JON & KATE:
AROMATHERAPY SAVED OUR MARRIAGE!
Speaking as a mental health professional, I have not given up on an eventual reconciliation for Jon and Kate!! You wouldn't know it but, individually, they're absolutely lovely people. I wish they were my clients so that I could sit them down on a giant, pink, overstuffed loveseat with lots of satin pillows, where they couldn’t escape each other. I might have to strap Jon in. Then I’d turn the lights down and burn some incense. I’d put on some mood music.
This would be the most loving, comfortable, supporting environment imaginable. Jon could open up and talk about his fears of not being a good father. There would be foot massage and essential oils. Kate would break down and say she doesn’t mean to be cruel, it’s just that life is so terrifying sometimes. Maybe she’d talk about abandonment issues. Jon would wipe away her tears and Kate would accept his embrace, which must be that of a sweaty, drunken hula dancer. The music would swell and I’d step out of the room for a cigarette.
Anyway, that’s how I’d do it. Sometimes a safe, nurturing environment is all that’s needed to create harmony in the world. Most people, I believe, really do want to get along peacefully. It seems to me this same technique could be applied on a global scale, say with Democrats and Republicans, Rosie and Donald, etc. It’s easier than fighting and there are no attorney fees involved, and in the end, you’ve only spent a few dollars on patchouli.
OSCAR WINNER MUMMIFIED!
Miss Oscar could jazzercise her way down to a size six if she put a little effort into it but I don't think this will ever happen because she's so impatient. She’d rather just pay for surgery. I’m worried about Miss Oscar!! In my opinion, she is having all her surgeries done too close together. Three weeks ago, she showed up for therapy with her nose and cheeks covered in bandages.
“Wait ’til you see my new nose, Dr. Carla!” she said. “It’s Grecian!” Then, just a week later, Miss Oscar’s assistant pushed her into my office in a wheel chair. Not only her nose and cheeks but her eyes were bandaged over. “Wait ’til you see my new eyes!” she sang. “They’re Indonesian!”
Today, two young men rolled her in on a stretcher, bandaged like an Egyptian mummy. They told me she had just gotten her hips, thighs, tummy and breast done. I was very impressed that she managed to get to our psychotherapy session, although her condition made my job more complicated. I was forced to make comments like, “Tap once if you felt acknowledged as a child, twice if you felt neglected, and three times for ‘other’.”
Miss Oscar suffers from the same fear that most older actresses experience in Hollywood: she fears becoming invisible. The major film roles aren’t rolling her way as they used to. Of course, nobody wants to get caught under the steam roller of time, but sometimes you just have to roll with it. Life isn’t always a roll in the hay. Sometimes it ain’t worth a roll of nickels. My goodness this is fun! I’m on a roll! A California roll! Welcome to my blog!! Laissez le bon temps roulez!
GAY FILM STAR FINDS SOLACE IN POTATO SALAD!
Film star “GARY” is a rough, sunburned he-man with a unibrow that would extend all the way around his head like a tab on the Quaker Oats box if he didn’t shave it. He’s the kind of guy who thinks a bed isn’t made until there’s a shotgun under the pillow. Never mind that his pillow has lace trim, if you know what I mean.
Today he strode into my office and threw himself down on the sofa, putting his size thirteen feet up on the ottoman.
“Doctor Carla,” he said, “I had a dream last night and it’s lingering with me.”
“Tell me all about it,” I said. I’ve read plenty of Jung and Joseph Campbell and I’m pretty good at patching together a moral out of the jumbled images that dreams are made of. “Don’t worry if it seems chaotic or meaningless, Gary. I’ll help you understand it.”
“Well,” he said, scratching his stubbly chin, “I don’t think it’s too chaotic, really. In the dream, I was offered a role in a film about the Old Testament. My agent said I should accept it but I didn’t think I should. So I took the script and went up on a mountain. While I was standing there on the mountain, a lightning bolt struck the script and it turned into a black serpent. I hurled a spear through the serpent and it burst into a giant ball of flame. Then I went to the refrigerator and had some potato salad.” He squinted at me, waiting for my reaction.
“The meaning is obvious, Gary,” I said. “The script symbolizes your destiny and the mountain represents the deep, dark recesses of your Id. The destruction of the serpent tells me that your sexuality causes you distress and confusion. I believe some aversion therapy might straighten you out. You might even get married one day. Have your ever heard of electroshock? It’s gotten a bad rap in the past but psychotherapists are now using it again, and with great success. What do you say? Shall we try? Just a few volts to start with.”
“Doc,” said Gary, running his fingers through his hair, “I don’t mean to contradict you but the script might represent a role for a biblical film I was actually offered last month. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. Last week I was up at my mountain cabin in Vale and it struck me like a lightning bolt that this film wouldn’t be right for me. Maybe the mountain just represents the mountain.”
“Well,” I said, “if you want to be literal about it, that’s fine by me. But you’re denying yourself all the richness and meaning of life. Things are never just things, you see.”
“But I think it’s pretty straight forward,” he said, squinting.
I felt sorry for Gary. “Your mind is so chaotic you can’t even see how disjointed the imagery of your dream is. Consider the potato salad which you ate, at the end of this narrative. Don’t tell me that seems normal to you!”
Gary scratched his head. “Well kind of, yeah. I mean, I woke up, got out of bed and went down to the kitchen. There was some potato salad in the fridge and I ate it. What’s so crazy about that?”
I can’t help people who won’t help themselves.
TV STAR DRINKS BODY PART!
KAMMY asked me to come to Warner Bros. today for her session, since she’s in the middle of shooting her popular sit-com. I was shown to her dressing room and, after sharing three or four margaritas, we started her therapy, which went for a full two hours.
I got Kammy to acknowledge she’s making good progress and desperately needs my continued care. It’s been two years since she started therapy and, with hypnosis and electroshock, I’ve gotten her down from four packs of Gauloises a day to three. At this rate, she should be nicotine-free in just six more years. She’ll be only thirty four by that time, with her whole life before her! I told Kammy it’s easier to quit heroin than tobacco and she asked me, with a whine that helped make her famous, “Really? It’s easier to quit heroin??! Who says that?”
I told her I say that! She asked me where I found this out and I told her it’s just a thing that psychotherapists know to be true. It’s a truism. I told her, “You don’t have to know how a car works in order to drive it, do you?”
That analogy seemed to satisfy Kammy and she quieted down for half an hour, although she may have been sleeping. Finally the makeup lady knocked on the door and Kammy sat up, crying, “Oh my God, I drank one of my eyelashes!”
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A lion tamer in a Fellini movie once said you’ve got to speak German to wild beasts because it’s the only language they understand. Well, you’ve got to speak in analogies to psychotherapy patients otherwise they just don’t get it. Lion tamers, fairy tales, car-talk: they’re all tools the adept psychotherapist uses to help her clients understand themselves better. That’s why it’s important to know lots of stuff. You have to stay ahead of your patients or they’ll maul your eyes out.
Note to self: As soon as Kammy kicks the cigarettes, take a look at her heroin habit.
BIG CHEESE: "HOLLYWOOD IS CHEESY!"
BIG CHEESE is a major filmmaker with a plethora of deep-seated anxieties. He’s practically got his own wing in the Carla DelVecchio Irritable Directors Hall of Fame. He may even be more irritable than my husband Ostergarrd.....but that’s another story!
Big Cheese often calls from his car and asks if he can see me in an hour. Since Big Cheese is an Oscar winner, my receptionist Petal knows the answer is YES HE CAN. This means Petal must call my standing patients with an emergency that she makes up, and reschedule their appointments. (God, I hope they don’t read this!). So far, Petal has had me closing down the office due to water damage, passing a kidney stone, and flying off to Beijing, to talk a neurotic panda down from a tree. Since all of these things could theoretically happen, it’s more public relations than a lie.
Today, Big Cheese called from the Paramount lot just as I was closing for lunch. Petal told him to drive right over. “I’m in such a state,” Big Cheese groaned, walking in and sitting down. He took a Godiva truffle from the candy dish and unwrapped it. After popping it in his mouth, he pulled a Wet-Nap from his pocket and cleaned his hands. Big Cheese looked disheveled, his graying hair standing up in places on his narrow head. “Well, so we’re ready to start shooting today and all of a sudden my star refuses to come on the set. Not until I give her mechanic a speaking part will she agree to act. I had to think about this for a minute. I mean, I could easily write in a line or two for her mechanic. That way he could get his equity card and she’d get laid. But I’m the director, darn it! I’m the one who decides who will and will not act in my films!”
“It sounds like a power struggle,” I said. “Does your relationship with this actress remind you of your relationship with your mother?.
“Huh?” he said. “Uh, no. Not really. Should it?”
“Haven’t we established that you have power issues with women?” I said. As a psychotherapist, I’ve learned never to make comments but only to speak in questions. That’s how you draw the patient out into the open. Questions are the magic portal to the unconscious. “Isn’t your power struggle with women one of your issues?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Big Cheese. “Is it?”
“Well, what do you think?” I said, helpfully.
“What do you mean, what do I think? About what?” said Big Cheese.
“Weren’t we just talking about women?” I said.
“Were we?” he said.
“Well, weren’t we?” I countered.
“What if we were?” he said.
“Would you rather talk about something else?” I asked.
“Like what?” he said.
“Like your inability to answer my questions, perhaps?”
“Is that a question?” he said.
We went on like this for another forty five minutes until finally I went over and poked him in the eye, which completely interrupted his train of thought. “Now,” I said, “I think it’s time for you to get back to the studio.” As he stood up, I looked in my appointment book. “Would next Thursday be good for you?” I said.
“Would it be good for you?” said he.
