Phil Stutz [Rerelease from 1/5/23]
2023-08-03 02:49:07
Hi, I’m Dax Shepard, and I love talking to people. I am endlessly fascinated by the messiness of being human, and I find people who are vulnerable and honest about their struggles and shortcomings to be incredibly sexy. I invite you to join me as I explore other people’s stories. We will celebrate, above all, the challenges and setbacks that ultimately lead to growth and betterment. What qualifies me for such an endeavor? More than a decade of sobriety, a degree in Anthropology and four years of improv training. I will attempt to discover human “truths” without any laboratory work, clinical trials or data collection. I will be, in the great tradition of 16th-century scientists, an Armchair Expert.
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hello, Monica.
Hi.
We have incredibly exciting news. Starting on Monday, August 14th, you'll be able to find all new episodes of Armchair Expert free on Spotify and everywhere you get your podcasts. But in the meantime, we decided we wanted to revisit a few of our favorite episodes over the last couple of years.
Yes, it's very exciting for us, because we get to come back to every one, which is really, really fun. And these are some of our faves.
Yes, in case you missed them, these are the ones that we thought were worth re-airing before we go wide on August 14th. Please enjoy some of our best of. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Mrs.
Mouse.
Hi.
Hello. Taylor. Boy, did we.
Get lucky.
Yeah, once in a while, you and I fall in love with someone in public, be it from a show or, in this case, a documentary, and then we get to be with them, and it's so lucky. Yeah. Phil Stutz, Phil Stutz. Dr. Phil Stutz is one of those people.
We've been talking a lot about the documentary Stutz, which is so good. I hope everyone sees it. In fact, maybe, don't listen to this episode. Go watch that documentary instead. And then enjoy the rest of your day.
Take the rest of your day off. No homework today. Everyone go home. Watch that, doc. Yeah, great documentary, Stutz.
And he came in and we got to talk to him and see how fucking wonderfully cute he is and brilliant.
And brilliant, yeah. He's a, if you don't know, renowned. Psychiatrist. Psychiatrist. And psychologist.
And psychiatric nurse.
Helper.
He also has a couple of books. The Tools and Coming Alive. But again, watch Stutz on Netflix. So please enjoy our new friend, Phil Stutz.
He's an armchair experimenter.
He's an armchair experimenter.
He's an armchair experimenter.
How is everyone this morning?
I love that color. It's fantastic.
Thank you. Me too.
I spent hours selecting my shirt.
We're kind of matching. Yeah, I love it. Do you want a coffee or a water or?
Just some water. Here's your water. I got his water here.
Okay.
With lemon.
Ooh, that's always a great way to start the morning. If you want more water, our water is available to you.
It's just a buck. It's not even that expensive. It's like $1 a can if you want one.
You guys are making me laugh and I'm going to choke.
Oh, don't choke. Don't choke. Don't choke.
Yeah, I think, as an interviewer, you know, I always have the selfish goal of stumbling upon something that hasn't been already stumbled upon with you. And you, choking to death here would be, I mean, that's an exclusive.
Do you think that would help me get into some of these restaurants if I was alive?
If you died on air.
Even if I was dead, actually.
That'd be cool.
I'd love to bring you up to speed of my knowledge of you before we start. A, I'm friends with Jonah. So obviously I would have watched Stutz, the documentary. But I guess nine years ago, you were on Marc Maron. And so, for people who weren't aware of that history, if I remember it correctly, he had interviewed so many people that referenced you as their therapist that at a certain point he's like, well, I got to meet this guy because he keeps coming up with all my guests.
That's pretty much it. I forget which person specifically.
Well, Hank Azari, I think, does a great impersonation of you.
That's what it was. Yeah.
If I can do Hank doing you, I think what Hank said was, you know, I'm in there and I'll be sharing something. And then Phil just say, oh my God, stop yourself. Think about if someone was telling you this story, you'd want to fucking kill yourself. I think that's his quote of you.
I deny that completely. I deny ever saying that.
So then I guess I just stumbled upon that episode nine years ago and my wife and I listened to it. And I want to say I've listened to that episode three times. It's so good. And so I was just really interested in you from that point and for a lot of different reasons. And it's really fun, because that interview was one thing and then Stutz, the Netflix documentary.
is this entirely different thing. It's more your technique, your approach, how you treat patients.
Yeah, that's a big part of it. What I'm trying to do, it was really more Jonah's idea than my idea, is to make this not like my technique or his technique or anything like that, but to make it a process that could be extrapolated to a lot of different situations. Not just as patients or clients, but to actually people out in the world that weren't even in therapy. The response has been off the hook.
Yeah.
Almost unimaginable. That guy is going to be an all-time director.
Jonah? Yeah, it was incredible.
Yeah, I gotta just also tell you, I met Jonah, he had filmed 40-Year-Old Virgin, but it hadn't come out. So when I met him, I'm meeting somewhere much closer to the photo he brings out, right? I'm meeting the very eager, excited young Jonah who's about to be in his first movie. And so I've known him since then and I've gotten to see every kind of iteration as he's tried, on different hats and whatnot. And the version that's in this doc is the most beautiful version of him I've ever seen.
And it really reinforces that the side of ourselves we most want to hide is, ironically, the most beautiful side.
Yes.
I mean, to think that that's who. he was hiding, that boy in your office or the fake office, right? Who lets you hear it all.
It's kind of fantastic. It's kind of like a miracle, actually.
It's a miracle. It really is. And there's two things. I know him as a person. B, I'm a fellow actor.
So I think I am acutely aware of when people, when they've fallen into the routine. And I was kind of on high alert to watch if he was gonna fall into the routine when it was uncomfortable and awkward. And I'm just so proud of him for not ever letting himself go to a safe spot.
Yeah, for me, the biggest turning point was we were about a year and a half in. I guess Netflix is so rich. I don't know what, but, you know, first we had eight days, then we had 13 days, I don't know. He trashed the whole thing, which I went, wow, and built it back up from zero. By that time, I think, everybody was so exhausted and confused.
That was the environment where something happened. That's the best way to say that something happened.
Yeah, yeah.
And it didn't just happen between he and I. It happened in the world at the same time.
What was going wrong originally? It just felt false?
Well, first of all, both of us like to tell a lot of jokes. And when I get nervous, I really tell a lot of jokes. Have you thought I've been funny so far? So funny. All right, good.
You're right now, you're in neck and neck tie for funniest guest of 2022.. I'll let you know on the 31st who we decide.
Okay, I appreciate that. I'd appreciate winning.
Even more.
But anyway, so that's one where we would avoid, you know, we'd fall into our roles. There was a point where I could see it. He wasn't getting what he wanted, even though he didn't know what he wanted at first. He was fantastic director for me, because I've never done anything like this. I had no idea what to expect.
And so he made me feel very comfortable. It's interesting, it's like you and it's like Mark. It was the same way. I didn't even know what a podcast was. I go up to the guy's house where he broadcasts from.
He's talking to me, this and that. And he says, come in the back. I'll show you where we do this, the studio. So I said, all right. He says, why don't you sit down, you know, get the feel of it, all this.
And the second I sat down, he turned the thing on. And he didn't tell me that until a couple minutes later.
It's a good trick.
Oh, you use the same trick?
I'm like your car. That guy who was early, he was early because I had to rig his whole car. So I've got you in transit from Century City. Like he's looking as if this might've happened. No, he did not.
From the outside, what I think happened was that Jonah went into it with the notion that he was going to showcase you, that it was about you. And then probably some kind of ethical dedication to not make it about himself. I think he went in with two kind of agendas that just fundamentally wouldn't work for what you were doing. And even I, as a viewer who knows him, I'm like, when we get into the Jonah shit, the Jonah shit's so juicy and powerful. It seems to me it took him a minute to recognize it's just not gonna work, unless that's what it is.
A big part of my philosophy, especially with performers, is failure and loss. They almost have to be worshipped as if they're gods. They're positives. Obviously, you have to know how to deal with them so you don't get paralyzed completely.
Why are they to be worshipped?
If you think of it in terms of the shadow, which is the part of you you don't want anybody to see, but you can't get rid of, but you still try to hide it, it has a lot of stored up stuff in it. Emotions, memories, attitudes, fears, whatever it is. You have to get at that stuff. With the human ego, it's nature is to try to avoid that. So it's the definition of the ego is removing anything that you think the world will look askance at, will shame you, embarrass you, whatever it is.
So let me tell you how I invented this.
Of course I do, yeah.
Yeah, you guys are active, okay. I had first gotten out here, it was the 80s. I was just learning about acting and show business, all this stuff. So a typical thing would happen would be one of my patients would get a callback. They'd get so excited about it and then they'd say, okay, now I have to replicate that reading.
So a callback is the one that happens after your initial audition. Yes. Basically, you made it through a round of the process. That's right. And right, your immediate inclination is like, oh fuck, what did I do?
that was so right in that room? I have to figure out how to do the exact same thing in this callback.
So, in fact, they would say to the shadow, just stay outside, because if they see you, we are roundly fucked, there's no chance. Just wait out here, it'll take five minutes, I'll buy you an ice cream cone, whatever. What happens is, you tell your shadow, stay out, stay away. So you, the ego, is working so hard to make the thing perfect. And what you really get is like a flat reading.
It's not terrible, but it doesn't catch your attention, it's dead. And the reason it's dead is because the shadow has been excluded. And, by the way, when you tell the shadow to stay outside, what he says is, I'll wait for you out here, but don't expect any help from me, you are fucked. I resent being rejected. I mean, it's not that on the nose, but it's close to it.
And when the shadow rebels, it's kind of a withdrawn state. And the soul force doesn't come out, because the soul force or flow, whatever you want to call it, it's unpredictable, it's sloppy, it's messy, because it doesn't care about the things that we care about. It doesn't want to win, it's not playing for that. It doesn't believe in words that much. It believes in feelings much more than in words.
The ego thinks the shadow is insane. That's the best way to say it, because his value system is so different. So I started to bring the shadow with me. I would talk to him and I'd say, you can come in here, you can say and do whatever you want. I'll tell you, between the two of you, you have an excellent vibe to give that permission.
Oh, thank you. That's the goal of this entire thing.
Oh, it is. It is.
First, I want to ask, before I proclaim the agenda of this show, is it fair to say that what we're most attracted to, even though we avoid it in real life, what we're most attracted to in life is complexity and multidimensionality. And when you leave your shadow outside, you're literally leaving one of your most fundamental dimensions. So when I now am just my ego or my superego or my perfect self, we can feel that this is two-dimensional. There's not that other bit of geometry that makes you complex and intriguing.
This is a little bit broader of an issue, but it's important, which is most people live pursuing that which is magical. So if I just drew a rectangle on a piece of paper, but it's outlined with dashes, it's not a solid line. And I call that the pursuit of perfection.
This is the snapshot?
Yeah, this is the snapshot. But that idea, it seems to make sense, but what it really does is, if you think about it, it has the quality of a snapshot. Now, a snapshot has no movement in it and no depth. So the more you hunt for the perfect, the flatter the thing gets. And then, if you're trying to perform or just express yourself, the flatness kills the whole thing.
In other words, probably 75, 80% of human communication is not verbal. Like with her, I can just, you know,
I rest my case. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's definitely some signals being sent back and forth. Yeah, some telepathy. Well, you can even look at it in historic characters on television. You have Wally Cleaver, was that the dad? No, he was the older brother.
Yeah, he was the older brother.
Yeah, who is the father? Mr. Cleaver, whatever.
Mr. Cleaver.
Mr. Cleaver.
Sure, we'll call him that for now. And then you have Walter White, Breaking Bad, right? Or you have Tony Soprano versus Mr. Cleaver. And who gives a fuck about Mr.
Cleaver? Nobody, he's a placeholder, so that the Beeve can have a full dimensional experience.
We don't even know his name.
Well, I know the Beaver.
I'm saying he's so forgettable. we don't even know his name.
Great point, Mr. Cleaver. The snapshot is really worth, I think, detailing even more for people. I just wanna say, I don't know of a person that doesn't have a snapshot. I've had many snapshots.
The snapshot is, I will get that promotion, I will get that 18% bonus increase in salary, I will buy that cabin, or I will have this Christmas with my family, or I will have this boat, or we will do X, Y, or Z. That's the finish line. That's what we're in pursuit of. And then the illusion that there will be emotions attached to that, that there will be a sense of elation, there'll be a sense of ease and calm now, that the Cs will get glass-like, right? Everyone has it.
And I was curious when I was watching that part, I find a hurdle I have in expressing how I feel about life is I've had this incredible privilege of getting the snapshot. I don't think most people get the snapshot. So it's hard to talk people out of the snapshot, because why the fuck would they believe you or I, right? I feel so blessed in that I got the snapshot and I was the closest to suicide I've ever been in my life, which makes me go, well, it must be something else. So I guess my curiosity with you and with patients is, is it harder to convince people that the snapshot is just a snapshot if they haven't achieved the snapshot?
Is that a hurdle for people or for you to treat people?
That's a good question. I never try to divide it up like that. Yes, I would say it's harder, because here's what actually happens. I hate to keep putting everything in show business terms, but a lot of these things in show business are so central to the human experience. Anyway, a kid comes out here, he's fucking smoking, using heroin, he's late.
He doesn't prepare for his auditions. He's a bum and he's very talented, very good looking, but he's not going anywhere. Somebody like that, the first thing I tell him is, you have to become more disciplined. If you're not disciplined, even in areas that don't even seem important to you, you're not going to make it to that level. And the kids always say, well, I know I'm going to be a star.
And once I get to be a star, then I will try to discipline myself. Now that has never worked in human history. And what really happens is, most of them don't become stars. So we don't have to worry about that. Those who do are very prone to depression, like very prone to it, because they say, I did what I was supposed to do.
I became famous. Now where's the reward? I still feel like shit. I can't even get a table at Craig's. sometimes, whatever it is.
The universe should have changed and it didn't change. It's a shocker. And extremists, that's when they kill themselves with drugs, you know, they kill themselves.
Now there's also cosmic injustice. I followed the plan. I got to the finish line. and where the fuck are all the prizes?
That's right.
On top of every other issue they already had, there's like a deep resentment that this thing didn't work.
Yeah, like they've been fooled or betrayed.
They've been duped. God, do I relate to that? Well.
What?
Just good morning. Come over here for one second. Come over here. You have a little dude down here.
Oh, is it peanut butter? I ate some peanut butter.
Well, it's in your eyebrows. Yes, you had some peanut butter in your eyebrows.
I don't want that in my show. All right.
My shadow is peanut butter in her eyebrows.
Yeah, your shadow fucking made your toast this morning and shoved peanut butter all over your eyebrows to confirm you are.
It's funny you mention that. I just had an addiction to peanut butter. Really? Yeah, I had to stop.
Why, how much were you eating?
Oh, no, a whole jar a day?
They were little jars, so.
Like the kind you'd get on an airplane, like a cocktail size?
A cute little jiff.
All right, let's get serious. Yeah.
Well, hold on. We're pretty deep in the weeds and I do want to, probably just selfishly, because it was so impactful for me to come to know you in this order. We're already into it, and it's fine that we just hit pause for one second. I think it's a value, it certainly was to me. Maybe because I'm suspicious of everybody.
Your history is really, to me, impactful. I'm a cynic. A, oh, fucking, Jonah Hill's therapist. What are these two bozos gonna tell me, right? This guy's rich, this guy's too rich.
What are they gonna do, right? The fact that you are from New York, you know, you graduated from NYU, that you were a psychiatrist at Rikers Island. I need this piece of the story. This is really important to me. What you're saying isn't in a bubble.
It really spans the spectrum of human experience. What would make you take that job? Were you a thrill seeker? Were you creating the story of your life? Did you want to get in the fucking weeds?
Or was that the only job open for you?
No, the latter. Oh, okay. You know, it was one great thing. if you were a prison psychiatrist, which is most of the time, the inmates were locked in. There was no chance of really doing anything.
So I would say, for 60% of the time, you were just in your own little cell there. You know, usually they'd lock the cell door so that you wouldn't get attacked. And then at that time, I was studying karate, so I would get in this little office in the back. But then half the time, and I'd practice the kicks. You wanna hear a great story?
No, I don't wanna keep taking it. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, of course.
We have endless time. Time's not one of our issues.
Okay. Cancel my afternoon.
Clear as reservation.
For the next two weeks. Yeah.
Okay, there was a clinic for people with medical problems, and nobody except the doctor was allowed to use the telephone in this particular clinic. So there was some emergency. I rushed into the clinic, and there was a guy, a nurse, on the phone. I said, get off the phone. There's an emergency.
And the guy says, wait one second. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don't understand. I run this place. Get off the phone.
You can go back on the phone. There's an emergency. And the guy hung the phone up. But then he stepped to me, and he started to threaten me. He said, you don't fucking tell me what to do.
In New York style, he took off his coat.
Oh, my gosh.
Stage one.
And at that time, I was studying karate. I was terrible at it. I've always been a terrible fighter. But anyway, he says, step outside. Now, in a prison, it's completely transparent.
You can see somebody 150 yards away. You can hear it. So there was quite an audience for this thing. Now, I couldn't back down and walk away. It was too manly of an attempt.
But on the other hand, I definitely didn't want to get in a fight with this guy. He was skinny. He was about 60 foot skinny. I wasn't as afraid of him physically, but it would have looked terrible for me to descend into that, right? So we both put our hands up.
We're like circling around. I said, I'm not gonna fight you. And so the guy was relieved. So he puts his jacket back on and walks away. You know, whatever he says, honky, whatever.
The next day, I would say about six to seven correction officers. And these guys were tough. They were in the battlegrounds every day. And they said, that was the coolest thing I've ever seen. And they all said the same thing.
I couldn't have done that. I couldn't have controlled myself. And just for a kicker, they told the inmate, you know, that guy is a black belt. I was like a yellow belt. He said, you better stay away from me.
They call him the Chuck Norris of psychiatry, that guy. He just dodged a major bullet. Really quick, one funny element is shit's hitting the fan. You need the phone. You need to get off this phone.
I need, now. I'm in a fight. Now I've got time to step outside. Exactly. If that's not, man, I don't know what is.
Seriously. Yeah, like somehow that'll get prioritized above.
Whatever, I'm merging.
Yeah, the White House is about to get bombed. I have this information. What, motherfucker? Oh, you think, oh really? And then you're there.
Yeah. It's very primal.
That's part of the maze. You know about the maze?
Yeah, so we're gonna get into the maze, but first we're gonna talk a little bit about your experience there in Rikers, because what I'm curious about is you're spending time there and you're observing, and are you starting to notice patterns or similarities, or is it as varied as the rest of the world is?
No, I wouldn't say it's as varied as the rest of the world. I would say there's certain signatures. In prison, all interactions have dominance and submission built into them. I was like a 26-year-old white boy and skinny, you know? And after being there about a year, I could walk past a whole row of inmates.
Like, let's say, they were going in the other direction, they were going to eat or something. I could walk past them and I could control the whole group. Wow. How? Not.
at the beginning. It's hard to explain how it is. It's an expectation that I was in control, is the best way to say it. Part of the time I worked in the blocks. You know what that is?
No. That's those long, three-tiered...
From the movies, yeah, yeah. Throw your mattress over the edge, that kind of, yeah.
Guys would store up urine and they would drop it on this correction officer's head. Oh, sure. From the third tier.
We're resourceful, if nothing else.
As I understand it, it's actually gotten worse over there, if that's possible. But anyway, the joke of it was, even though I was a psychiatrist, I was well-trained, there was basically only two requests that these guys made. They never made a request about, I need help for my mental health, never. Number one, they wanted Valium. Sure.
And number two, they wanted to get me to say things that would either mitigate or prove them innocent. So they were working me, and the reason is they just couldn't help themselves. Typically, the guy would say, the crime I'm being indicted for, I absolutely did not commit. It's unfair, it's not right. But right after that, they'd say, but by the way, I didn't commit that crime, but I am the best second story man in the city.
So they had to place themselves in the hierarchy, but just not this particular crime. Yeah. So it was a twisted environment. And basically, the thing was survival. Maybe this is only funny for me.
In the afternoon, this was in the 70s, and everybody had their John Shaft outfits on, and these tricked out cars, you know, with a diamond in the back.
It's on rooftop, digging the scene with a gangsta, lean.
You should have seen the parking lot of that place, man.
Oh, I can't, it's like a car show.
But I kind of liked it, that part I liked.
Right, I really liked that too. I have a sense of why I do. Do you know what it is about it you like?
Yeah, it was like pseudo flow, pseudo coolness, and pseudo manliness.
Yeah, yeah, masculinity. Can I say why I like it? I don't wanna Bogart your story.
All right.
Okay, you're gonna allow this one. It's really fresh on my mind, because I've been writing about it. I had a great uncle who was crazy, murdered a bunch of people. A couple of my great uncles all did from one side of the family. And my grandpa was humongous.
He was 6'1 and 250.. He was a Golden Gloves boxer, a heavyweight.
Where was this?
In Detroit. And he was terrified of my skinny Uncle Cal. And so that fascinated me. as a child. I was really fascinated by Uncle Cal, because this broke the laws of superhero-dom that I knew about.
And I asked my dad, why didn't Papa Bob beat the shit out of Uncle Cal? Because he did all kinds of crazy things around the house. And he said, well, yeah, he could have definitely beat up Uncle Cal, but then what? Then? Uncle Cal's coming back.
He's coming back with a knife, or he's coming back with a gun, or it hurts me, or it hurts your uncle, or it hurts grandma. You can't beat someone like Cal unless you're willing to kill Cal. And Papa Bob's not willing to kill Cal. And being introduced to crazy and the power of crazy was just really, really a formidable experience that I think I've had an obsession with the rest of my life. But I don't know how one's not at least interested in what the powers on planet Earth are among us.
And to find out that there was one that kind of trumped everything was very intriguing to me. And so I would want to be in that environment, in that prison environment, and I'd want to witness crazy. And I'd want to maybe feel like I was infusing enough of it, that people then would also have that fear about me and that I would ultimately be powerful.
Yeah, I think there's no question. I don't know if I got quite as deep into it as you were, but yes.
Especially, I think, when you grew up in New York, right? You're walking down the street, you're bumping into people. There's a frequency or a potential frequency for this dominant submission thing. You gotta be aware of. You don't have the freedom to not.
Yeah, I always tell people, when I was living in New York, more stuff would happen in a month than in all the months and years I've been out here. Because everything was in your face. One time there was a murder in a dry clean and right near my house on First Avenue. So it was a guy that ran a cleaners. Somebody whacked him.
Two weeks later, I'd see my cleaners that I'd go to and I was kind of friendly with. And it's five o'clock in the afternoon and he's not in front of the store. He's not in the store. He's nowhere. There's nobody there at all.
Guess what happened? He got whacked. They made a mistake with the first kill and they killed the wrong person. Right above him, there were exhibitionists that would fuck every night right after dinner. I mean, it was tremendous.
What a place to live.
Oh yeah, there was a place called the Tumble Inn and it had no windows. They were all bordered up because there was so many fights and guys getting thrown out the window. And in the Tumble Inn, this guy took hostages and I saw the whole thing and there were shots fired. I was on the eighth floor, so I just thought I was safe. I probably wasn't.
And I watched the whole fucking thing.
I just had a quick question about the Dom-Sub relationship. Do you think that that paints onto most relationships? I feel like every relationship, there's an element of a dominant person and a submissive person. And sometimes that switches, but there's always this power dynamic that people are playing in.
Yeah, I don't know every relationship, but yeah, most of them. You can almost define a good relationship as one where both parties are consciously working to avoid that. But that's not gonna happen by itself. I mean, that's a whole other thing. Yeah.
Well, can I tell you one thing, Phil? Yeah, sure.
We edit the show, unlike other shows. So you should have zero anxiety about needing to get your thought together quickly. So just let me relieve you of any fear you might have of the pacing, because we fix all that.
This is too good to be true. Is this actually happening or whatever?
We do lots of cutting. Although in the doc, that was. one major takeaway for me is the amount of time both you and Jonah took before answering, because it was so thoughtful. It wasn't just spewing out thoughts or concepts or what you've already rehearsed. You really thought about the answer before you said it.
Nothing felt reflexive.
Yeah, I loved it.
Thank you. I never thought of it, but that's exactly right. I couldn't have been prepared because I had no idea what we were gonna do, which is very helpful. You know, now that I'm thinking about it, he made himself available to me in a way that totally relaxed me. I've never thought of it like that before.
But anyway, the prison thing, it was really my first exposure to forces. In other words, it didn't matter so much what you were thinking, or it didn't matter at all most of the time, but you had to learn how to emanate a force. That's why, after a year or so, I could walk down this whole file of inmates and I could control them. And more extreme version of that, in the blocks, which I think it's 150, and there'd be all of one correction officer.
Oh, my God.
And he'd have to control the whole thing.
Wow.
The scariest thing is when you have to go to the back of the block. It's like crossing the Mississippi River for Lewis and Clark or something. You know, then you're in the unknown. You don't know what the hell is gonna happen. Those inmates aren't as deferential to you.
The further you get, the more animalistic. There was a thing called a riot cart, which had those plasticine things.
Yeah, little face shields and stuff.
Yeah, and they had tear gas. And they had sticks. And they would let me go with them. I don't know why.
You know why they did. Because they need someone to observe their manliness. Because they can only give each other so much because they themselves are performing their manliness. I never thought of that. They need kind of an outsider.
They need an audience. They need the reward of having been brave and been witnessed being brave. Yeah. Does this relate? My therapist hit me with this, and I'm striving to understand it, because I'm a little bit prone to conflict with other men, or a lot bit prone.
He said, you have to kind of break out of this dichotomy of dominate or submit. And you have to more think about. you're in a room and a panther enters and you just look at the panther. And you're not submitting and you're not dominating. You're just looking.
And that look is enough. It says, you'll have your hands full, but don't be scared, I'm not trying to dominate you. Like. that's the sweet spot. Is that related?
Yeah, there's even a tool for that. It's called category three. You first go to I'm benign, I love you, you know? And then the opposite, if you fuck with me, I'll kill you, I'll rip your head off. And then you go back and forth from one to the other.
And then you hit the both of them at the same time. Now, when you hit two opposites at the same time, you create flow. That's almost the definition of flow. So that's a little tool you can use to help with that.
Uh-huh.
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
So when you enter, and you talk about this in the doc, you're kind of unconventional in that when you got into this, that was the reigning theory. Like we're gonna not suggest anything. Explain what the reigning kind of paradigm was.
The reigning theory was that all people's problems stemmed from some conflict in their unconscious that they weren't even aware of. There was a battle in the unconscious. Basically, it said if you become aware of the conflict inside yourself, it would go away.
Just the awareness of it.
Yeah, and you could come to that conclusion yourself. And you know, I called bullshit on that. I said, are you fucking kidding me? If any of them could come to the solution themselves, they wouldn't even be here. Yeah.
They're asking for help by the fact that they showed up in the first place.
That was the old theory. And they would say, don't you dare tell the person what to do. Don't structure the world for them. Don't do anything. Just sit there, excuse me, holding your dick.
And it'll happen by itself. It never happened in human history. In no other field would they assume that something's gonna happen by itself when the conscious mind is incapable of coming to a solution. So that was a big switch for me. It's so deeply ingrained in my soul that self-regulation, I call it, like Marxism was self-regulation.
Bullshit. You know, if the workers understand their predicament, then they're all gonna change. The theory not only doesn't tend to heal you, a lot of times it tends to hurt you because it's rigid. And because it's rigid, there's a lot of things that you can't see, or you don't wanna see. It killed my father, by the way, in 1939..
You know, there was a pact between Russia and Germany. Did you know about this?
Yes, before they were against each other, they were aligned in their taking over of Eastern Europe.
And that killed my father.
How so?
Well, because he was a communist. By age 28,, 29, he realized how corrupt they were. And then he had nothing. And they were atheists, you know, both of my parents.
And your father was incredibly gregarious, an extrovert, loved people.
Let me put it this way. If we went to a restaurant to eat dinner, if I went to go to the bathroom or something, when I came back, he'd be talking to somebody at the next table. If I left for 15 minutes, he'd be talking to the whole fucking restaurant. Right. That's how outgoing he was.
Well, it's no wonder communism appealed to him. He's gonna have communal dinners and breakfasts and lunches. He'll be surrounded at all times. And maybe the elements that divide us, status, all this stuff will be eroded into a perfect connection.
Absolutely. So. therefore, you could get a connection on the cheap, so to speak. Because one family had it, we was lazy. I loved him very much, so I'm feeling it now.
You know, I noticed, I don't know if this is the right way to say it, but he's the good guy in your story.
Yeah.
And you had a lot of compassion for him.
And as years went on, I had more compassion. The other thing is, he wanted to tell me stuff. And some of the stuff he taught me about the world was great, about power. But a lot of the stuff I wasn't interested in, I just didn't believe in it. This could go on forever.
You want me to go on forever in this?
This is the highlight of my life, this thing. I'm like your dad. This is all I wanna do.
Really? Did you ever think of becoming a shrink?
I never thought of it.
He is wild.
But over time, I've thought, oh, I would've enjoyed it a lot. And I think of a similar thing that you have, which is people seem to feel comfortable telling me things I can tell they haven't told other people. I couldn't have more gratitude for it. Like, what a thing. I think my therapist told me the gift of all the trauma, the gift of all that is.
you see it in others. You can detect it really quickly. They can see in you, you know their story. And that's what the gift of all the trauma becomes. And I've come to really like that.
In fact, the trauma was worth it.
Yeah, that's great. The only thing I would add to that is, when there's trauma and there's a learning potential, it's best to really direct the person as concisely and as immediately as you can. If somebody's depressed or they're in bad shape, they're falling apart, my whole thing is, I can't wait at all. I almost try to point out the meaning and the advantage of what's happening, even in real time, if I can.
Well, that correlates perfectly with AA, which is like you're getting people generally the day after they had their worst thing, where they finally said, fuck it, I'll go join this club. I didn't wanna join. That's gonna be the apex of their openness to take direction. And probably day one of your therapy session, ideally, that's their nadir. You know, we're gonna try to build from there.
That's the thing that got you in the seat. This is the time to seize, probably that willingness to accept direction.
100%. Now, here's the amazing part. from my point of view. That same concept or that same model can be applied to the entire, let's say, United States, every person in the United States. Because now we're having serial disasters on every level, from volcanoes, global warming, obviously, there's violent rebellion all over the world.
You could go on and on and on. The viruses themselves, I believe, they're a metaphor for some kind of inner battle.
Well, that's great because, first and foremost, what's unique about you, at least in that era, is you're like, I need someone to leave on day one, feeling a little bit of hope. I can't wait two years. I'm not willing to do that. That's kind of novel, or at least not in the majority of the time. Another thing of yours that is wonderful from my point of view is it's so action-oriented.
Again, like AA. I find so much overlap between AA and you. You have so many actionable steps. And I think for a lot of people, myself included, psychology is very abstract. We can't get in there and put a pin in that bone.
There's nothing physically we're gonna be able to do. So anything we're gonna do is very nebulous and very abstract. And I think that's where people, they get to. the part which you mentioned previously was thought to be the goal, which is, I see my pattern, I recognize where it comes from, and therefore, I should have some relief from it. You're gonna also need to work.
You're gonna need physical steps you take. So when do you start compiling these tools? How long does it take? Is it never-ending? When do you latch onto the idea of, I've got to give people marching orders?
That was like the first day.
It was day one?
Yeah, it had to do with money, because I was attracted to a lot of patients and I made good money. I said, well, I'm 30 years old. All these older people are coming to me. I was afraid they'd all leave, and so I started to put more pressure on myself to give them something tangible so they wouldn't walk out with nothing. It was really out of my own guilt.
I was taking the money. I said, well, I'm gonna take the money because I like to make a lot of money. Not anymore, really, but at that time, I wanted the money. If I was gonna get the money, I have to give them something. If I wasn't seeing anything, if I wasn't seeing any change, improvement, or even a clear pathway to change and improvement, I'd get guilty and then I'd think they were gonna fire me.
So it was just exactly what you said. So there was a duress, there was an urgency. Maybe not for the best of reasons, but it didn't matter, and I always held myself to that.
What was the snapshot then? I mean, money clearly was in it, as it was for me.
Pretty much in that moment in time, I started to get sick.
Okay, so then health became the snapshot?
The snapshot was getting better. Well, I'll tell you another story. I'd been sick for a couple of years, and my friend said, hey, there's this woman up in Marin who seems to be some kind of a healer, can do magic, whatever. So I go up there, do you know Marin at all?
Right on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Yeah, it was, yeah.
She lived back in the woods on the outskirts of Marin. It was very dramatic. She lived in a creek bed that had pine cones like this thick.
Because it's Redwoods right there.
It's Redwoods, yeah. Anyway, so I go up there, and she works on me for about an hour, puts me in some yoga poses, prays over me. I don't know what she do. When I got up.
I can just picture it.
When I got up, I was cured for two days, and I felt like I was flying upside down. Now, I kept going up there hoping to replicate that, because it only lasted for two days. Unfortunately, I realized she didn't know what she was doing, but here's the thing. After I had that experience of flying upside down, all this information that I have, that I'm telling you, this stuff about healing and spirituality, it all came. It came over a 10-year period, but it started literally that day.
In Marin while flying upside down.
So that was like the second thing that directed me in a direction that I wouldn't have anticipated.
And do you, at that point, do you even start methodically putting this together? Are you writing stuff down? Do you have the awareness and the goal that I'm going to try to compile this at some point so that I can hand it off?
I wanted to codify it and have it written down. I mean, like what's in that documentary, I would say is 5%, maybe 8% of what I know. That's why even now there's a frenzy to get as much down as possible.
What is the general reaction from fellow psychiatrists about your work, if there even is a general reaction?
They have no reaction about my work at all. They only have a reaction about how many famous people I treat.
Sure, that's exciting to everyone.
That's their currency, which is too bad.
I immediately text my therapist, you got to watch Stutz. And I had some level of fear. If someone I was advising texts me, you got to listen to this podcast, I might think, oh, they think that one's better than mine. I need to check it out to learn from it. So I had some, I don't know if this is going to be triggering for me to tell my therapist, he needs to watch this.
And he immediately said, oh my God, I already watched it. Absolutely love it. You know, he has a book, tools. But I was curious if, in the kind of psychiatric community, the things you've discovered are embraced.
Zero. It used to piss me off, but now it doesn't. I'll say this, my psychiatry has improved a lot over what it used to, because they have what they call evidence-based psychiatry. But the downside of it is it makes everybody cold and objective and scientifically oriented, which is good for some things, but it's other things, it's worthless, literally.
I think it's really easy to have an insecurity if you're in psychiatry, which is. it's not really that measurable. It's a newer science. You could enter with the chip on your shoulder that no one thinks you're legit to begin with. I mean, it seems fertile for that.
How do you know all this stuff?
Oh, here we go, the flattery. When you come out to LA, what prompts that move?
I was at a loss because at that time, you know, a lot of my friends were doctors. They all thought I was crazy. There was nothing wrong with me, et cetera. My sister had already moved out here. So, out of desperation, I said, let me live in California, which is something I'd always had in the back of my mind anyway.
And I came in here for a month and I hated it. You know, I would walk out of a restaurant at 9.30 at night. It is the 1980s, whatever. It wouldn't be a soul on the street, nothing. I was so offended.
So I went back to New York and I got even sicker. So then, out of utter desperation, I moved down here and I still hated it.
You got sicker with your Parkinson's when you went back? Or you got sicker mentally?
Well, I suppose everything is partially mentally, but it was mostly exhaustion more than anything else. Looking back on it, I guess it was Parkinson's, yeah.
And so that's the part of the story I guess we haven't introduced yet. And by the way, I've seen the photos of you are fantastic in the doc. I'm so happy you had all those. You were a physical specimen. You were gorgeous.
You have an athletic physical body and you enjoyed it. You actually used it. You played basketball. I'm sorry.
Karate, I suppose.
Karate, yeah, you're challenging nurses to fights in the hallway. Like you're feeling your physicality.
You are a fucking genius. I can't, yes.
Oh, no. That's the worst thing you could possibly have said in this room.
But a lot of the stuff I did was to ground myself in the physical, because my mind would go the other way. I guess I am a kind of a strange person.
I do want to pause there actually for one second, because I wonder, with all your patients who are successful, who are smart, I assume most of them are, are they trying to impress you? Do you worry about that sometimes in your sessions that your patient is there to impress you?
You know, there's two kinds. There's one kind that's doing it defensively and is insecure. That doesn't bother me. I can work through that. But there's another part, let's say a lifelong narcissist that can't do anything else.
They're really blocked off.
Yeah, and you can tell the difference.
Yeah, or you could tell the difference, no question.
You can do that quickly?
Yes, I could do that quickly. I could do that maximum 20 minutes of the first session.
Okay, so that makes me nervous, because we've been talking for 20 minutes, so you know if I'm a narcissist or not. How do you delineate that? Because you're in a situation where the person is, of course, going to talk singularly about themselves. That's the premise of the experience. So how are you deciding what is narcissistic and what is not?
What are the signals for that?
The signals are retreat, withdrawal, excuses, because people know there's a path of forward motion and there's a path of hiding and avoiding. They know that much. The person isn't really interested in what he would have to do to change. He's not really interested in it. He's interested in getting validated by me.
It's a more, I don't want to say disturbed, but that's a more disturbed person. Yeah.
Have you seen people effectively confront narcissism?
It's funny, people keep asking me that. Yeah, I have.
It's a lengthy process?
It depends on the person and the segments of the narcissism. But I would say, in the best of all possible worlds, you need the ingredients of his life has to be not happy or, better yet, not satisfied. If you have somebody who's not satisfied and comes to the conclusion, which it sounds like you kind of did to a degree, this isn't working, I got to do something else.
Something's very broken, yeah, was my thought.
See, then when they come in, basically they'll say to me, okay, tell me what to do. I had a guy that I treated for 14 years, didn't listen to a fucking word. I said, nothing didn't improve. He had two daughters and the daughter said, we're going to leave you if you don't stop drinking and screaming. We're never going to talk to you again.
And one of them had already had a child. And in one day he made more progress than the preceding 14 years because it was a penalty.
Yeah. Right.
And it's a true story, it's amazing.
And when you can't manipulate.
Yes, that's right.
Because the narcissist is brilliant at finding a way to be the victim in all situations, hopefully convincing the other person who's confronting them that they are in fact the victim, and then getting out of the situation by establishing that they were the victim.
It was too, they wanted attention for being the victim, but they also wanted attention for being the best, greatest, et cetera.
The hero and the victim simultaneously.
Simultaneously.
That's the dream, isn't it? Yeah.
Holding the trophy and everyone saying how impossible it was because you're such a victim.
Yeah, yeah. Could I take a rest for a second?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I apologize. I didn't really consider that I got to be mindful of whatever energy level you have, considering the medicine you're on and the condition you have. I didn't factor that in and I apologize.
Oh, it's fine. Okay. It's probably better, actually. I didn't ask for this.
I didn't order this.
I ordered the French onion soup.
What the fuck is this, banana? I just pulled it out of my bag. How long have you guys been working together?
Only a couple months. Oh. No way.
Only two months?
No, a little more than two months.
Six months maybe. How long have you guys been together?
We've been doing this job for five years. Really? Coming in five years, yeah. We're on like episode 520..
This I take as one of the top ones.
Doing pretty good. Pretty happy with it.
You know, you could prove your sensitivity to me by bringing those M&Ms over here.
That's actually one of my questions, and you can just eat your peanuts, and I just want to ask your thought about this. I'd say one of the very hardest things for me to do is to accept help. Real bad at it. I'm bad at asking for help. I'm bad at being weak.
Had a lot of surgeries. I have a lot of bad hobbies. Cannot be helped. And when I'm watching the documentary, I'm like yearning to nurture you and to help you and to care for you. And I can't be the only one that has that feeling when they're around you.
And I was wondering how that feels and if that's uncomfortable or you have learned to embrace it.
I'm trying, you know. It's very uncomfortable, but with the Parkinson's, there's things you can't do on your own anymore, no matter what. But in general, I know that I need it. No question. In fact, what's interesting, I would say in the last year, when I've had to do anything, I've asked myself, if I had help or if I could accept help, how would that make my life easier?
I try to connect help, not just with asking for it, but an actual result. that's tangible, you know?
Right, like. go a step beyond the asking.
Yes.
Yeah, what's the outcome of it? Because I'll stop myself at the feeling, right? I'll go like, oh, I'm trying to imagine asking for help. And then I get so bogged down in how it'll feel to ask for that help that I'm now in the maze, as you would say. Like I can't get to what the results of it would be, which is what I probably should be evaluating.
But I just imagine, especially seeing those pictures of you having been a physical specimen to need help. It would be so hard for me.
There's one tool, which is called an embodiment, which is a complicated thing, but do you know what a lattice is? Lattice work?
That you hang and plants grow along the top of it?
All it is is a series of horizontal lines and vertical lines, and they intersect, right? So you get these kind of little squares. Now, each time the two axes cross, you draw a little black dot, okay? So you have this lattice work and a black dot at each intersection. What is that black dot?
It's need, you see? So if you had no need, the matrix wouldn't form itself, because need is the driving force. So if you believe there's a singularity, a oneness to the universe, the force, the power that would create and maintain, that is need.
Yeah, I wrote it down, in fact, from the documentary you said, which I think is so beautiful. It killed me, actually. The glue that holds the universe together. You say shame and embarrassment is the glue that holds. There's something like that.
Yeah, probably need is the bottom line, at least for men. Some of the embarrassment is because it exposes your need, I guess.
It's a weakness. To have. a need is to have some weakness in some area.
Individually, it's a weakness, but collectively, it's a strength. And if we can't get this joke, we're gonna be destroyed, literally. Yeah. That's what the next book is about.
Not Coming Alive, a forthcoming book.
Yeah, forthcoming.
Okay, I had this experience a month ago. I was on an AA meeting, it was on Zoom. And it's a really unique perspective. Having gone to meetings now for 19,, 20 years, I've never been in a meeting where I'm observing rows and rows of the participants. And I can look at them simultaneously.
And what I immediately was struck with was, what the fuck is this group of people? You know, we got a guy that's 80, we got a 19-year-old kid, we got a gay guy, we got a trans man, we got, you know, we got everything. If you were an alien looking at this grid, you'd go, what on earth is this club that these people are in? And I thought, wow, this is a club of people who have the same weakness. It's the only club I've ever joined through a weakness.
All the other ones I joined through a strength. So I'm good at motorcycle riding. I go to a track with other people. good at it. We are bound by this competency.
on motorcycles. You might be in a math club. What I found about AA is the intimacy is 10X of any other group I've ever been drawn to. And how ironic it was the one where I came together because it was my weakness. And boy, wouldn't that be?
an interesting way to assemble, is declare our weakness and find each other. It's just completely opposite of what I did the whole other rest of my life, which is find like-minded competency.
Yeah, that's why there's a point where I tell people, you're a fucking idiot. You're stupid because you won't open the door. to need or failure is another big one. And so there's all these forces that wanna help you. You can almost say metaphorically that love you, that you are so stupid, what you need most, you won't allow in.
I'm a big believer in 12 step. And I see, especially males, they'll show up and they'll say, yeah, it was good, but I can do it myself.
What do you think is their primary reason that they say that I can do it myself? Why is there so much more pride in doing it yourself?
Because the human ego doesn't like thinking that there's anything bigger or smarter or wiser than it. It won't accept them. I'm really enjoying this. Why don't you take a break for half an hour?
Yeah.
I love that part of the doc, when you're enjoying the moment so much, you go, I'm gonna go home and go to sleep. You guys stay right here. I'm gonna come back in the morning and just join right here. Can everyone just stay here and then look at me in the same way when I return?
You said that, I didn't say that.
I'm repeating. This is verbatim what you said.
Okay, how do we do that? If we want to draw something.
Oh, look at this. What's yours? I'm neurotic about my pen. What is it? Sharpie gels.
Okay, I do a pilot. You do the big, I do 1.0.. It's gotta be fat. Do you draw with a fine one or a fat one? Bold or fine?
Fine. Fine? You like the bolder ones?
I have to, I'm left-handed. So instead of dragging the pen, like you do, which pulls the ink out, I push the pen, which clogs it. So if I don't have a big fucking gusher, I'll run out of ink really quick. It's a left-handed issue. He's left-handed.
You're left-handed?
Ambidextrous?
Well, because this-.
As a result.
Yeah, look at this, but this is not.
Interesting, what is your explanation of that? Why would your dominant hand be the one?
You know, Parkinson's is always one-sided or the other. Oh, it is? Yeah, I don't know if they even know why that is. I mean, very few things are symmetrical, but now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder if the fact that there's part of you that's functional, you can take yourself through the experience of asking for help and receiving help. You kind of can do it internally.
You had a bad hand and a good hand. Wow, I never thought about this, because this is actually strength when all my life has been weakness.
Yeah. Your left hand is now your strength.
There's a hint of it in basketball, because I would go to my left more than my right.
You and I could get wild right now. You just said something that was really powerful. So you might be not as skilled with your left hand, dribbling the basketball, but your defender is generally defending people who dribble with their right hand. So they're most skilled at defending. when someone's using their right hand.
They're the most muscle memory. So you switch to your left hand, which is a downgrade.
Right, right.
But it's only a downgrade relative to how the person now can defend you while you're dribbling with your left. So their weakness on their left, you might be creating a bigger deficit. Because you've switched to your left, now the other person has to switch to their left. And maybe if you're both competing with your non-dominant hand, you're much better. So by maybe exploring your weak side, you enter in a different domain altogether, where everyone also will have to operate on their weak side.
And maybe it'll actually be dominant, because the context has changed. That too abstract?
No, I love that. Although I guess it's too abstract, because I'm forgetting it while you're saying it.
There's no stickiness.
There's a lot of words.
It might be fun, but it needs a rewrite. It needs to be pared down. It happens in interpersonal relationships. Me and you are married. We argue every night because you're on your phone.
I say, you shouldn't need to be on your phone at night. You should learn how to take care of all your emails during the day. You say, I don't need you to manage my schedule. I'm doing just fine with my allotment. And then you and I battle.
And we're both smart. We're both lawyers. I can't convince you. You're not convincing me. And then I go to my left and I go, I want your attention.
I feel lonely when you're on that phone.
And that's more persuasive.
And then they're like, oh fuck. What's my defense to that? I don't have one. So I've gone weaker, but weirdly I've gotten now through. Because that position isn't one that can really be argued or tried in a court.
I call that contextual. The ego might be stronger in one sense, but if you redefine the context, then the ego is weaker. You want me to talk about this?
Yeah, of course. Well, I want you to talk about anything.
that you're interested in talking about. And I also do want you to draw whatever you were going to draw.
Yeah, yeah, that's probably more important.
Because we're going to frame whatever. this is, for sure.
I might even incorporate it into my lovemaking. We'll see how it turns out.
I'm going to leave that part out of the picture.
It's up to you. You're the artist. But wouldn't mind something that's a little titillating in there.
Just stop. Be respectful of this very special human. we got to come over to the attic and just table your perfiness for just an afternoon.
I know you can't. I know your limitations.
Are you engaged?
His wife is in there.
No, he was asking if you were engaged independently of me, right? Or were you asking if Monica and I were engaged? Either is a fine question.
Both are great questions. I'm not engaged at all.
And it's definitely not to him.
Yeah. We're just best friends. His wife is a very famous actress. That is not me.
You've seen her, Phil. You've consumed her content. It would be unavoidable at this point.
Oh, yeah? And she's on TV?
Well, you know the franchise Frozen? She's one of the princesses. She's a singer and an actress.
That's supposed to be fantastic. I know it's going so good.
Yeah, it's incredible.
Oh, she did a movie with Jonah. They did Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Yeah, she was Sarah Marshall in Sarah Marshall. Good place on NBC the last four years. She's the lead of that show.
You know, they're coming out with a show about shrinks.
What's it called?
I think Shrinkage or something like that.
Oh, you're being serious. I thought for sure you were setting me up for a joke.
No. And supposedly the me character is played by Harrison Ford. Oh.
Get out of here.
Nobody will believe he would take the part, but he did and he's good.
Oh. Hold on a second. You're saying there is a show and that you are the archetype of one of the characters and it is played by Harrison Ford. He's not going by Phil Stutz, is he?
They wanted it to go by Phil, not the last name, but my lawyer wouldn't allow it.
No. We gotta get paid for that, I think.
Yeah. Wow.
That's good casting. If someone needs to be you, Harrison Ford's a good one.
Well, it's good for the ego. I don't think that's good casting. Really? No. No, that's terrible.
Absolutely. Why? This is Harrison Ford. Get off of my plane. No.
He might be doing a different. Version. He's an actor.
Could you do that again?
Get off of my plane. There was a man in my house. That man had one arm. You find that man, he killed my wife. Okay, that's Harrison Ford.
in a nutshell. There is no connective tissue between. What is great about Harrison Ford is his physicality. He's a big water buffalo storming through the world and he's knocking his shoulder into things and he's jostling about and he's screaming very uncomplicated things. This is a bad casting decision.
Wow. Okay. Who would you have cast?
Great question. I got it. So fucking easy. It's insane. John Turturro.
Oh, I love John Turturro.
Period. Boom. Best show ever made, John Turturro playing you. That is a bullseye.
That'd be good.
Do you love Turturro? You must, he's a New York guy.
There's something about him.
It's because you guys are so similar. You probably hate him. I'm probably.
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.
We all hate our doppelganger. What? They kind of look alike. They kind of look alike.
I can see it.
In the voice, they have a very similar.
He's such a guy.
I hate when they change their voice.
Actors?
No, shrinks.
Oh, wait. Do shrinks change their voice?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Tell me.
Especially in the 80s. They would get very arch and very like informal.
Oh, like they're talking to a child almost?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I find that very patron.
I wanna say, you motherfucker.
Yeah, where's your real voice, doc? Let's hear you.
Stay tuned for armchair expert, if you dare.
Anyway, here's the thing.
Okay. The lattice. This is the lattice.
And you see the little bumps? Yeah. Each of those bumps, they represent need. You have a, don't show the M&M's. Well, you can show them.
We'll have to talk to your lawyer. We don't know if you're endorsing M&M's quite yet. I'm sure you're fielding a lot of offers in the candy space.
It's a big space. Anyway, that lattice work, with the little bumps in it, which represent need, but they could also represent failure, depression, but mostly it's need. That's what holds the whole thing together, because these are experiences that nobody can deal with by themselves. You just can't. It's not even a moral issue.
You've reached the weird conclusion that the universe is held together by the failures, not by the successes. The universe is held together by need, not by independence. It's hard almost to grok that.
No, you're right. For there to be interdependent-ness, an essential ingredient would be need.
To me, the essential ingredient.
So you have two great books out, The Tools and Coming Alive, that you've written with your partner, Barry Michaels. The Tools is, as you said, very comprehensive, only about 5%, that's in the documentary studs. But in Coming Alive, you lay out the four most common problems. So this is the net by which I intend to ensnare everyone who's listening, because there isn't a human that's not experiencing one of these four things, exhaustion, addiction, or compulsive behavior, hurt feelings, slash, victimhood, or demoralization and quitting. These are very common problems and you employ the tools in the book to walk through how you would confront those.
One way to say it is that it's not just giving somebody tools without a direction, without an overview. That's good. It's better than nothing. But the tools themselves will be more effective when you see them, experience them, and use them in a context.
What is the context?
In some ways that's dictated by the patient. It's like a wheel that won't stop turning. You can think that you're free of this one. It's like cosmic whack-a-mole. Whack-a-mole, yeah.
You may think you're free of that one, but it doesn't matter, because they're all connected on some level.
One thing that was cool, because it's not one of my problems, is exhaustion. And you said people seem to believe they have some kind of biological set point with their energy level, and they don't realize that it is highly variable and can be changed, their energy level.
That's a contextual issue. What is the nature of the physical body? And I have to draw you. Sorry. Yay!
Does anybody ever come in here and do this?
Oh, this is so special.
Not this version. No. Certainly some people have taken notes. We've had a couple people with sketch pads and stuff. Yeah.
Which I always like. Oh, you know, who wrote a lot is Gottman.
Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it was cool. He does what he claims you should do in real time all the time, and it was not a performance. He's like listening to the thing, and he's forcing himself to write it out, because that's how he's gonna hear it. And he's doing it in his real life, like sitting there.
That's impressive.
It is, right? When you watch someone walk the fucking walk.
Okay. These lines represent two different sources of energy. One is called physical energy, and this bottom one says spiritual. Now, the guy that I study, Ruff Steiner, did you ever hear of him? Mm-mm.
He was a philosopher born 1860, and in the year about 1900, Freud was starting psychoanalysis. This guy switched from being a philosopher to the study of the occult, and of the other world, so to speak. That's where I got this idea from originally. Anyway, okay, so look at this.
Okay, so we have a line that's a physical source of energy. We have a line that is a spiritual source of energy. They're parallel, but then they both take a 30-degree turn, and then they cross each other.
Well, physical energy goes down, and spiritual energy goes up.
There's one caveat, which is spiritual. energy won't go up by itself. See, the physical is given to you without any effort on your part, and it will go down no matter what you do.
You mean over a lifetime, or over a day, or over what?
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