, that of the literary critic, as he promised to give the audience his “reading” of the book. When Pablo Fenjves explained that the book was proposed, agreed to, and created in the context of a “hypothetical confession,” Dr. Phil seemed unable to comprehend such an abstract idea and even noted: “hypothetical and confession, I don’t see how those two words go together.” In the realm of critical theory, however, there are, in fact, many ways of interpreting this. One of the more interesting pieces to discuss such issues is Michel Foucault’s essay “What is an Author?” In this piece, Foucault makes a great many comments that help to elucidate problems in today’s Dr. Phil. It is suggested that “today’s writing has freed itself from the dimension of expression,” that “the work, which once had the duty of providing immortality, now possesses the right to kill, to be it’s author’s murder” and that “we must locate the space left empty by the author’s disappearance.” In fact, Foucault focuses not on the author, but rather the author-function. The author-function is more than the realization of the act of writing—even a famous writer’s signed checks, grocery lists, and tic-tac-toe games are generally not authored. Instead “the author-function is…characteristic of the mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses within a society.” The authorship doesn’t simply describe who wrote something, but how, when, and under what circumstances. As Foucault writes, “literary anonymity is not tolerable,” perhaps—as this episode shows—because readers and their societal discourses need someone to punish. Nonetheless, the author-function is a construction and the specifics are “only a projection…of the operations that we force texts to undergo, the connections that we make, the traits that we establish as pertinent, the continuities that we recognize, or the exclusions that we practice.” If it is so mind-blowingly incredible that a hypothetical statement could also be a confessional one, it is only because we (not he) find it so impossible and because we are actually operating within a self-structured discourse which aims at separating the two concepts both hermetically and hermeneutically. Such a perspective is only as interpretively necessary as we make it; in fact, one could easily turn around and say that the idea of a hypothetical confession is at the root of all fiction. If it was conclusively discovered that Shakespeare was a murderer (like so many of his most realistically written characters in works of stunning detail) would that in any way affect his work? Objectively, it doesn’t, only when viewed through the author-function does it matter in the least whether any writer is a real murderer or simply imagines. Foucault also points out that the author-function demands a “certain unity of writing—all differences have to be resolved.” Dr. Phil and the gang are clearly fulfilling that end of the function, but it also glazes over a more serious issue. After all, while it might have been from interviews, it was not actually O.J. Simpson who wrote the book. No, it was Fenjves. The discourses are not in a position to evaluate Fenjves, however, either as a murderer or an author. Therefore, he is pushed aside radically, left to talk about what is not in the book, explaining his interactions with the true author. In this sense it seems that what Dr. Phil really can’t comprehend is that “all discourses endowed with the author-function do possess this plurality of self.” The “I” that is talking in one sentence is never the same exact “I” that is in the next, nor does the pronoun mean the same thing as the viewer jumps through passages, between chapters, or across books or genres. In this way, there is little connection between the speaker, the writer, and the author. In short, Dr. Phil’s show provides an answer to Foucault’s final question that is very different from the one given by the author himself. The question is: “what difference does it make who is speaking?” Foucault leaves it up to the reader, whereas Phil is not shy about letting his audience know that it matters a great deal, especially when he’s the one speaking.

Dr. Phil Now or Never

Today we were treated to another dose of “Dr. Phil Now!” where Dr. Philistine investigated the very current phenomenon of school shootings. Obviously, we shouldn’t belittle the trauma felt by victims of any violence, nor should we condone brutal, inhumane behavior. At the same time, it might be just as wrong to refrain from belittling Dr. Phil, allowing his brutal, inhumane brand of psychology to persist without criticism. This issue touches upon many political ramifications such as gun control, education policy, and the rights and freedoms afforded to individuals (particularly young people). The most interesting fallacy related to school shootings, though, is not overtly political, but rather historical. Dr. Phil repeats an oft reported error so familiar to media reports, expert explications, and uneasy community meetings: these acts of violence are new and anomalous. This is an irrefutable—and perhaps deliberate—distortion of the historical record. A Columbine survivor and guest added: “one thing got me into college, I thought it didn’t happen there.” Again, this is the historical record being annihilated. Even between the Columbine shooting and the Virginia Tech massacre (which apparently re-opened this victim’s eyes) there were at least 9 shootings on college campuses resulting in 19 deaths and many more injuries. In fact, there are dozens more similar acts of violence going back to at least 1936 where a student at Lehigh University killed himself and his English professor after demanded that his grade be changed. In 1966, for instance, a meticulously planned shooting by a deranged, well-armed shooter took place atop the Tower at the University of Texas which killed 16 and wounded more than 30 more. In fact, a reasonable (though necessarily morbid) examination of the relevant history shows that almost all the common assumptions are wrong. Some of the most deadly school related killings in modern times don’t even take place in America, but rather as part of broader conflicts in places like Bratunac in Yugoslavia, Stalino in Ukraine, Hue in Vietnam, and Beslen in Russia. As these events also illustrate, such attacks are also often not the result of, as Dr. Phil muses, “heartbroken teenage boys” and “loners” but rather adults (or, more ominously by groups of adults) with deep felt social, political, and personal grudges. Even in America, the deadliest school-related killing was not perpetrated by a depressed, socially awkward adolescent at a modern, suburban campus. Instead, it was at a rural Bath, Michigan schoolhouse in the year 1927 when a 55 year old school board treasurer and farmer killed 45 students and teachers, injuring 58 more. Disgruntled over his foreclosed farm, difficult family situation, and other townspeople who ignored his fight for lower taxes, the killer used dynamite and combinations of shrapnel to destroy his own home and set off explosions in three locations at the township’s only school. The purpose of recounting these gruesome events is not to glorify them or even compare body counts as part of a dismal contest, but instead to point out that they are not completely new phenomena, nor do they follow (at least with any great regularity) any of the characteristics so meticulously mapped out and emphasized by Dr. Phil. This is quite different from Santayana’s famous claim that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana Reason in Common Sense). It is difficult to see how anything can be repeated when it is forgotten, covered up, or unknown to begin with. There are many conceptions of history. Hegel and Marx posit dialectics where various stages and interactions are thought to lead to progress and eventually a teleological perfection. Others, like Walter Benjamin, read history as a persistent accumulation of chaos and catastrophe, with progress coming in the form of the backward-flung angel hurling through the post-lapsarian state (Illuminations). In this sense, it doesn’t really matter whether our age is the pinnacle of human existence or the nadir, or even if our time is not substantially different from anything that has already occurred. What is important is that virtually all reputable sciences, philosophies, and psychological movements (predicated on the idea that past events affect subsequent consciousness) must take account of past events and consider a broader historical context. Otherwise, as Dr. Phil demonstrates, one’s historical perspective mirrors that dangerous relationship where the subject becomes an illogical and introverted, social outsider obsessed with destruction.

The Queerest Dr. Phil Yet

“Queerness can never define an identity; it can only ever disturb one.” -Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive

Boy, oh boy—it’s episodes like today’s that make me happy I write a blog that applies post-structural theory to the Dr. Phil Show. After introducing us to Kim and Cory, a teenage couple in a tumultuous marriage with two neglected children, Dr. Phil went on a maniacal crusade. The mission was not to promote family planning or contraceptives, nor was it even to sound the clarion call of abstinence, but instead Dr. Phil pleaded with parents of teens and the teens themselves, begging them to listen as he shouted: you’re not really in love! By the way, this isn’t his first rodeo. As usual, there’s a large body of literature we might wish to consult in order to deconstruct Phil’s sophism. Since it is fairly inconceivable that any teenage lover would listen to this episode without a fit of Romantic giggles, it seems only fair that we pick a theorist who—despite his or her value—would likewise be ignored by Phil. That brings us to queer theorist Lee Edelman and his recent book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. But Edelman’s queerness isn’t exactly the queerness that so rarely shows up on the Dr. Phil show. Rather, it’s the queerness that is always somehow present in the Dr. Phil show. As Edelman writes, queerness “names the side of those not ‘fighting for the children,’ the side outside the consensus by which all politics confirms the absolute value of reproductive futurism” (5). We see this nearly every episode when Dr. Phil says something to his guests like “Your [insert destructive behavior here] would be fine, except you have kids!” or, more subtly, when he makes comments like “it’s time for you guys to grow up and be adults!” Thus, Dr. Phil sets himself up in the most favorable ideological position; he’s the one fighting for the children. His guests are always the queer ones—man, oh man do they need help—those queer folks who aren’t acting like adults or taking proper care of the kids, their future, their Other-to-come. Surely it is not a coincidence that virtually every episode is in some way an incarnation of a plagued marriage or perverted parent-child relationship. That’s the queerness—the lack of reproductive futurism—that must be mended. At least that’s what Dr. Phil—indeed all politics and society—would have us believe. Edelman sees it differently. To disregard for a moment the specific, non-theoretical children with diaper-rashes and growling stomachs, we can begin to see what Edelman terms the “sinthomosexual”(33). Building off of the Lacanian concept of the sinthome, Edelman writes that sinthomosexuals assert themselves “against futurity [and] against its propagation, insofar as it would designate an impasse in the passage to the future and, by doing so, would pass beyond, pass through, the saving fantasy futurity denotes” (Ibid). Instead, sinthomosexuals are “insisting on access to jouissance in place of access to sense.” (37). In this radical juxtaposition, there is now something wrong with Dr. Phil. He’s the one continuously restaging his “dream of eventual self-realization by endlessly reconstructing, in the mirror of desire, what [he takes] to be reality itself” (79). Of course you’re miserable now, it’s about your children…What? They’re miserable too? Well, then it’s about their children…We need not applaud the guests for mistreating their children, but perhaps they should be congratulated for standing up against the tyranical “belief in a final signifier” and their attempts to undermine “the promise of futurity” (37, 35). Kim and Cory from this “troubled teen love” episode are indeed unfit in many ways. They aren’t great examples of the sinthomosexuals who triumphantly live for the jouissance not the unreachable desire of futurity. Of course, Dr. Phil is also not a perfect and blameless reproductive futurist as he steps in with his Texas justice to spank the “children raising children.” The admission that children themselves—traditionally non-sexual and without agency—can be corrupted and destined to an unhappy future is something of a precarious step for Dr. Phil. While certain aspects of mainstream psychology focus on how the curable adult subject was influenced as a child (with the events and impacts reappearing through symptoms as an adult) Dr. Phil has never seemed to agree. At one point Dr. Phil suggested that he should have been involved all along (even before Kim and Cory had their kids) in order to insure a happy childhood and future. Dr. Phil is not promoting sinthomosexuality or the toned down and mitigated version of reproductive futurism inherent in most psychoanalytic thought—instead he’s demanding to be involved in every conception of the future to come personally (whether it’s queer or not) from the very childish beginning, to the equally childish future that will not end.

Dr. Phil Isn't A Freud of Anything

Today’s episode was a “Dr. Phil Now” episode. Apparently, “Dr. Phil Now” shows are where Dr. McGraw completely (as opposed to just mostly) ignores clinical psychology—instead musing for 40 minutes about a “current event.” Today’s “current event” was the controversial, politically charged, and culturally influential demise of Britney Spears, and her subsequent loss of her children’s custody. Now—at a psychoanalytical low point that perhaps rivals Britney’s own personal nadir—it might be the best time to ask: is Dr. Phil being a doctor? It is well-known that Dr. McGraw is not a psychiatrist, a medical doctor, but his ardent followers are quick to point out that he is, in fact, a trained, accredited, and practicing psychologist, with a Ph.D. in psychology. It is important, then, to ask: is Dr. Phil being a Doctor of Philosophy? If we turn to the intellectual often cited as the progenitor of psychology, Freud, the answer is clearly and emphatically in the negative. One of the works where Freud best outlines psychoanalysis is in the aptly named, and posthumously published, An Outline of Psycho-Analysis. In the chapter entitled “The Technique of Psycho-Analysis” Freud writes, from the perspective of the analyst, that “with the neurotics…we make our pact: complete candour [sic] on one side and strict discretion on the other.” This is at complete odds with McGraw’s approach—emanating, as it does, from network television—which is inherently indiscrete. Furthermore, even if McGraw is using “candour,” it is both futile (since Britney is probably at a discothèque and not watching the show) and unfounded. Freud is adamant that proper psychoanalytical methodology must revolve around self-observation, personal meetings, and one-on-one discussion with the subject (Ibid.). Today’s show included former bodyguards, a bevy of lawyers, an Entertainment Tonight correspondent, and even paparazzi tycoons, but no Spears. This, alone, invalidates the process of one involving psychoanalysis in the strict, conventional sense. McGraw is also failing on another important count. As Freud writes:

“We avoid telling [the patient] at once things that we have often discovered at an early stage, and we avoid telling [the patient] the whole of what we think we have discovered…as a rule we put off telling [the patient] of a construction or explanation till [the patient him or herself] has so nearly arrived at it that only a single step remains to be taken, though that step is in fact the decisive synthesis” (Ibid).

Obviously, this model cannot occur here. We have only the thesis (or perhaps the antithesis) unable to properly meet as they share no (conscious) dialectic. Freud continues by saying that if psychoanalysts “proceeded in another way” they would either “have no effect or…provoke a violent outbreak of resistance” (Ibid). In broader terms, it is perhaps the warped and grotesquely psychoanalytic tendencies of media outlets which has put Britney in this situation to begin with. Had we (the fans, the media, the public) not wanted to know so much about her, get inside her (head), or force our own broken syntheses—perhaps the circumstances would be quite different. Lastly, Freud writes that one of the greatest advantages helping along the psychoanalytic process is that “rationality” and “intellectual interest” to overcome suffering will be awakened through “the theories and revelations of psycho-analysis” (Ibid). By rejecting such established theories and practices, Dr. Phil might be closing off his best opportunity to help (including his own professed work). If hope to be the defenders of theory and psychoanalysis, must we be the ones to then say: “Leave Britney alone, Dr. Phil”? As Freud notes, the patient will always see the analyst not as a helper, but as “the return, the reincarnation, of some important figure out of…the past” (Ibid). We can’t really blame her (or any Dr. Phil show viewer for that matter) for associating McGraw less with Freud than with the paparazzi, the incestuous stage parent, or the poorly-matched husband (think synthesis). Freud also writes that “real sexual relations between patients and analysts are out of the question” and that affection of preference should be only sparingly granted. This might just be Dr. Phil’s most totem-less and taboo shortcoming if we consider the necessarily (albeit veiled) sexualization of Spears during the broadcast as she becomes the unattainable subject of desire, the faulty feminine idol which must be reworked, the focus of an incestuously productive dialectic, and the paradigm of an unacceptable patient-analyst relationship in virtually every other way imaginable. Here, the real neurotic resisting, perverting, and manipulating the analysis and discourse might be the one with a safe job, a comfortable marriage, and unchallenged control over his kids.

What in Phil's Name is Going on Here?

Today’s episode of Dr. Phil ushered us into the always unpleasant and fractured confines of the Dr. Phil house, where we met a second pair of newlyweds in dire need of man campification. The Dr. Phil canon is quite large, and it is not immediately clear if he has ever associated himself with Jungian psychology—or any school for that matter. Today, though, a quick look at Jung’s God-image archetype seems fitting. The problem pair today was mostly Jack and Danielle. Jack was characterized by the entire house (and an unusually surly Dr. Phil) as a “rude” and uncooperative “know-it-all” who is “constantly manipulating” and undermining his wife, the rest of the house’s progress, and—worst of all—the show. Jack, on the other hand, claims that the others are taking advantage of him, lying to him, leaving him utterly confused. Making matters worse, Danielle’s various psychic problems contribute and exaggerate the situation. At first, this may seem like a time to talk about group psychology and the collective unconscious. But, in many ways, it is unclear whether man camp constitutes a true collective. Anyway, we have darker waters to walk: the archetype of the God-image. Jung speaks of “an archaic God-image that is infinitely far from the conscious idea of God” (The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconsciousness). The individual enlightened by a conscious awareness of the God-image sees, within his own mental and spiritual state, the manifestations of a Godliness that differs significantly from the removed, inhuman, and arcane God of many established theologies. Jung writes that “what one could almost call a systematic blindness is simply he effect of the prejudice that God is outside man” (Psychology and Religion). What is this “important and influential archetype” doing, resurrected here on the Dr. Phil show (Ibid.)? For most of the guests, very little. Only Jack seems to have any conscious comprehension of his own power—even if it is, all too often, manifested malevolently. Danielle is the prime example of an individual with no sense of his or her own mental and spiritual agency or value. She overtly projects not only her scapegoat desires onto others (mainly her husband), but she also imbues external forces with all the power to control her reality, destiny, and perceptions. Even if her husband immediately stopped being abusive, where would she turn? Not into herself. Deep within her lies a terrible secrets that “not even [her] parents know” and which would “ruin [her] life if it got out.” This secret seems to be preventing what Jung might call the necessary development of a interior God-image for a healthy psychic state. More insidiously, it seems that the very lack of this God-image is what causes the secret to be so powerful and threatening. It has no power over Jack—or Dr. Phil, the God-image extraordinaire. He tells Danielle that, for Jack, it’s “all about controlling you.” That’s a serious no-no, since Dr. Phil wants to control everyone in his house, with Godlike omnipotence and authority. The end of the show is ambiguous in that it is unclear whether Dr. Phil has actually killed Jack’s God-imagined gusto and ego-centricism. This reveals a very important fact about the God-image. Individuals with a well developed God-image archetype may have great control over themselves, and in some cases considerable powers over those who still hold fast to the exterior image of God, but they have little binding authority over others who feel the God-image within themselves. To take it to the degree of blasphemy, one might think that Christ could ordain himself easily, were he the only one around at the time who saw Godliness within himself. When two people feel so ordained, however, as Phil and Jack both do, of course a battle between good and evil will ensue. Jung’s answer is very different from Phil’s though. In Jung’s words “it is the prime task of all education (of adults) to convey the archetype of the God-image, or its emanations and effects, to the conscious mind” whereas in Dr. Phil’s words “you need to listen to my advice” and stop being such a manipulative little know-it-all when “you’re not the smartest guy in the room…not by a long shot” (The Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy). Is that evil, good, or just God-image talking?

We "Other Genians"

The premise of today’s episode of Dr. Phil, if it is to be believed, is that last Friday’s episode was so controversial, so action packed, so mind-blowingly amazing, that it had to be extended to a second show. Thus we are again entertained (it is, after all, a daytime television show) by the racially motivated violence and bitter division among the inhabitants of the small Louisiana town of Gena. In honor of Louisiana’s French roots, I suggest we take shelter with the esteemed French post-structuralist, Michel Foucault. Let us consider a few thoughts from his essay “We ‘Other Victorians’”:

[I]f repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost: nothing less than a transgression of laws, a lifting of prohibitions, an irruption of speech, a reinstating of pleasure within reality, and a whole new economy in the mechanisms of power will be required. For the least glimmer of truth is conditioned by politics (5).

This passage, from Foucault’s book The History of Sexuality does, of course, focus on sexuality, though it seems just as applicable to our study of race. The story of the Gena six and perhaps all racial conflict is the story of a corrupted and uneven politics of language. As evidence, we see that members of Gena’s African-American community refer to the hanging of the 3 nooses on the schoolyard tree as a “terrible hate crime” and the beating of the white student as “a school fight” while the white citizens represented on the Dr. Philippe show had the exact opposite view of the magnitude of each event. Systemically, there is no resort, of course, otherwise Dr. Phillippe would not need to be talking to these people and their would have been fair and equitable treatment for all parties. More importantly, though, there’s also no easy remedy in the philosophical discourse. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy’s entry for “race” is shorter than its entry for “comedy.” Tying and hanging a noose is surely less insidious (though more overt) than the real injustice: there’s no statute to prosecute the act under. It is obvious, further disturbing the situation, that the problem is not with Gena, but rather the entire culture. Indeed, the power behind society seems to, quite literally, quarantine and segregate such problems to the geographically remote “Other” which is no longer quantifiably associated—except that it is everywhere within it. Perhaps there is something latently teleological and dialectical about any binary—male and female, modern and postmodern, black and white—which does not only allows, but leads to the power struggle over linguistics and knowledge. Even by looking forward and claiming that compromises can be reached is only a matter of affirming the repression (The History of Sexuality 7). It is not enough to be weary of politics, the system, or society, one must also take a critical eye to the language and knowledge controlled under the hegemonic dominance of the aforementioned institutions. To watch Dr. Philippe is to actively take part in racism; then again, to not watch Dr. Philippe is also to engage actively in racism. In a Foucauldian universe, there is perhaps more benefit to all sitting down and admitting that we are each alike and united in our socially embedded, inescapable racism.