The Shocking 'Caust of Watching Dr. Phil

In the blog lifespan of every postmodern critic of Dr. Phil, there inevitably comes a time when one must come to terms with a tragic and inhumane aspect of modern life: genocide. At first glance, it seems unreasonable, illogical, and even disrespectful to equate any of Dr. Phil’s actions—however misguided or despicable—to the large scale, calculated, and heinous instances of ethnic cleansing in the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and more recent or ongoing conflicts in the Balkans, Chechnya, or Sudan. If it is a question of moral blameworthiness, legal culpability, or adverse cultural impact, obviously Hitler, Slobodan Milošević, and others would have to take the cake. But Dr. Phil does not claim to be an International Court of Justice judge, or even an unimpeachable icon of lucid moral propriety. Instead, Herr McGraw claims his amorphous right to be broadcast into our homes and minds because he is a trained Doctor (Ph.D.) of psychology. This is a bit problematic because, psychologically speaking, there are more than ample grounds to equate Dr. Phil’s furor for helping Americans with the Führer’s goals of helping the Aryan race. A good case study of the psychology of Genocide is found in Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem which details the political life and subsequent trial of a high ranking Nazi official who had orchestrated the deportation, ghettoization, and eventual extermination of millions of social, political, and ethnic undesirables. One might expect Arendt to find a plethora of evidence that Eichmann was a crazed psychopath, a rabid Anti-Semite, and, above all, an extreme exception far outside the normal spectrum of human society. In fact, Arendt finds quite the opposite. Arendt writes: “the trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal…this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.” (253). Even more striking are Arendt’s observations that Eichmann “was obviously no case of insane hatred of Jews, of fanatical anti-Semitism or indoctrination of any kind. He ‘personally’ never had anything whatever against Jews.” (22-23). The question then becomes, if Eichmann was not an abnormal sociopath, an ardent Anti-Semite, and a atypical brute among men, how could this unexpected characterization possibly be reckoned with his role as the architect of the Holocaust? Arendt’s response, though potentially valid and accurate, is far more disturbing than any act of Nazi barbarism as it works toward explaining—though in no way justifying—a wide array of modern monstrosities. Arendt’s answer is that the “long course in human wickedness” teaches not of aberrant psychopaths and bigots, but rather the overwhelming, subversive, and dangerous power of the “banality of evil.” (231). Arendt writes that, the judges overseeing Eichmann’s trial, like almost everyone involved, simply assumed that Eichmann was lying, the psychological reports were wrong—obviously the man on trial was insane and full of calculated hatred. By doing so, they missed the real issue, that “an average, ‘normal’ person, neither feeble-minded nor indoctrinated nor cynical, could be perfectly incapable of telling right from wrong.” (23). For Arendt, “his guilt came from his obedience, and obedience is praised as a virtue.” Inspired very much by Arendt’s writing, in the mid 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram set out to create a set of experiments which would empirically calculate how far people would go to follow authority, including the “willingness to follow inhumane orders.”* (Douglass Mook, Classic Experiments in Psychology, 335). Milgram recruited participants using a traditional method: newspaper ads and posters with vague language inviting people to take part in a psychological experiment (Mook 336). Demographic data from each recruited participants was noted as they were brought into a laboratory setting. Participants were introduced to a second individual, who was introduced as another study participant, but who was actually an actor and a member of the research team. Participants were told they would be acting as the “teacher” while the second participant (actually an actor/researcher) would be the “learner.” (Ibid.) The “learner” was sent into a separate, but adjoining, room where he or she could be heard, but not seen. The participant believed the study tested the psychology of memory since the “teacher” conveyed a signal to the “learner” who would be required to remember and communicate back the correct item to complete a pair (Ibid). Participants were told that, as “teachers,” they would be required to administer “punishments” to the “learners” in the form of increasingly severe shocks at each wrong answer (Ibid). Of course, the true intention of the study was not to gauge the ability of the “learner” to remember pairs of data, indeed, the actor/researcher in the role of “learner” would repeatedly make intentional errors to illicit the “punishment” response from the “teacher.” What was really being studied was the willingness of the “teacher” to administer what they believed to be intense and dangerous shocks, some up to 450 volts (115 volts being the power of the average wall socket). The participants as “teachers” must have known of the danger of the voltage since buttons were equipped with labels such as “slight shock” and “danger: severe shock.” (Ibid.) Furthermore, though the “learner” was actually not being shocked at all, the actor would scream. At 120 volts, the “teacher” would hear the “learner” cry that the shocks were becoming to painful and, at 150 volts, the “learner” would demand that the experiment come to a halt. Eventually, the “learner” would refuse to communicate a response, but the researcher in the room would inform the “teacher” that this should be counted as an error and shocks should continue. Participants would often ask the present researcher things like “is this safe” or “shouldn’t we stop?” but the researchers would calmly reply: “You have no choice, you must continue.” (337) The question was: at what voltage level would participants quit, refuse to continue, or simply leave? Before starting the experiment, Milgram asked this very question to a sample of middle-class adults, a group of Yale psychology students, and a panel of psychologists, who all believed only about 1% of participants would administer severe shocks (338). In fact, in Milgram’s standard experiment, 65% of participants—“normal” people demographically speaking—would obey all instructions and administer extreme shocks (337). This is an extremely disturbing finding. Perhaps you are sure that you would refuse to shock someone to death just because you might be urged on by someone with a slight bit of authority over you (like a researcher). This means, statistically speaking, next time you’re stuck on an airplane in the middle seat, both the people at your side would be entirely willing to administer a sever shock onto someone like you. These 65% of participants could vote, in a landslide, for a candidate who they would then follow completely, regardless of the marching orders. If Nietzsche was right that 100 men created the Renaissance and can save humanity from any cultural drought, it is still probable that 65 percent of them are potential Eichmanns. Furthermore, by slightly altering the circumstances, Milgram found that up to 90% of participants would continue to follow orders if they had a greater psychological distance from the victim (for example, by relaying, but not singularly fulfilling, the order to administer shocks). This relates to the Dr. Phil show since, numerous times every segment, Phil tells the guests that they should, or must, do something to “improve” their life. Particularly in the final segment, Phil extends the same advice to his willing audience—both in the studio and at (the psychologically distance of) home. From a social psychological standpoint, Herr Phil is the diabolical experimenter, counting on the fact that his followers will blindly obey his orders whatever the costs. Of course, the advice might be good, but it might also be embroiled in personal biases, partisan ideology, and individual flaws, broadcast throughout the world. Traditionally, the role of the analyst is to lead the subject to self-awareness and positive, conscious choices, not to issue commands and edicts. If someone stops drinking, beating their spouse, or molesting children simply because an authority told them to, is that real progress and a solution, or is it simply covering one disturbing psychosis (i.e. alchoholism) with another (i.e. rash obedience) that may seem innocuous but has been used to explain massacres and holocausts alike. Dr. Phil, of course, is not Eichmann any more than Stanley Milgram is. It is us, the viewers, the potential participants and “teachers,” who have the dangerous potential to obediently follow directions without thinking for ourselves. When we listen to authorities—like Dr. Phil, Nazi leaders, or researching academic—and do whatever they say, from a psychological standpoint, we are listening to our fellow participant’s screams, yet continuing to shock them to death. Of course, that is simply from a psychological standpoint. From an ethical standpoint we might wonder whether it’s better to be shocked to death than to continue living with the shocking fact that our individuality, our free thought, and our personal agency has been dead all along.



*At Deconstructing Phil, we always strive to bring you first hand accounts from the writings of prominent philosophers, psychoanalysts, and theorists. While Stanley Milgram is an influential psychologist and his book Obedience to Authority does provide detailed and direct accounts of his famous experiments, all four copies of the book were checked out when I checked in my local university library. Mook’s textbook, however, is a fairly detailed, objective, and accurate look at some of psychology’s most notable experiments. Secondly, it should also be noted that there were serious ethical challenges to Milgram’s experiments. These concerns deal with the circumstances and awareness of the subjects, though, and do not mitigate or call into question the ultimate findings. Lastly, while this post is already long and detailed, it should be noted that another similar experiment which goes a long way toward explaining the interaction between authority and obedience is the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971).

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").