That's not so Thanatos, Daddy

“Hobo Daddy,” tonight’s episode of Dr. Phil focused entirely on the story of Kayla, and her Father Jerry, who left when she was a young child to live life as a homeless hobo, floating up and down the Mississippi River. We also learned how Jerry had treated his son, and Kayla’s older brother, like a friend, partying and drinking with him when he was only 14 or 15. Later, when Jerry had begun his itinerant life, Micah became embroiled in drug problems, committing suicide and effectively abandoning his own family. Kayla and her mother both blamed Jerry for Micah’s problems. With such a confused, envious daughter and a wild, norm-defying father, the Oedipus complex might be a good place to start. On the other hand, we might also want to consider theories like Lacan’s jouissance or Name of the Father, in light of Jerry’s perpetual, rambling journey and Kayla’s apparent dependence on a paternal image to allow signification and prevent psychosis. It is implied that the show is meant to be told from the Kayla’s perspective (already an incestuous, taboo turn for a traditionally objective science) and yet, quite often, Jerry comes across as the hero. He thinks of himself as “a modern day Huck Finn,” appears as the protagonist in a documentary about his life as a hobo, and appears on the show as a genuinely naïve, well-meaning, foreigner. One way to theorize across the teleological and ontological river that seems to be dividing the father and daughter, without unduly privileging one over the other—as Dr. Phil had great trouble doing, first chastising Jerry and sympathizing with Kayla, then adopting the opposite view—would be to consider the relationship as that between Eros and Thanatos. First developed as a psychoanalytic concept by Freud, the idea is that human nature is in constant conflict between the drive for life and the drive for death, Eros and Thanatos respectively. Eros, the drive for life involves repetitive, compulsory (and, perhaps counter-intuitively, often discontented) compulsions for life, sex, art, and wholeness. Thanatos, conversely, is characterized by the drive to repeat unpleasant events from one’s past, to cause destruction, to revert to an earlier state, and to seek death. In seeking death, however, the drive is really seeking an end to chaos and diverse sensations in favor of finality and the cessation of inordinate pain. For the most part, Jerry seemed to personify Eros, living the Romantic life on the river, drinking, constantly reminding people to live their life, emotionally lucid, and giving birth not only to Kayla and Micah, but also a film. Kayla seems more obsessed with the drive toward death. She constantly relives not only Micah’s death, but all the unhappy moments of her life. It appeared to be a compulsory need for destruction which caused her to angrily shout out things like “I’m fine—this is about Micah!” “I could never abandon [my own] kids!” and “you’re not my father!” From the death drive’s point of view, Kayla is fine, unable to abandon her kids, and fatherless. Not because she’s a better person, but because she’s the dead one. If not reliving her past memories as the ghost of her three-year-old self, she’s projecting herself onto the dead brother. This binary is in no way frozen, or complete, however, but this seems to be an important issue, if not the implicit subterranean cause, of the entire model. There is, of course, a perspective where Jerry is the one seeking death (via alcohol, drugs, and danger) while Kayla seeks life. It is this struggle which causes the conflict between the two instincts, and between the two main guests on tonight’s show. It also helps to explain why the usually rigid and confident Dr. Phil had trouble picking sides. Ultimately, this is relationship between life and death drive is also an important concern or contributing factor in topics as various as Jung’s (significantly different) conception of the motherly archetype of Eros or Lacan’s idea of jouissance. Similarly, this concept might be revealing when applied to the reasoning and reasoners behind the energetic hero-worshiping of (read as: “long live”) Dr. Phil and those who wish he’d just shut up, or die.

The (wo)Man Camp Which Is Not One

On today’s episode, “The Dr. Phil House: Man Camp Newlyweds, Part 2,” we were introduced to 3 troubled, recently married, couples as they enter the Orwellian Dr. Phil House. Though it was advertised and continually referred to during the show as “Man Camp”—which seems to suggest that it’s the men who are the delinquents needing to be trained—most of the attention, including criticism, was actually given to the three women. This leads me to believe that the most appropriate resource in an interpretation would be Luce Irigaray’s essay This Sex Which is Not One. Irigaray exposes many key ideas, starting with the observation: “Female sexuality has always been theorized within masculine parameters.” Already, this might help to explain why an episode largely devoted to the problems of women could retain the title of “Man Camp.” Irigaray continues by pointing out that “women and her pleasure are not mentioned…the penis is the only recognized sex organ of any worth.” Though critical of Freud, Irigaray seems to hold onto the general notion that sexuality and libidinal desires are at the core of all human interaction and psychology. Women’s genitals relate to their use of language and on neither level can they communicate with man’s desires because their logic and sex are both omnipresent and non-existent. Dr. Phil seems to embody this model perfectly. He orders the husbands and wives to be separated, and lets the men into the house first. Not only are the sexes (or we might more accurately say genders) not aloud to communicate, but they aren’t even coeval or ontologically present. One need not deny that the women—particularly the alcoholic Karla who the episode revolves around—have problems. There should be a degree of suspicion, though, that instead of offering concrete, systematic alcohol abuse treatment, the phallic Phil takes a great deal of time to expose and humiliate Karla for having an equally phallic bottle of vodka hidden in her purse. Even when he gives advice that could be viewed as more constructive, he seems unable to communicate with Karla as a women, exactly as Irigaray hypothesized. Dr. Phil claims that she’s “out of control.” Women don’t talk; they “whine.” Irigaray writes that “the vagina is a flaw” and, at times, Karla’s womanhood seems to be a problem that is as serious, or more problematic, than her drinking. When Dr. Phil and Karla’s father eventually shift their gaze to John, the husband, the only criticism is that he has anger issues and “a man who would hit a woman is a poor excuse for a man.” Though this chastisement is apparently meant to criticize John, instead it is saying he is a poor man (i.e. a woman?) and that the problem is not hitting people, but rather women. In this sense, too, the woman—not the man’s violence to overcome the communication gap and find material substance—is the root of the problem. Karla, it seems, is not being helped at all. In fact, as Irigaray writes, she is “more or less [a] complacent facilitator for the working out of man’s fantasies.” We learn what her husband, Dr. Phil, her father, her neighbors, and the other guests feel about her, but she remains one who is “indefinitely other in herself” with “no ‘proper’ name.” The great mistakes and abuses that Irigaray (a psychoanalyst who Dr. Phil apparently hasn’t read) warns about have become true. John, the husband, may be at fault for masochistically choking Karla to control her actions, but Dr. Phil does the same when he tries to “trap women into giving an exact definition of what they mean…mak[ing] them repeat (themselves) so the meaning will be clear.” Dr. Phil can put women in his house and observe and reconstruct their every hidden movement, but when he watches their lives go by in home videos, he still refers to himself as “an outsider.” If Irigaray is right, this means that, no matter how the existing order is toyed with, history will simply have to repeat herself without being understood.

Phil the Red

“I had a real job before I did this” Dr. Phil, September 24, 2007
“You cannot abolish philosophy without making it a reality.” Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the Right, 1884



Today’s episode, “Bishop T.J. Jakes,” had a lot to offer. Televistically, we had the added appearance of Bishop T.J. Jakes to help with 3 segments (two being the standard). Philosophically, there’s also much to work with. Work, in fact, was on of the central motifs in the broadcast. First we met a marriage about to break up, principally because the husband, Bobby, has become “addicted to commodity trading.” Then we were introduced to Hunter, a middle aged man whose “big problem” is that he is critical and negative about everything. Finally, we heard from Antoine and Tiffany, who brought a handgun out one night when they thought someone was breaking into their home. Leaving it under the pillow, in the morning, Tiffany walked in as her three year old son picked up, then dropped the gun, fatally wounding himself. She is now “working” to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The Marxist undercurrent is probably most visible in the first portion of the show. Bobby is, of course, captivated by commodity fetishism. While Dr. Phil would like us to believe that Bobby is the only one preoccupied with money, his own rhetoric, as well as the other guests, belies this defense. Kelly seemed obsessed with his obsession, both as it infantilizes her (feelings she projected onto him, calling him a “child”) and as it undercuts and exposes her own—equally fetishistic pursuit—of wages and goods. Similarly, Jakes advised that the couple “lost more than money…the real bankruptcy is the loss of the marriage, her love, the harmony.” This answer seems to do little more, though, than shift the fetishism, and resulting exploitation, from the realm of laborer to the level of personhood. In fact, Dr. Phil had perhaps the most astute comment when he interjected that “you don’t solve money problems with money.” In Das Kapital, Marx’s answer to the “money problem” of commodity fetishism’s exploitative grip is “a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour-power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour-power of the community” (1.4). Dr. Phil’s answer embodies this, albeit simplistically, when he states that “you solve them with attitude.” In any case, a theoretically Marxist approach should warn us against blindly following the orders of the bourgeoisie. What are Phil, and his associate Jakes trying to do? They’ve already turned Bobby and Kelly, their marriage, and their entire existence, into a product, one that has “value” and should not be “broken.” Perhaps they are really only trying to maintain the status quo. This seems to promulgate, not fix, the real “money problem” if, as Marx suggests, families also possess “a…system of division of labour” akin to, and supporting, the market (Das Kapital, 1.4). In the case of Antoine and Tiffany, where the “use value” of their handgun takes an instantaneous, grotesque perversion as it causes their sons death, Dr. Phil gives comparable guidance when he says Tiffany’s remaining two children need “not 80%...but 100% of their mother.” This appeared to reinforce Tiffany’s view that they are no longer “a complete family” and that she is, herself, a commodity (equally as dangerous as a gun, and apparently currently on sale, as is, for 20% off). The Marxist answer seems to be not to continue “working,” even if it is to prevent similar tragedies. Instead, it is to realize that the Bishop next to you on the right is “the opium of the people,” while the bourgeoisie to your left, giving you his recommendations might be the psychological drug-dealer (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the Right). The better advice might be to abolish “religion as the illusory happiness of the people [and] demand for…real happiness” (Ibid). What does this tell us about Marxism, though? There must be something unclear, inherently difficult to act on, and maybe even undesirable about Marxist answers if people like Bobby and Kelly, Hunter, and Antoine and Tiffany are aspiring, or at least willing, to end the show in virtually the same position they started, except of course that they are helping a successful show, major network, advertising corporations, and society-at-large with little in exchange.

Philling in the Gap

What does Dr. Phil—the eponymous man and the daytime talk show—have to do with analytical psychology, cultural criticism, and poststructuralist philosophy? At first, the appropriate answer seems to be: nothing, nothing at all. The decision to disregard these shamans, branded by pedagogues as “quacks,” cannot be assumed to be completely naïve or immaterial. Valuable things are lost, suppressed, and denied. But can hyperreality be said to inexorably mesh reality and fantasy when we maintain that Dr. Phil’s philosophy is pure fantasy? Is not Dr. Phil the Other from (and, in fact, for) Lacanian philosophy; lacking and detached, the Other is still that which constructs and defines the very polemic that spurns disassociates with it? Are there not essential Marxist issues of class, cultural hegemony, and production at work here? Indeed, the hypothesis of Deconstructing Phil. is that every celebrated and worthwhile facet of modern psychology, cultural criticism, and philosophy cannot avoid a dialogue with subjects like Dr. Phil. Instead, they will benefit from a glimpse at this “short circuit,” where—following Slavoj Žižek’s example in The Parallax View—we will examine “the inherited decentering of the interpreted text,” in order to “discern its subversive core” and playing with “this gap between meaning and the pure Real” (ix, 4, 7) While this will hopefully help to elucidate the relationship between Dr. Phil and doctors of philosophy, Žižek points out that the parallax gap lives in the kernel of philosophy, the psychoanalytical experience, and politics itself (7, 19, 10). By reading Dr. Phil in various contexts, we might be, at the very same time, interpreting contextuality and the reading process. Join us, as we put the Phil in philosophy and the philosophy in Phil. We hope to have some fun, perhaps learn something, and, of course, make a différance .