Shrink Rap

Nationally syndicated radio psychotherapistDavid Viscott '59 says that feelings "are the most powerfulforce anyone knows

SOMEWHERE IN LOS ANGELES a man named Scott picks up his car phone and dials. "Hello, Doctor Viscott?" And Scott circuitously explains how he always ends up falling for drug-addicted women.

"Pretty boring, isn't it?" says the doctor. It's not a question—he knows. "Yes," says Scott, adding, "What's so difficult for me, doctor..."

"Stop. I don't want to hear this."

"You don't}"

"No! How much abuse does it take for you to say, 'I hurt?'... That's the key issue of your life." The doctor's voice edges toward exasperation. He has been listening to Scott for 67 seconds.

"What I'm saying is she's in therapy now and..."

"WE DON'T CARE ABOUT HER, BUDDY!" The voice drowns out some freeway's roar. "We care about why it takes you so long to say, 'I don't like the way I'm being treated!' Come 0n!...Y0u set it up so you're justified in kicking her out when the fact is you wanted to kick out someone once in your life when you felt younger and less powerful."

"Oh, doctor," breathes a voice of genuine relief. "You're right on!"

"I know I'm right on, Scott, but ARE YOU LISTENING?!"

Scott is listening, along with hundreds of thousands of others. A contractor who can't stop seeing prostitutes, an 11-year-old boy afraid to go to school, a newlywed whose husband can only make love while wearing women's clothes the callers are familiar to talk-radio junkies everywhere. The voice they listen to, however combative, probing, caring, and cocksure can only belong to Dr. David Viscott '59.

To a nation desperate for cures, Viscott may just be psychiatrist-in-residence. Along with his highly rated call in show, soon to be syndicated nationally by KABC Radio, and an NBC network television show debuting 1991, the graduate of Dartmouth and Tufts University Medical School directs the Viscott Center, treating thousands of patients a year through a professionally guided process of self-analysis called the Viscott Method. He has written more than a dozen books, created bestselling video and audio tapes, a board game, a line of greeting cards, and, most recently, launched his own magazine, Being in Touch. If you write to the National Institute of Mental Health for advice, most likely you'll receive a free copy of "Freeding Yourself from Bad Moods," published by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare and written by Dr. David Viscott.

Being in touch is at the heart of the Viscott Method. "Someone who can say what he feels when he feels it to the person who needs to hear it: if you can do that, you're healthy," says Viscott. Unhealthy people conceal unexpressed pain, either as anger (pain from the past), hurt (pain in the present), or anxiety (pain about the future). They repress this pain through denial, blaming, or pretense. The Viscott Method seeks to peel these defenses away quickly. In a profession ridiculed for promoting frequent and costly sessions of 40-minute hours, the Viscott Method demands a strictly limited number of two-hour sessions. While critics have called this "turnstyle psychotherapy," a marriage of New Age and Nescafe, Viscott calls his short-term therapy effective and practical. "I give people the tools to understand where they are and get to the next step," he says. Or, as he admonished the misguided Scott over the phone: "Therapy for a person like you could go on for years, and you'd make tiny little pieces of progress. I want one big chunk of progress, and I'm greedy I want it now!"

We spoke with Viscott in his home, not over the phone. But the voice is the same strident and articulate, with roller-coaster rapidity and more than a touch of the old Boston neighborhood. Before he became a physician and psychiatrist, Viscott was an English honors student and first clarinetist in the Dartmouth symphony; his spacious home is filled with art, antiques, and books. On the sunny morning we arrived, it seemed worlds away from the busy, hi-tech studio where he would shortly face another afternoon of, "Hello, Dr. Viscott.?"

Dartmouth Alumni Magazine: Same have called you a one-man industry.What do you think is the reason for thissuccess?

David Viscott: I'm talking about the single most important thing in life. Feelings are the basis of all creativity, all ideas, all politics. I've spent my whole life talking about feelings how they work, how they interrelate, and how to get people to communicate them they're the most powerful force anyone knows.

Every one of my psychiatrist friends says, "Gee, that makes a lot of sense, I guess I've always known that." But why is it that no one has ever laid it out before? Pain in the future is anxiety, pain in the present is hurt, and pain in the past is anger, and if you hold it in it turns against you. And the energy that's drained to keep the anger from being expressed lowers your life energy and that depression of energy is called depression.

Next question: defenses. I only see three defenses, and all the rest are variations. You can't think of 35 defenses and operate as a therapist please it's impossible, only a computer can do that, and it doesn't make any sense. There are three personality types: the dependent, the controlling, and the competitive. The dependent person uses the defense of denial. The controlling person uses excuses blaming or excuses are the same thing. The competitive person uses pretense. They're saying, "Oh, I could have gotten all 'A's if I studied." Sure you could...

Can you explain Freudian theory that quickly and have it make sense and be utilizable and be able to say, "I know what's going on now"? The "industry" that you're referring to is nothing but the natural extension of this thought process. I've been thinking about it for 25 years. It took me a long time to be this simpleminded.

Why your emphasis on feelings?

When I say feelings are central I mean processing the feelings is essential. To have feelings on board while you're trying to reason is very, very destructive. The highest person is free of hurt from the past. He has forgiven and made peace with his enemies and with his parents, and he is free to use his mind without the disturbing influence of unresolved feelings. To be emotionally free is to have no feelings left for expression. That doesn't mean that in the next minute you're not going to be hurt when someone is an idiot to you, but rather that when that hurt occurs you can say, "Excuse me, you did a very awkward and punitive thing right now and I'm calling you on it." Otherwise, the intellect is virtually a prisoner of the emotion that is held in. Just a little bit of hurt builds into a lot of anger and occupies your mind. Ever notice how you get hurt by a little thing and for hours your mind is full of junk?

The stuff that bugs people, the reason people cannot create, the reason people are not their best, the reason people are not able to feel good about their accomplishments is low self-esteem, and low self-esteem in turn is the function of feelings of hurt and anger that have not been expressed.

Why do people resist opening up with theirfeelings?

The dependent person fears rejection. The controlling person fears admitting weakness, and the competitive person fears that they are going to reveal themselves as flawed.

What about those who say, Feelings,Schmeelings"?

That's right in the work situation. Feelings are not the currency of the workplace. You don't want feelings, you want good service. But the point is, with any pair of hands you get a brain and any brain is restricted by the feelings. That's what management skills are all about dealing with feelings. The worst businesses are those where you have an insecure person at the helm.

Your critics might scream, "Oversimplification."

People can only apply what they understand. I'll talk to psychiatrists who will describe a patient in psychological terms they might as well be talking about someone from another planet. You can't follow them.

If you ever go to any of these psycholanalytic gatherings and listen to the talk, you say to yourself: I was born with a good mind, why is it I can't understand this? And the reason you can't understand it is that it doesn't make a lot of sense. What makes a lot of sense is the kind of thinking that, really, the great physician William Osier emulated: "The man may fall down in your midst, and you may lean over and administer all of your techniques, but unless you loosen his collar first the women will think you a fool and they'll be right." There's a commonality, a practicality.

One of the promises of psychoanalytic invention was that it would help us raise better children, free up people, and all that. But the fact is that it has failed as a real developmental tool for this simple reason: you cannot express to people the heart of the psychoanalytic method in a way that makes sense. It's not understandable because it's overly complex and it suffers as do all theories from the need to justify itself at every turn rather than explore the phenomenon.

Yet the Viscott Method has been deridedas self-justifying, as "turnstyle psychotherapy."

You know why Freud put people on the couch, in his own words? "I cannot bear to be stared at eight hours a day." His desk had all this Egyptiana on it that he used to hide behind because he was painfully shy. Every therapist creates a therapy in the light of their problem. I have a defect as a therapist: I get bored hearing the same things over again. Okay, all right, so your mother beat you and your father's no good, but isn't it time to join Alanon and get out of that house and get a job? I mean, I want you to move. So, how do you get people to move?

I developed a method that works better. It works better because I don't do the work. I realized that, as bright as I am and as dedicated as I am, I can't do the patient's work.

The truth of the matter about "turnstyle psychotherapy" is that my patients and die patients of the Viscott Center this will sound very braggish develop more insight into their lives in one visit than someone who's been in psychoanalysis for a year. I have chosen existing vehicles for communicating feelings and putting in people's hands workbooks, tapes, and newsletters with methodologies, theory, questions a whole system with which they can cut through their defenses and see themselves as they really are.

The emphasis is on getting better?

Among your generation, is there is a senseof compromise, of not fulfilling dreams?

I have a lot of doctor friends who wanted to be musicians. There's a large sense of being lost. I mean, I believe in something very simple. The purpose of life is to discover and develop your gift. The meaning of life is to share that gift with others. The process of discovering your gift is having the courage to pursue it, even in the wrong direction. Music taught me how to listen. Writing taught me how to convey. The important thing is, if you see any part of yourself that you think has potential, grab it, and give it a chance. There are moments when that inner voice speaks to you, but if you allow yourself to be at all influenced by what other people think, or by judgments on your confidence or intelligence, you lose the potential, because the voice does not take criticism.

What would you tell a Dartmouth graduate about to enter the professional world?

Getting ahead means nothing if that's all you do. Finding yourself and feeling secure in who you are so that no matter what happens no one can take it away from you is everything. If you find that place, you always get ahead. Do what you love everything depends on it. If you don't do what you love, your world is not filled with love. Therefore, you're not fun to be around, and the people who work for you are not inspired. You may get into the form, but if you don't love what you do, it's really bad. And the point is, it takes 15 years to discover the lie. You can make millions of dollars, and love making the money, and love the bigger house, and love going to Cannes, and love doing all this stuff, but the point is, if you stop doing it, where are you on a quiet afternoon when you sit alone by yourself? You should not feel robbed if you were transported to another environment and you had to live a simple life.

Define, or redefine, then, "success."

When the work at hand is free of stress, when I'm so involved in it that I'm no longer a person but just an agent manifesting the work, and I am lost in that work and I don't notice the passage of time or anything else. Success is defining and being faithful to your life. Most people don't live their lives, they live someone else's life. That's why we get paid so much in this country. It's the bribe to live someone else's life.

What can a college do to prepare studentsfor this world of feelings, for the emotionalchallenges they'll face?

I think all four-year colleges should become five-year colleges. Before one commits formally to the major, there needs to be a work-study program for students where you actually go to work in the area that you think you'd like to be in. If you're a pre-med, you're working in a hospital somewhere for a year. That takes the Ivory Tower and puts it right in the middle of reality so you have the opportunity to see the effect of the world on people.

And once they graduate, 'what would youtell people looking for the direction of theirawn life?

You have to do productive work. A lot of people don't do productive work; they just shift papers around. They don't create. If you're not creating anything, how can you feel good about yourself? In your heart of hearts, if you just settle disputes between people to make the production of more useless materials more efficient, how can you feel good about yourself?

I only know one truth: Whatever you love, do that. If you're not doing what you love, you're not going to do anything well.

Most people don'tlive theirlives, they livesomeone else'slife. That'swhy we getpaid so muchin this country.It's the bribeto live someoneelse's life."

Los Angeles-based writer Rob Eshman's laststory for the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, "Henderson the Beach," appeared insummer of 1988.