Stutz, Film, Jonah Hill, Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis, Tools, Psychotherapeutic Action
There was a bit of buzz around Stutz on the analytic list
serve. Since I hadn’t seen it, I didn’t
quite know what to make of the comments, but people seemed a little up in arms
around it. Then one of my students recommended
that I see it, so I talked the Reluctant Wife into watching it on a stay in
Friday night date night.
I have to admit that I can’t give a complete report on it,
though, because I fell asleep for a bit in the middle of it. The next day, the Reluctant Wife mentioned to
her mother that we had seen it, and the Reluctant Mother-in-law also watched it
and she too promptly fell asleep.
I note our parallel soporific experiences of the film not as
a condemnation of it, but actually as a sort of recommendation. The vibe of this movie is very serene and the
pace is slow. It is a documentary of
sorts, and what it intends to document, the treatment of Jonah Hill, is not what actually gets documented. We watch a blossoming of not one but two
people and this occurs at a lovely pace with just a few plot twists and turns.
Jonah Hill, the patient, director and star of this film, is
an actor that I have enjoyed seeing in a variety of films; The Social Contract
and Moneyball come immediately to mind (and, interestingly, neither is a film that
I posted about). In both films he played
a character who was socially isolated and viewed the world through a judgmental
lens – inhabiting an aloof space that included a certain level of touchiness.
While Hill was playing a role in these films, his playing of
that role seemed deeply rooted in who he was as a person – the round kid who
was used to being excluded from cool social things while being smart and
acerbic enough to stay in touch from a distance and to make things happen – in the
Social Contract, to found Facebook and, in Moneyball, to supply the statistical
knowledge to be able to disrupt the old school scouting machine of Major League
Baseball and support a new way of valuing players.
Some time after making these films, Hill went into psychotherapy
with Stutz, a therapist to the stars in LA.
Hill found the treatment so helpful that he decided to make a documentary
about it while continuing to be in treatment.
The first thing that is remarkable about this film is both
Hill’s acknowledgement that he was playing to type in those films, but also the
ways in which that type has been altered as a result, at least in part, through his relationship with Stutz. Hill is physically
trimmer and is upbeat. At times his mood
feels a little forced – as if he is agog – in love with life, but also with Stutz,
and working hard to maintain the belief that he feels better, but he seems to actually
have a range of feeling states that seem quite genuine across the arc of the
film, and they seem to be at marked variance to the person I have come to know
through the parts he has played. Jonah
Hill seems younger and more buoyant than I have seen him in films.
The second thing that is remarkable is the way in which the
making of this film openly articulates what is known as a dual
relationship. Stutz shifts from having
one relationship with Hill – psychotherapist – to having at least two –
psychotherapist and costar in a documentary film, but in fact there are many
other relationships that emerge. At times,
Hill is serving as Stutz’ psychotherapist.
Phil Stutz is an interesting character – not one that I have
heard of previously. He co-wrote a book
on his technique, called The Tools, ten years ago. The book has recommendations from Gwyneth
Paltrow and Drew Barrymore. Stutz
himself is a nicely centered person – self assured without being cocky, he is
comfortable saying what he thinks – and somewhat formulaic in his interactions.
In fact, the film starts out as if it will be bracingly formulaic. We are in a therapy session. Hill and Stutz are facing each other in Stutz’
office. They are engaged in a
conversation that is filmed in black and white.
But there is something weird about it.
Though they are facing each other, some of what they say is filmed from
directly in front of the speaker – but there are no cameras evident. Though this seems like an organic interaction,
it can’t be. It feels simultaneously too
real and oddly staged at the same time.
Thankfully, Hill breaks the fourth wall, reveals that we are
not really meeting in Stutz office, but in a green room that allows them to paste
the office on later, that shooting has been going for some time and that Hill
is feeling lost in the middle of a project that may have seemed simple enough
to begin with but it has become huge and he is disheartened by the enormity of
it. The somewhat forced happiness he was
professing at the beginning of the film disappears, and we are treated to a new,
more integrated version of Hill, but also of Stutz.
Often in films about therapy (Don
Juan DeMarco comes to mind as an example of this), the patient changes when
there is a change in the therapist, a change that is instigated by the work of
the therapist with the patient. I have
speculated that this has to do with a fantasy on the part of the patient that
they are repaying the experience of being cared for by the therapist with
caring for the therapist. That, and so
much else, gets enacted in this film.
Hill asks Stutz about what brought him to therapy, what his childhood
was like, and how he came up with his approach to treatment. He also asks him about his Parkinson’s diagnosis
– the tremors of which are apparent from the beginning of the filming. Hill doesn’t just collect this information,
but puts it into effect, noting that Stutz is stuck in his current relationship
and is afraid to be more fully present in that relationship. They turn the tools onto the teacher so that
he can wrestle with his demons and Hill clearly gains satisfaction when the
therapist has taken his advice.
Stutz, who is working from a psychodynamic framework, is
altering two parameters of treatment here.
The first is anonymity; and the way to protect anonymity is to avoid self-disclosure. In classical psychoanalysis, the analyst is a
hidden figure that is all but unknown to the patient. The intent is that the patient will be able
to project onto the analyst the unconscious transference – the remembered
aspects of past relationships that always interfere with our being open to new
relationships. Of course, the idea that
they always interfere clarifies that even if we are not unknown to our patients,
transferences will emerge. It is
presumably easier for the patient to see that he or she is generating them if
the analyst is not playing a part in the interaction.
Contemporary psychoanalytic theory does not prevent us from self-disclosing. In fact, not disclosing creates a certain
persona (one that is lampooned in New Yorker cartoons); it does not create a
true blank screen for the patient to project their inner worlds upon. It turns out that Stutz and Hill share
important early losses – both lost a younger sibling in childhood and dealt
with the emotional family fallout from that – and part of Stutz’ ability to
empathize with Hill likely comes from shared aspects of their lives..
In his book on Group Psychotherapy, Irv Yalom noted that
group therapy has two advantages over individual therapy. One is the sense of universality – the patient
is in contact with other people like him or her. Instead of feeling like a unique object of interest,
they realize they are part of a community of individuals with shared dilemmas
and historical antecedents. Turning the
tables on the therapist and having the therapist disclose more about who he is allows
Hill to engage in a very small group psychotherapy – he joins a group of two.
The second advantage that Yalom points out is that the
patients in group therapy get to act the part of the therapist. This is, Yalom believes, curative. Feeling that I can help someone else improves
my sense of efficacy in general and gives me a sense of value – I feel better
for having helped others. Again, by
allowing the documentary to be made and answering Hill’s questions, Stutz
offers Hill the opportunity to participate in a group experience where Hill can
be the treater.
The second major parameter from classical psychoanalysis
that Stutz alters is that he offers direct advice to his patients. This is not new. In the middle of the 20th Century,
Robert Wallerstein followed 42 patients in treatment and reported that the
supportive aspects of treatment (including giving advice) were more reliably related to outcome than the
more expressive aspects of treatment (giving the patient interpretations).
Stutz starts his treatments by telling his patients that the
first step to mental health is physical health – and he tells them to improve
their diet and to exercise. This is
sound advice. Since the 1980s we have
known that aerobic exercise is as effective at combating moderate levels of
depression as antidepressant medications.
I think both give patients a more stable psychic floor from which to do the difficult
work of psychotherapy.
The “tools” that Stutz offers are packaged with his particular
language, but are connected conceptually with well known psychotherapeutic
interventions. What appears to me to be
unique about his approach is twofold.
First and foremost is his comfort – with himself and with his
patients. He feels as unflappable in his
virtual office as in his real one, even though the virtual setting, once the false backdrop is peeled away, feels harsh, cold
and uninviting, Stutz is still present.
The second unique and fun aspect of his interventions are
the drawings that he makes. His
pictorial representations of the tools – very spare and conceptual – afford the
opportunity for the patient to internalize the message that he is teaching in a
novel manner – to give a visual representation to something that he is
delivering verbally. Our brains are built to integrate material cross modally, and his drawings nicely exploit this ability.
Change is difficult to make.
We resist change. Offering a
schematic – quite literally a different way of looking at a novel solution to a
problem – allows us to inhabit a non- linguistic space from which to think
about how best to solve that problem. I
think it may arouse in us a different, more pragmatic self – one that is used
to solving problems – like geometric and architectural and electrical problems,
not getting mired in them the way that we sometimes do with more verbally mediated
problems.
The drawings also serve as transitional objects – something that
we can quite literally hold onto from the session to remember our connection
with the therapist and with the solution to the problem.
This films breaks all kinds of norms – stretches all kinds
of therapeutic parameters. On one level,
it is a film where a grateful patient shares with the world the process that
has been life changing for him. He is
able to do this because of the manifold privileges that his abilities, craft,
and resources afford.
He is also able to have a different kind of relationship
with his therapist than most people are, in part because he has something to offer
in return – fame, a platform to immortalize a person and his version of a
method. Or does he? Wouldn’t Stutz have answered the questions if
Hill had posed them in the course of his therapy? Isn’t therapy always a more mutually
determined and mutually rewarding undertaking than it might seem? (And here I don’t mean to minimize the
challenges, including maintaining radio silence about one’s own issues so that
the patient can better articulate theirs).
But would Hill have known that he was as special to Stutz as
Stutz was to him without having made this film?
Isn’t that part of the very issue that brings Hill to see Stutz? Doesn’t Hill doubt that he is beloved for who
he actually is rather than for the person he has become and that he enacts on
the screen? Can we ever be known and
loved for who it is that we actually are?
What, then, distinguishes psychotherapy from all other
conversations? In my small college, we
were assigned grades but it was considered bad form to look at them. Instead of grades, our professors would talk
about us in the third person in our presence, describing our strengths and
weaknesses in the classroom during the term.
One fall, I did particularly badly in class, so they decided I would
need to be reviewed midterm during the spring. Well, at the second, emergency review, my performance
had improved tremendously. One of my
professors attributed that to my having fallen in love. The Dean, who sat in on the conversation,
stated that he had never heard love talked about in a formal setting like this.
Hill’s transformation is clearly driven by many things, but
one of the chief components is his love for Stutz. The film allows Hill to realize that Stutz
loves him, too. He becomes Stutz’
favorite son, as it were. Part of the
challenge of therapy is knowing that this is the case – not just that we love
our therapist, but that our therapist loves us, warts and all. But that can be a really hard thing to know –
short of, and maybe especially if, we come to know them.
Thank you. A great review. I think you were more generous than I, though. Anonymity, abstinence and neutrality. Out the window. That Jonah is rich and famous enough to 'do what he wants' was, frankly, grating. However, you draw out the human elements in your comments. I have a pet peeve, like most psychotherapists, about how we are depicted, Hollywood-style, usually around light or major boundary transgressions and the engaging conflicts that emerge from them. But your point, drawn from Yalom, about the patient contributing by being 'therapist' was well made. Stutz's art cards as learning tool/transitional object I liked. As it happens, a proposed multimodal aspect of psychoanalysis (using music) was the topic of my recently-submitted PhD. So thanks gain, and I look forward to reading more.
ReplyDeletePS: I too fell asleep midway. How interesting!
Thanks for your comments. I agree that this is a huge enactment that can only occur in Hollywood. My comments are intended to understand some of the components of the enactment through a charitable dynamic lens. Another way of saying that is that I am trying to understand the sweet and soporific qualities of the film which requires a disregard of some of the obviously concerning elements. Jonah Hill and Stutz are living out a fantasy - why does that fantasy "work" in this film?
ReplyDeleteFor the same reason it works in many Hollywood caricatures: the viewer is tantalized by the prospect of depth psychology, but defensively seeks to subvert its premise due to his reluctance to tolerate power imbalances and the negative valence of the doctor able to resist the pressure of human desire. A feast of schadenfreude!
ReplyDeleteDidn't mean to post above as anonymous
ReplyDeleteI think, if I follow, part of what you are proposing is that star power levels the power imbalance in the relationship. The schadenfreude is partly that - even the stars have problems - but also, perhaps, a wishful identification with someone who can have power over the therapist - who can make them into a wholly owned subsidiary who comes to my studio and acts - I am the director - rather than being subject to the direction of the therapist?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your interesting comments.
Yes! I think you phrased my comments more succinctly than I did myself! Thank you.
Delete