McGraw's Familiar Quotations

Tonight, Dr. Phil appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, right after "stupid pet tricks." Dr. Phil is actually a fairly frequent guest on the Late Show, which is particularly surprising since, especially in the past, he has been the subject of considerable ridicule. Recently, when it comes to McGraw, Dave seems to have shifted his comedic technique from open mockery to Socratic irony. Practitioners of Socratic irony take on a faux naïveté to reveal the foolishness and ignorance of the person they question. In this subtler, yet still quite complex fashion, Dr. Phil gets introduced as "America's favorite t.v. mental health professional," a platitude which is in a way true, but also meaningless considering the subtextual, sarcastic implications that 1.) there are basically no other "t.v. mental health professionals" and 2.) Dr. Phil is barely a "mental health professional." While Socratic irony is often very funny, it can also expose things that are normally kept out of the dialogue, particularly here, as the questioner has become the questionee. Thus, when Letterman asked Dr. Phil about many issues that have been discussed previously on the Dr. Phil show, he got very different answers. On Britney Spears, to whom Dr. Phil recently devoted an entire episode (see "Dr. Phil Isn't a Freud of Anything"), the audience got insight into this prize quote: "you gotta not pay attention to her." It would be easy enough to say that this is simply an indication that the Dr. Phil we get on the Late Show is not the same Dr. Phil we get on the Dr. Phil Show. This is obviously partially true, yet it should not permit a complete contradiction, at least it usually doesn't. We allow dramatic actors, politicians, athletes, and other non-comedic public figures to appear on such humor-driven talk shows, often even making fun of themselves, and while this is often viewed as portraying a different side of the celebrities in question, they do not deny their other work. If we are to consider this advice good and actionable, it necessitates that we ignore not just Britney in the tabloids and Entertainment Tonight, but also as she is discussed on the Dr. Phil show. In this sense, Dr. Phil has come onto the Late Show to advertise and promote his own show and—through Socratic irony, his own precarious ideology, and lack of philosophic universality or commitment—has criticized and dismissed it instead. Similarly, we learned what Dr. Phil really thinks about the kids he so desperately tries to protect on his own show. All week, we've heard the broken reproductive futurist record: save the kids, do it for the kids, don't endanger the kids. What did Dr. Phil say about the kids tonight? "I would just turn the hose on them." That's right, when Letterman led McGraw down the road that leads to complaining about today's youth (with their loud music, lack of clothing, and "grinding") Dr. Phil responded by suggesting (in an act reminiscent of one of the status quo's best defenses against the civil rights movement) that we turn the hose on them. When Dave questioned him on the future, Phil replied: "Where does it go from here? There's nowhere else to go...I guess we're just going to all run around naked." We could interpret this in a number of ways. Again, it might simply be a joke that is Venn-diagrammatically distant from the true value of Dr. Phil's wisdom. But what sort of wisdom can be obfuscated simply by an appearance on the Letterman show? Freud holds up to comedy just fine; consider any Woody Allen movie or the ubiquitous penis joke. There seems to be deeper things at work here. Phil could also be refuting and depreciating his advice given in more serious surroundings, now admitting that all that kids-are-the-future-are-important talk is nonsense. It could also be an admission that, though he is, in reality, working and fighting for the children, it is to no avail, the future is grim, his work is not working (it is flawed and could never work, it isn't reaching the needy, et cetera). Most insidiously, one could also say Dr. Phil is, in fact, creating the problem himself. To my knowledge, very few people have championed the therapeutic possibilities of hosing children down. Perhaps the problem itself did not address until Dr. Phil chose to find it. Indeed, many people probably do not find these "problems" harmful in any way, including the deplorable—wait, I mean vulnerable—children committing such despicable—wait, I mean helpless—acts. It seems Dr. Phil is an unruptured personality with a split philosophy. To use Lee Edelman's binary of the sinthomosexual and the reproductive futurist (see "The Queerest Dr. Phil Yet") we could say Dr. Phil embodies both, fighting for and against the children depending on the situation. He demands neither jouissance nor an endlessly delayed realization of an impossible end, but instead seeks to continually create problems which make possible their own solutions which make possible their own problems, this is the true child he's fighting for, the child named "America's favorite t.v. mental health professional."

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 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.